Director's Cut vs Theatrical Version

[Franklin]

Since the rise of the dvd, movies are released more often not only as the original version we've seen in the cinemas, but also as a director's cut. These versions are longer with more scenes and more and enhanced storylines that where probably too long to show on the white screen.

For the real fans these longer versions are a real treat. But are these longer (slower ) versions a recommendation for the average people? What do you think? And what version do you prefer when you've seen both versions?

Movies like The Abbys, LOTR trilogy, Apocalypse Now (Redux), Underworld, The Butterfly Effect, Donnie Darko, Daredevil, The Alien movies, Terminator 2, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and Gladiator all have theatrical and director's cut versions.

[Jappy]

Personally, I like to see the films I love as a Director's Cut as I can get a bit geeky about it! ;D

However, unless you have a steel arse, three or four hours in a cinema is probably not a good idea and so DVD is the perfect medium for analysing a Director's vision of his work. The addition of a commentary almost certainly means you will sit through it all again to hear why he/she left out certain scenes etc.

Your "average" cinema-goer will not have the attention span of us geeky types and anything beyond 100 minutes will have them fidgeting like fuck and annoying the crap outta me with their popcorn shenanigans.

[teppic]

Director's cut every time (with just one or two exceptions). Just about every film mentioned except Donnie Darko was cut simply because the film studio got involved and compromised the director's original vision just to get the running times down (because they think the general public have 3 second attention spans) or to get a lower age rating. The LOTR's situation resulted in people paying to see a film with small but important parts totally missing, which surely no one finds a good idea except the film companies marketing dept's.


The only time a 'Director's Cut' is sometimes a bad idea is when a director goes back to a film after a period of time to "Make it better" or "Improve it" - because most of the time it simply doesn't work. See most people's opinions on the Director's Cut of Donnie Darko for example, or look at what Lucas did to the wonderful original Star Wars films.


On the subject of running times... Every one knows i loved the Silent Hill movie, and i can't believe that even the positive reviews complained about it's running time being two hours (it simply couldn't have done the atmosphere of the games justice if it had been an hour and a half). Well it turns out that the original cut was reported to be three and a half hours long! Wonder what those who complained would have said about that. ;D But that means that there's an hour and a half of footage missing from a film i loved greatly. I understand that the full length film would have damaged the film at the box-office, and this is why Director's Cut dvd's are so important - it's the only way i'm ever likely to see that missing hour and a half. The only bad thing is it leaves the real fans wondering what the hell to do when a film they like is coming out on dvd and there's no news about if a Director's Cut edition will be released. Do you buy now and risk having to buy the movie a second time a few months later, or wait and possibly damage sales of a movie you want to be successful? I really wish that the film companies would be more honest about such things and say when there will be an extended version released. I happily waited for the full versions of all the LOTR's films, and imported Hellboy to make sure i'd be able to get the extended Collector's edition - with the exception of the UK release of Hellboy (where they wouldn't say if the extended edition would get a release over here, took a year to finally release it, and then didn't release the Collector's Box version), those are good examples of how such situations should be handled so that the fans don't get unknowingly ripped off. Unfortunately they're in the minority.


But if all this is annoying you, then just wait... Within the next year we'll have HD-DVD versions and BlueRay-DVD versions also. And of course all those movies on dvd's you have in your collection will eventually get released on at least one of the high definition formats (The Last Samurai and Serenity are amongst the first HD-DVD's to be mastered and put on sale, and when you see a movie you love in HiDef, trust me when i say you won't be able to resist and will soon be adding yet another copy of the same film to your collection ).

[Franklin]

I recently bought the director's cut of Donnie Darko for a little 7 GBP. It's a Sunday Times release and it's a nice addition to the original DD-dvd I have, but I haven't had to watch it yet.
But Andrew, do you mean this director's cut makes it a worse movie that the original 90 minutes version?
And what about The Butterfly Effect? Haven't seen it yet, but also bought the director's cut 2 weeks ago for a very low price

When 5 or 6 years ago Terminator 2 was released on (double)-dvd, the movie was a longer director's cut version and I think it just slowed down the movie I always loved.
There is a US release with 3 versions of T2. I lended it from a friend one time.
In this case the director's cut isn't improving the movie for me.

Underworld and Almost Famous I prefer the director's cut far above the original, though!
And what about Das Boot? Can't remember seeing the original, but the director's cut-dvd I have I really like and it's 3,5 hour long if I'm correct.
And recently it got a 5 hour mini-series release form the original movie!!!

But what is the advantage of HD-DVD and BlueRay DVD? Are the pictures and the sound in even better quality than today's dvd's? There are SuperBit releases, but you need a special dvd-player for that, right?
Isn't that also the fact with HD and BlueRay?

[Jappy]

franklin said:

But what is the advantage of HD-DVD and BlueRay DVD? Are the pictures and the sound in even better quality than today's dvd's? There are SuperBit releases, but you need a special dvd-player for that, right?
Isn't that also the fact with HD and BlueRay?

Blu-Ray and HD-DVD WILL be better in picture and sound but yes, you will need a Blu-Ray or HD player. Exisiting DVD's will be able to be played on these new machines. In fact, the makers claim that your DVD's will look even better. Hmmm

SuperBit DVD's can be played on any DVD player. They claim to have better picture and sound quality, hence the lack of extras on SuperBit titles.

[teppic]

franklin said:

I recently bought the director's cut of Donnie Darko for a little 7 GBP. It's a Sunday Times release and it's a nice addition to the original DD-dvd I have, but I haven't had to watch it yet.
But Andrew, do you mean this director's cut makes it a worse movie that the original 90 minutes version?

