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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Fixing Films

We're The Great Old Ones Now

15:50 / 22.05.02

There's a trend right now to go back and 'fix' movies. Spielberg removed the guns from ET (like anyone cared) and Lucas took the blasterbolt scars off the stormtroopers' armour, as well as adding extra footage, when he re-released the original movies.

More remarkably, Coppola's 'Redux' - which I think is an unmitigated disaster, and I'm praying they'll release the original on DVD again, because I don't have it.

So: fixing movies? Legitimate directorial process or barbaric tampering?

17:45 / 22.05.02

Wordworth's "Prelude".

18:27 / 22.05.02

It depends on the reasons behind any changes. If it's in order to make the film closer to the director's original vision then I don't really have a problem with it. How many different versions of Brazil have there been over the years? I don't think that many would try to argue that the 'accidental' showing of Gilliam's prefered take has led to an inferior version being made available. The same applies to Blade Runner.

Two conflicting reasons have been given for the ET tampering. Depending on which version you believe, Spielberg either did it because he always felt that the guns were a mistake or because he became uneasy with their inclusion over a period of time. The first excuse I'd be happy with; if it's a mistake from the word go then changing it later on, when the technology to do so effectively is available, is justified. If the director has a change of heart over a course of time then I don't think it's all that easy to justify. Quite apart from anything else, films are of their era. If you're going to fuck about with them simply because you don't think that they work as well in the modern climate, then you may as well go the whole hog and remake them.

The same two reasons are given for Lucas' fiddling with the original Star Wars trilogy. The scene with Solo in the cantina, where in the new version Greedo shoots first, was changed either because it was a mistake in the first place or because Lucas didn't like one of heros having any sort of moral ambiguity. The real reason to be the latter, if only because the attempt to make it look like Greedo takes the first shot was so pathetically half-arsed.

Then you've got the added stuff. Here, though, it was a mistake in that the newly-created footage jarred terribly with the older material. Watching the special editions is little more than a game of spot the difference, the shiny new stuff sticking out like a sore thumb (take the expanded Mos Eisley or the lead up to the Death Star trench, where the CG creatures and ships seem completely unable to stop shifting about all over the place, the sudden manoeuvrability of the ships in particular at odds with the older model shots).

Like I say, it depends. On the reasons for the tampering or its effectiveness.

06:58 / 24.05.02

I think this is a fascinating argument and more fascinating because of the absolute grip that Hollywood has about which version of its movies are available. In theatre a different version or interpretation of a play is always fine, because there's nothing to stop you seeing a version you prefer (or at least an interpretatoin you prefer). With film there really does seem to me to be some kind of betrayal of the original product, particularly in the way that some films lose their ambience and the years of associations that people invest in them simply to fulfil a director's 'vision'

Of the Star Wars ones I thought that A New Hope and Return of the Jedi were both made worse by the alterations - particularly as they were not used to cover up hokey effects like really bad robots, but instead used to insert patently obvious bits of CGI that were simply unnecessary. Empire was, however, in my opinion improved by the process. A great film was given simply a greater sense of scope by turning white panels into windows overlooking a bustling city. But then no plot elements were changed.

ET is another matter entirely. The film is actually quite terrifying in places. The government people with guns adds a sharp, difficult and scary element that helps cut against the fat and the schmaltz that fill so much of the rest of the film. It's simply cowardice that led Spielberg to remove them. Cowardice and anxiety about being seen to be anti-governmental. I was appalled.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

08:10 / 24.05.02

Grant - is it the same situation with poetry and film? And does a prolonged period of ceaseless revision have the same impact as a twenty-years-on reworking?

09:47 / 24.05.02

heh - its almost like soviet revisionism, only without the harsh penalties for remembering the original.

Not all revising a film need not be bad- personally i prefer blade runner's director's cut - however before a film is 'fixed' it usually must first be commercially successful in its 'broken' form, whichdoes effect the films that will even be considered eligable for 'fixing'.

An interesting aside...
Do we think the advent of DVDs and other extra's lead to passionate directors producing two versions of their films "one for theatrical release and another for down the line alternate DVD version release?"

