Justice League: So, who's seen the Snyder Cut?

[Eric V]

Yeah, yeah. Fans always get riled up when people criticize stuff they like. Happens all the time sound here.

But a 4-hour director’s cut could certainly be called indulgent.

He didn't just criticize the work; by extension, he criticized the viewership who enjoyed it by writing "Pacing designed for people with nothing else to do." The former would have been fine; the latter is an unnecessary shot at viewers who liked it.

 

[billd91]

That said, I feel that sometimes movies are cut down for dumb reasons, and to the detriment of the quality of the movie, while other times movies are just way too long and desperately need cuts. I'm looking at you Peter Jackson!

Yeah, the editor is a relatively little known factor by the public but really important aspect of movie making. It can really make a movie great (Star Wars) or it can make a movie notoriously bad (Manos: The Hands of Fate - if you haven't seen this, its editing and pacing are soooooooo bad).

The Hobbit Trilogy for example, did not need to be 3 movies. It could have been easily trimmed down to 1 movie, and it would have probably made for a better movie to boot.

I think the two as initially planned could have been OK, but padding to three meant a lot of pointless filler. I watched the trilogy once in the theaters only because my family wanted to see it - I was done after the first one even though I liked Martin Freeman as Bilbo.

Aliens Special Edition includes some wonderful scenes that I really think should have been included in the theatrical release, but not all of the scenes that are now in the special edition. There is way too much exposition in the special edition, which spoils several of the movie's surprises. Plus I don't think we needed another scene of Newt's high pitched screaming.

I think Aliens is a particularly interesting case. I have no idea if the laserdisc version I saw, which had cuts restored, is the same as the Special Edition, but there were some of the cuts that were cool and others were pretty obviously good cuts to make. The automated gun defense scene was kind of cool, until you realized how dumb it made the aliens seem compared to the original theatrical cut. They're a lot more impressive if they come in via the ceiling spaces without having tried the frontal rush against the automated guns first...

 

[ART!]

I can't think of any movies that have been in this strange state; To be halted due to a terrible tragedy, and to then have another director come in to finish the movie, only for the original director to come back and do a 4-hour long cut of his version of the film, post theatrical release. It is nuts.

That said, I feel that sometimes movies are cut down for dumb reasons, and to the detriment of the quality of the movie, while other times movies are just way too long and desperately need cuts. I'm looking at you Peter Jackson!

The Hobbit Trilogy for example, did not need to be 3 movies. It could have been easily trimmed down to 1 movie, and it would have probably made for a better movie to boot.

Cutting Saruman's death from Return of the King was a crime, and left a bad taste in my mouth, considering how much filler there is in that movie. Plus it felt like a trick to motivate people to buy the extended cut on DVD. Plus the extended editions add more meandering scenes to the Two Towers with Treebeard, which jarringly interupt the action several times. Seeing more of Middle Earth is a nice novelty, but it comes at the price of pacing. So I find myself in the odd position of both liking the extended cut for 1 or 2 scenes, and hating them for the filler, long run time and bad pacing.

Aliens Special Edition includes some wonderful scenes that I really think should have been included in the theatrical release, but not all of the scenes that are now in the special edition. There is way too much exposition in the special edition, which spoils several of the movie's surprises. Plus I don't think we needed another scene of Newt's high pitched screaming.

Kill Bill was clearly intended to be one movie, and not two volumes. But frankly, I like that it is two movies. Tarantino may have added some filler here and there to pad out the runtime for both movies, but I like most of what he may or may not have added.

With its 4 hour run time, I think Snyder's cut could have easily been made into 2 movies.

You're absolutely right: ZS'sJL is a hard thing to assess, because there's nothing else like it.

You mention Tarantino, whose movies I react to similarly to how I react to Snyders: I get that he has real strengths as a filmmaker, and some aspects are really amazing and it's fascinating what he can pull off, but I almost always wind up at least kind of regretting having watched their movies.

Don't even start me on The Hobbit trilogy. Ugh. I found a fan-edit of those that cut it down to a 4-hour movie, and that's a 4-hour movie that actually works at all levels.

 

[embee]

I think the two as initially planned could have been OK, but padding to three meant a lot of pointless filler. I watched the trilogy once in the theaters only because my family wanted to see it - I was done after the first one even though I liked Martin Freeman as Bilbo.

500 minutes of movie from a 300 page book.

