I think both versions of both last LoTR movies were a mess. I wish I had the editing wherewithal to bother with my own version. I can't bear to watch any of them.



But I'm pretty much with Alex. If your director's cut is 5 hours long, then release a five-hour long movie or don't release it at all. It's an insult to money-spending theater-goers to expend time and money seeing a feature the director considers sub-par to some other imagined version of the piece.

Bah on that.

I've never seen the long versions of the LOTR movies. The short versions weren't good enough for me to care. So to an extend I'm basing my belief that Jackson had his eye on the DVD to the detriment of the theatrical version based on the number of times I'd raise some criticism and be told "oh that is handled better and/or explained in the extended version."

Alex is correct about the theatrical versions being trailers for the DVD versions, but I wouldn't blame the director. It's almost always the studio, who will demand a film of a certain length in order to have a set number of screenings per day per theater. The director will invariably turn in their own preferred cut as well as the shorter version, so the producers don't do the cutting for them.

If I know that there's a much longer version coming out, I'll skip the theater and watch it on my big tv.

If this had been the case in the '80s, perhaps David Lynch's cut of Dune might have survived...

Huh. That's really interesting, and puts a bit of a spin on things. I'm glad she left it, though. While not my favorite of the series, I can't think of anything in it that was extemporaneous. Thanks for the quote, though. I'd never heard that.

Ah, my bad then. I understood you to be saying that you prefer films short and sweet without too much detail. I get what you're saying now. Still, I don't fully agree. Still using LotR as an example, I think Jackson made the theatrical releases as good as was possible and fully intended for them to be the best, definitive versions, with the extended cuts being more for us geeks who wanted to geek out even more. I agree with you about always making the best film possible, but I see nothing wrong with making the best film for the theater and then letting the niche of fans who want more, get more. As long as both versions receive the attention and care they deserve, of course.

True, there are cuts made against the directors will and **** happens.

But when Jackson filmed LOTR he didn't know that the "wait for DVD" option would be available to him. And this is why the first movie is pretty good in its theatrical form.

So, for Return of the King either he did not produce sufficient film that a good movie could be edited out of it at 3+ hours instead of 4+, or he was either too focused on the DVD version to do so, or didn't want to cut a theatrical version that would differ substantially from the DVD version.

All issues that I place at his feet and not the studio's. After all even the theatrical version of Return of the King was still 3 hours, 20 minutes long (about the same as the Extended version of Two Towers) so it isn't like New Line had him horribly constrained.

And still, the general guidelines for acceptable theatrical length are well known by movie makers. If you can't write a TV series that fits into 60 minutes per episode then you don't write a TV series. If you can't make your ideal movie within the length generally accepted then you fine another venue.

Just my opinion, of course. Though Jackson really should have been doing his publicity tour for the last two movies saying "The theatrical version will be awful because the studios won't let me do 5 hours on the big screen. Wait for DVD."

Has he actually said that he did that, or is that your opinion? I'm asking because I'm honestly curious. I can't find anything about his mindset on the subject.

Length limitations is not the reason Return of the King sucked. Listen to the Peter Jackson commentary. He didn't care about any of the events in that part of the story. None of them inspired him. None but one. The charage of the Rohirrim onto the Pelanor Fields at the Siege of Gondor (how's that for a geek sentence!). It's a fantastic moment of the film, infused with passion.

No surprise on my part when I heard Jackson in his own voice declare that was the only part of Tolkien's third act that did anything for him.


The mistake was not running time. The mistake was taking on a project when the third act of the story bores you.


* * * * *

I love Ridley Scott's introduction to his Director's Cut of Kingdom of Heaven. He cautions it's not merely a lot of entrances and exits to extend existing scenes, or extraneous stuff wisely left on the editing room floor.

In most director's cuts, that's exactly what you get. They are vanity pieces lacking editorial judgment. For the most part.


Kingdom of Heaven is certainly an exception. And the fight with the studio over running time and content was pretty well publicized at the time of that film's release. It's still far from a perfect movie, but the Director's Cut is a revelation if you've seen the theatrical.


Not so much with Return of the King. What a freaking mess either way.




The more I think on it, the more I'm glad there are no extended versions of the Harry Potter movies.

I don't think the film version of OOTP did justice to the endless pages of Harry's moody teen ALLCAPS ranting. Or to the 50+ pages of conversation between Dumbledore and Harry after Sirius's death.

Re the director's cut concept: how confident can someone be that something labeled "director's cut" is truly the director's uncorrupted vision as opposed to just a different, bigger version with a marketing label attached. If something is labeled "unrated version," I can shop with confidence. Not so much with "director's cut."

Some of my favorite films are are pretty darned long. But, size doesn't matter as much as good storytelling.

MP, have you seen the director's cut of Lynch's Dune? Is it any better than the horrible theatrical release?
(However, it DID give me "Worms. Spice. Is there a connection?" to add to my favorite movie quotes.)

I don't think there is a director's cut. There is an extended cut, which is awful, and which Lynch had nothing ot do with. He sued to have his name removed from it, in fact. It played on cable years ago, and was padded with concept art and narration. There has been occasional scuttlebutt about Universal pursuing Lynch to go ahead and create a Director's Cut, but he isn't interested.