By now, everyone’s aware of the idea of a director’s cut: nasty mean studios and cinema chains force filmmakers to cut their movies, re-edit them, etc, to fit whatever agenda they have (getting more bums on seats or interpreted more charitably, making the movie into something people might want to watch).
However, come DVD time/20 years later and suddenly the option to make more money looms large – surprising though it may seem, studios now make more money from DVD sales and rentals than they do from theatrical showings – and the idea of releasing an alternative version or creating special edition that costs more suddenly becomes very appealing. So the studios give the director a call, say “make it how you wanted to make, provided it’ll only cost an extra £50”, and hey presto, a director’s cut is born.
Most famous of all, and the one that really started it all (bar Close Encounters’ special edition, a thinly veiled way to stop certain producers from getting any more money from the original release) is Blade Runner‘s director’s cut, now available in a googolplex of different versions, but all of which generally lose the narration and the end bit nicked from The Shining‘s left-overs, and have a unicorn dream sequence injected to make it clear Deckard’s a replicant.
But I was musing on the concept and wondering are directors’ cut necessarily a good thing?
Continue reading “Question for the day: directors’ cuts – good or bad?”
