If you see Gladiator II in theaters this weekend, don't fall too in love with it: As is typically the case with Ridley Scott films, we will have another version to look forward to when the sequel hits digital. The filmmaker certainly loves to tinker with his movies, and he's released post-theatrical "director's cuts" for almost all of them.
Scott's films often have an expansive scope (and an accompanying hefty price tag), meaning he has to compromise his vision to whittle it down to a reasonable runtime for theatrical audiences, but he's is far from the only filmmaker to fiddle with a movie months or even decades after the original release—the rise of the home video market has made director's cuts almost de rigueur for filmmakers with clout (and the studios probably don't mind having something else to sell).
But while these enhancements often improve a film for the better, plenty more have accomplished the opposite. Here are six times it worked, and five times it'd have been better to leave things well enough alone.
Best: Heaven's Gate (1980)
According to the documentary Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (streaming on Prime Video), Michael Cimino's controversial epic, inspired by the Johnson County War, introduced the concept of the director's cut. Most film buffs know its troubled production, plagued by rumors of Cimino's exacting behavior on-set, earned it enough bad press that it was probably doomed even before United Artists, looking to do whatever it could to recoup on its investment, released a truncated cut of what it had judged to be an uncommercial vanity project. Thanks to scathing reviews, Heaven's Gate bombed at the box office, ultimately bankrupting the studio.
Several years later, pay television station Z Channel broadcast a 219-minute version of Heaven's Gate, leading some critics to reassess the much-maligned film. Cimino then released his definitive 216-minute director's cut in 2012. While the final product is still overlong and certainly a little self-indulgent, its visual style and measured pacing definitely plays better with more room to breathe. Heaven's Gate is breathtakingly beautiful, even when the story turns dark and violent, and it is certainly undeserving of its initial toxic reputation (not that you can easily judge, as the theatrical cut is unavailable online). Stream or rent the director's cut on Prime Video, and catch it free with ads on Tubi and Pluto TV.
Best: Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
If Heaven's Gate introduced the concept of the director's cut, Ridley Scott popularized it. Eleven of his films, including Blade Runner (of which there are four versions!) and Gladiator, boast extra scenes, mainly for the better (there is one exception below). And no Scott film benefits more from retooling than his Crusades epic Kingdom of Heaven. After poor test screenings, Scott succumbed to studio pressure to cut down his costly film, and critics and audiences were not pleased with the final product. When it came time to release it on DVD, Scott added nearly an hour of extra footage to what is called the "Extended Roadshow Cut," making the battle sequences bloodier and giving the characters more depth. The revised Kingdom of Heaven is a triumph of style and substance rarely see in the modern Hollywood era. The theatrical cut on Prime Video, but you're better off with a digital rental of the Roadshow version.
Worst: Mallrats (1995)
Kevin Smith has often publicly criticized his sophomore feature, so I don't feel bad about saying that the extended cut of his slacker comedy is even worse than the theatrical version. In this nearly two-hour cut of Mallrats, the lovelorn best buds T.S. and Brody come off as even more whiny and unsympathetic than in the clunk but well-paced 95-minute version, with a bizarre assassination subplot thrown in for discernible reason. Given Smith isn't a fan of his own film, there really is no reason for this "bizarro" version of the movie to exist. The theatrical cut is available for digital rental, but to watch the director's cut, you'll need to pick up the 10th Anniversary DVD.
Best: The Abyss (1989)
The most underrated film in James Cameron's filmography was actually released in theaters unfinished in 1989. Visual effects company Industrial Light and Magic couldn't complete some sequences before the release date, so Cameron had to cut a crucial scene involving an underwater alien race unleashing a human-eliminating tidal wave across the planet. After the success of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, 20th Century Fox offered Cameron's production company a financing deal that included a provision allocating half a million dollars to complete the effects work on The Abyss. The new, vastly improved, nearly three-hour-long version of the film debuted in theaters in 1993 and was recently upgraded to 4K in 2023. Steam the theatrical version on Hulu and rent the director's cut from Prime Video.
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