The rise of DVD as a major video distribution medium has led to a dramatic increase in "director's cut" versions, with "alternate endings" and "deleted scenes" and all the rest. After all, you need to fill that extra space out with something-- to get people to pay for a movie on DVD, you need to provide something extra, and there's only so much you can do with commentary tracks.
The problem with this is that most of those scenes were deleted for a reason. Usually a good one.
This was brought home in dramatic fashion this past weekend, when we rented Ronin on DVD, entirely because the disc promised an "alternate ending" (we already own the movie on video). Since the ending it had in the theater was pretty satisfactory (other than the cheesey Jean Reno voice-over), it was a little hard to imagine an "alternate" ending that would be an improvement. If you've seen the movie, but not the alternate ending, you can probably guess at an obvious possible course for such an ending: namely, "Dierdre comes back." Which is very obvious, and very Hollywood, but wouldn't be an improvement over the previously released ending.
Well, that's not it. It's close, but the actual "alternate" ending is much, much worse. Whoever decided not to use it knew exactly what they were doing.
We also rented This Is Spinal Tap on DVD, because I recently read somewhere that the commentary track features Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, and Christopher Guest in character as Derek Smalls, David St. Hubbins, and Nigel Tufnel commenting on the movie. Which is, in fact, every bit as brilliant as that sounds-- doubly so because it's clear that they're making it up as they go.
In addition to that, there's also an hour or so of footage that didn't make it into the original-- practically another Spinal Tap movie. Some of this is very good-- the scene of them at the zoo is a hoot, and there are a couple of scenes that set up the famous airport security check gag, though I probably could've died happy without seeing Bruno Kirby in his underwear singing Frank Sinatra.
Article comments
1 - James Russell
I didn't think the original edit of The Big Sleep did that much to make it more comprehensible, since Raymond Chandler's plot was already pretty damn twisted in the book. Howard Hawks and Humphrey Bogart couldn't work out whether one characted was killed or killed himself, so they asked Chandler directly, with the latter replying that he had no idea.
2 - Phillip Winn
Ugh! The extra footage in Fellowship improves the movie, in my view. That was cut for time, not for any good reason. Several things are more comprehensible for first-time viewers with the footage put back in.
On alternate endings, A Perfect Murder had several, one or more of which was probably every bit as good as the one they eventually went with.
But I think that the ending of The Abyss wasn't much improved by the alternate ending on the DVD. Maybe a little, but it was still pretty darn weak.
I'm with you on most "deleted scenes" and "alternate endings," but Fellowship is a different story. :)
3 - Larry O'Brien
I couldn't agree more with the point. One of the things that they often do with deleted scenes and director's cuts is spell out things that are better left unstated. The director's cut of "The Big Blue," for instance, adds about 15 minutes of footage which are absolute dead weight, transforming one of my favorite movies into a heavy-handed screed.
4 - Chad Orzel
Ugh! The extra footage in Fellowship improves the movie, in my view. That was cut for time, not for any good reason. Several things are more comprehensible for first-time viewers with the footage put back in.
I think time is a valid reason to make cuts. Or, rather, pace is a good reason for cuts, and the two are closely related. It think the cuts made to Fellowship were made for reasons of pacing, and I think they were reasonable cuts to make. I haven't heard any real complaints about the lack of cut material from people who saw the movie without having read the books.
But I think that the ending of The Abyss wasn't much improved by the alternate ending on the DVD. Maybe a little, but it was still pretty darn weak.
Back when it was on HBO all the damn time, I remember thinking that the way to improve the ending of The Abyss would've been to cut a bunch of footage at the end, not add new footage, so I'm not surprised that additional material didn't help. (Specifically, it should've ended at the point where Ed Harris is carried into the alien city.)
And from the first comment:
I didn't think the original edit of The Big Sleep did that much to make it more comprehensible, since Raymond Chandler's plot was already pretty damn twisted in the book. Howard Hawks and Humphrey Bogart couldn't work out whether one characted was killed or killed himself, so they asked Chandler directly, with the latter replying that he had no idea.
The real improvement was in having a scene at the DA's office about halfway through where Marlowe lays out the whole plot to that point. It was a little talky, but cleared things up, and made sure all the viewers were on the same page before plunging on into the second half of the plot.
I was never all that bothered by the question of who killed the chauffeur-- for one thing, there's an explanation suggested in the book that would work just fine. I'm also not entirely sure I'd trust the "Chandler had no idea" story-- he made a few different statements along those lines, but I think he had tighter control of his plots than he let on...
5 - Kate Nepveu
Re: Ronin: "It's close, but the actual "alternate" ending is much, much worse."
I don't think that states it strongly enough.
I'm trying very hard to forget it actually existed at all, and not think it was a bit that really happened that we just didn't get shown (which my mind keeps wanting to characterize it as). That bit is so bad that it's in danger of retroactively ruining the movie for me. I HATED HATED HATED it, and anyone who even remotely liked the (non-voiceover parts of the) ending should avoid it at all costs.
*deep breath*
On _Fellowship_: "look fairer and seem fouler" should have stayed in, and taking it out made Frodo look stupid and ineffectual. A trend the movie went for, I admit (Weathertop, for instance), but I didn't like it. "It's Mr Bilbo's trolls!" also should have stayed in, I think.
The one longish scene that I thought added something was the argument towards the end where Boromir accused Aragorn of forsaking his human heritage for elfdom. I thought this made the "_our_ people" bit during Boromir's death scene more powerful: it made it much more concrete to me that Aragorn has reached a turning point.
I thought everything else should have been left out. The opening dragged really badly, and Lothlorien just killed all momentum and left it hanging from a tree. Though I think the movie screwed up Lothlorien anyway, so maybe I just wanted to get out of there.