 

[Imaculata]

I think Aliens is a particularly interesting case. I have no idea if the laserdisc version I saw, which had cuts restored, is the same as the Special Edition, but there were some of the cuts that were cool and others were pretty obviously good cuts to make. The automated gun defense scene was kind of cool, until you realized how dumb it made the aliens seem compared to the original theatrical cut. They're a lot more impressive if they come in via the ceiling spaces without having tried the frontal rush against the automated guns first...

Exactly. The sentry guns are cool though. If it were up to me, I'd probably lean towards keeping them, just because I like how the scenes with them build suspense, and suggest a much larger force of Aliens than we get to see on screen. Because at the most we see like 6 extras in alien suits, but as viewers we have to believe there are hundreds.

But I don't like the inclusion of the Delerict Ship. It spoils too much, and the dialog at the colony is not very good. Plus I feel it is more interesting to let the viewers piece together what happened themselves, by watching the marines investigate the colony. By giving away exactly what happened, those scenes lose a lot of their suspense. They also added dialog later on in the movie, that spoils that we are going to see an Alien Queen. And I hate it.

I do really like the scene where Ripley finds out her daughter has died of old age while she was away. It is well acted, and considering how the movie is about motherhood, it seems very important to me to include. It makes the bond between Ripley and Newt carry a lot more weight.

There's also a scene with a cocooned Burk in the alien hive, which has not been included with any of the Special Editions to my knowledge. But now having seen it, the acting is not very good, so it got cut for a good reason. Sorry Paul Reiser. I thought I wanted to watch Burk die. But as it turns out, no I don't.

 

[ART!]

500 minutes of movie from a 300 page book.

The studio switched the plan from 2 movies to 3 movies when Jackson was well into filming the planned two movies. As soon as that news broke, I knew the movies would be a mess. Logistically, that's just a huge mistake.

 

[Hatmatter]

The studio switched the plan from 2 movies to 3 movies when Jackson was well into filming. As soon as that news broke, I knew the movies would be a mess. Logistically, that's just a huge mistake.

Agreed. I have a fan edit of The Hobbit that cuts out the material that was not in the book and the film is terrific, absolutely terrific.

 

[Imaculata]

You mention Tarantino, whose movies I react to similarly to how I react to Snyders: I get that he has real strengths as a filmmaker, and some aspects are really amazing and it's fascinating what he can pull off, but I almost always wind up at least kind of regretting having watched their movies.

Tarantino really loves dialog. His movies are all about the dialog. So when a movie studio tells him to break his movie Kill Bill into two separate volumes, he's going to add all that dialog that he was going to otherwise have to cut. I tend to like his dialog, so for the most part, this means more stuff for me to enjoy.

But there was one scene near the end of Volume 2 with Estaban that really killed the pacing in my view. Plus the scene at the stripclub also felt a lot like filler, and not the good kind.

 

[Imaculata]

Agreed. I have a fan edit of The Hobbit that cuts out the material that was not in the book and the film is terrific, absolutely terrific.

I have seen both a cut that brings it back to 2 movies, and even a cut that brings it down to 1 movie. The first focuses mostly on cutting out all the unnecessary cameos. So everything with Legolas and Gandalf, except for the scenes where Gandalf is actually in the book.

The other cut is even more harsh. It keeps most of the shire stuff and the songs, but it gets Bilbo on the road to adventure much quicker. Lake Town is cut down dramatically, with the side characters removed. It does keep Bard and his family. But the Master of Laketown and his annoying sidekick are gone almost entirely (Sorry Stephen Fry, you only get a brief cameo and thats it). Also, no Tauriel (Sorry Evangeline Lilly).

What I found interesting, was how the editor of this last version tried to bring the focus of the movie back on Bilbo. It wasn't just a matter of cutting down the movie to make it shorter, but also to improve the story telling. It should be Bilbo's story, but early into Battle of the Five Armies it seems Bilbo disappears from the movie almost entirely.

If you're interested in this version, and/or want to hear the editor's thoughts on the editing, he has a video on it:

 

[billd91]

What I found interesting, was how the editor of this last version tried to bring the focus of the movie back on Bilbo. It wasn't just a matter of cutting down the movie to make it shorter, but also to improve the story telling. It should be Bilbo's story, but early into Battle of the Five Armies it seems Bilbo disappears from the movie almost entirely.

To be fair, in the Battle of Five Armies, he isn't much of a factor so he should disappear in the battle. But that does kind of heighten the filler-ness (filleriarity?) of so much of the action sequences and drawing attention away from Bilbo's story.