Yes, people say the director's cut is slow and ruins most of the atmosphere of the film. I have the one given away with the Sunday Times too (which i keep in the box of the original R1 version i got for only £3:99), but haven't got round to watching it yet.

And what about The Butterfly Effect?

I've only seen the theatrical version which was on one of the movie channels i get. Very average movie i thought, and i can't see how it could have been made better with extra footage (but hey, you never know - maybe they found the lost 3mins of footage where Mr Punked was actually able to act ;D).

But what is the advantage of HD-DVD and BlueRay DVD? Are the pictures and the sound in even better quality than today's dvd's? There are SuperBit releases, but you need a special dvd-player for that, right?
Isn't that also the fact with HD and BlueRay?

It's all in the name: High Definition DVD. The resolution of the picture is hugely increased, and so there's much more detail in everything. Blu-Ray is Sony's competing HiDef format (think of it being like a new VHS versus Betamax situation). There are also some tv channels beginning to broadcast stuff in HiDef now.

Shrek 2 in HiDef broadcast via Sky Movies (i nicked this pic from a forum i go to sometimes - i'm not willing to pay the price of the service as it is just now). It's not the best example as detail is lost by the camera (yep, the real thing looks even better!), but it still looks obviously much better than even the dvd release.

For the new disc formats you would need a player of the correct format (only just being made available and still quite expensive - Blu-Ray being the most expensive of the two). So just as you need a dvd player to watch dvd's, you'd need a HD-DVD player to watch a HD-DVD disc and a Blu-Ray player to watch anything on a Blu-Ray disc. It's probably worth noting that the PlayStation 3 will have a Blu-Ray drive fitted as standard, though i've no doubt a proper Blu-Ray player will give better pictures (just like the PS2's dvd picture isn't anywhere near as good as even low cost dvd players). The other big thing in favour of the new disc formats is that they can fit huge amounts of data on them - several times the amount of a dual layer dvd disc. For channels which broadcast stuff in HiDef you need a set-top box to decode the signal, all of which are sent via satellite or cable at the moment. And of course you need a tv which can display a HD picture, which most modern LCD and Plasma tv's can these days.


As for Superbit, it's just a marketing gimmick. The theory is that they don't compress the movie as much as in regular dvd releases (which is why there is always less extras - or none at all - as there isn't the space on the disc to fit them in). If the movie isn't as compressed then the picture quality should be better. As i said, that's the theory anyway. In reality there's hardly any difference between a Superbit release and a normal release as these days if there are too many extras to fit on a dvd without compressing the movie too much they just tend to put the extras on a 2nd disc as dvd disc's are quite cheap to manufacture now. In the very early days of dvd's there was a point to Superbit releases (though even then most people wouldn't have been able to tell the difference), but these days it's just a marketing angle to get people to buy the movie yet again. And since Superbit is just a standard dvd, you don't need a different player - any dvd player will play them without problem.


This site gives some idea of the type of improvements a HD signal gives (just remember that when you mouse-over the images to see the higher resolution versions of the pictures that the 2nd image isn't the full HD resolution, and so you can expect the real HD picture to be even clearer): www.cornbread.org/FOTRCompare/ The main purpose of this page was to show that the LOTR dvd transfer wasn't anywhere as good as it could have been, but you should still get some idea of how a movie's picture quality can be much improved over what everyone is used to as standard.

[Franklin]

And since Superbit is just a standard dvd, you don't need a different player - any dvd player will play them without problem.

Well, that is something different from what I heard a while back in a store, or read somewhere!

It's pretty clear for me now that I won't change to HD or BluRay. Just as I won't change my big widescreen tv for a plasma or lcd-screen for as long as my Philips-tv works just fine

It's nice to see what we can expect in the future with these new dvd's in development, but over 99,9% of the people will wait to change to another dvd or tv standard, when the other standards are a succes ánd affordable for them. And for dvd's it is also important that you can play the old dvd's as well.

Back to Theatrical vs Director's Cut: I still prefer the original version of E.T. over the 20th anniversary edition Spielberg made.

[teppic]

Superbit DVD's: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superbit


All HD-DVD players and Blu-Ray players also play DVD's. At least one of the formats will take off, it's just a matter of how quickly they become easily affordable (and just look how quickly DVD player's became affordable).


If my personal experience of Philips' CRT tv's is anything to go by i'd guess around 5 years from the date it was bought. ;D Depends when it was first bought tho - the further back you go, the more reliable the big brands were. Old Sony stuff used to last 10 or even more years, but now a lot of Sony equipment is generally considered to last more in the region of just outside it's 1 year warranty (the Japanese even have a funny term for how modern Sony tv's have a habit of breaking down just outside the warranty).

[Mina]

i usually prefer the director's cut, although in certain cases it can suck - like for "Amadeus" (way too long), "Underworld" (useless scenes/too long), or "Blade Runner" (sorry but i prefer the version with the voice off )...

[Franklin]

Good point about Blade Runner Mina! I almost forgot about that movie, hence there is only a director's cut release for as long as I remember. A release without extra's.
I know the original version with the voice over.
I would love to see a double dvd to be released, with the original version on disc 1 and the director's cut on the other disc. But with a lot of extra's on them. Deleted scenes, development of the story, making the music and stuff like that.

But maybe we can wait for that release just as long as an official release on dvd of Twin Peaks' second and conclusive season (which never happened so far ).