12:39 / 24.05.02

The inclusion of deleted scenes on DVD releases has struck me as odd from the start in that, when those sections are presented as 'added extras' on the disc, you're never given the option to watch the film with the deleted footage reinserted. That'd be an interesting experiment; give the viewer the opportunity to create their own cut of the film.

I think that what you're talking about is a possibility, sleaze. It may be that directors will, in future, be less passionate about ensuring that the theatrical release meets their requirements and will be happier to let the studio have their way, safe in the knowledge that their version will be made available when the DVD comes out.

Our Lady of The Two Towers

13:23 / 24.05.02

Going slightly OT but Nick, if is remember correctly when I saw the 'Redux' DVD watching it with the extra scenes is an option, you don't have to watch it with them if you don't want to.

I remember sometimes in the mid-90s the BBC techies used some technique to colour a black and white copy of a colour Doctor Who episode where the BBC had lost the original. They deliberately made sure they didn't make it 'better', as they could have erased the lines around the Cromakey etc.A couple of years later, for no readily apparent reason they 'digitally enhanced' The Five Doctors anniversary special, where zippy overlayed effects stood out like a sore thumb from rubber creatures and exploding fireworks.

I'm dubious about new versions and so on, mainly because I see them as the Hollywood marketing machine using it as a way to make more money out of us. Something like this Spielburg dicking around with ET, if he can't trust his judgement in the first case, what's to say we should ever watch one of his films? And what's to stop the 40th anniversary edition where he says "actually, I always saw the FBI as carrying Space Hoppers. Mmmm, can I have a new bedpan please?"

Extra footage is different, something like 'Apocalypse Redux' or 'Lord of the Rings' when the footage was all filmed but cut purely for time reasons. I'm still uneasy but not as uneasy.

14:16 / 24.05.02

Would that Five Doctors rejig have been around the same time that they also digitally 'enhanced' old Red Dwarf series? [fights back joke about enhancing Red Dwarf by deleting the masters... and fails] I've not seen that particular piece of fiddling, but it sounds like a mistake in much the same way as the A New Hope SE was; the wobbly sets and cardboard monsters work because everything in the series is like that, it's all part of the same universe and, therefore, believable in a rather perverse way.

14:19 / 24.05.02

E Randy D, I think you raise a valid point about directors kind of hoping that there’ll be material they have space for on the DVD, and it made me think : a lot of the Deleted Scenes I’ve seen look as if they were deleted for a reason – mainly, that they didn’t necessarily move things along (the smoking scene in Fight Club springs to mind). Whilst I’m sure that there are examples which utterly undercut this point, I wonder if we’ll start to see the reason why scenes are deleted shifting from being a creative one (“this scene doesn’t really achieve much, we can lose it”) to … almost a technologically driven one (“I can put it on the DVD”).

As for the revamped Star Wars films, my main quibble with them is that I forked out £10 to see each of them, and Lucas still insisted on making the Phantom Menace. Just how much of a retirement fund did the man want guaranteed before he left well enough alone? Tch.

DBC

Our Lady of The Two Towers

15:54 / 25.05.02

Randy- Yeah, although the Red Dwarf one was supposedly because they had enough episodes to finally go to syndication in America and wanted to make the old episodes look more consistent with the new ones.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

11:21 / 26.05.02

when the released the ALIENS dvd with the extra scenes, it made me smile. I liked that these scenes were not needed to make the film good, but did enhance the movie upon rewatching.

the only good thing about the special editions of star wars was that i got to see the films in a theater

i think dicking around with ET is stupid, so instead of being done up in camo and looking like a terrorist, we now know that when a kid is wearing camo and fatigues, he looks like a hippie...

21:00 / 26.05.02

Probably apocryphal anecdote: Somebody once asked a famous critic (izzat an oxymoron?) if he had seen the director's cut of some movie. He shouted, "I don't want to see the director's cut of anything!"

I used to whole-heartedly endorse that logic: to hell with the rough draft, give me the final copy! Then I realized that the the form of the final copy was sometimes dictated by unsophisticated dolts. Case in point: Donnie Darko. The studio demanded that Richard Kelly trim the movie down, and he was forced to cut twenty wonderful, beautiful scenes.