10 Director's Cuts That Ruined Awesome Movies

9. Donnie Darko

Donnie Darko did little business when it first hit American cinemas at the end of 2001, but was famously one of the biggest cult hits of the decade thanks to its superb sales on home video. With its meteoric success, director Richard Kelly was given carte blanche to complete the cut of the film that he originally intended to create, reconstituting deleted scenes that the studio encouraged him to cut. Though the addition of these scenes do make the film easier to understand, Kelly fails to realise that in doing so he also strips the film of its seductive, mystical quality, laying everything out in plainer terms for the viewer. Also, Kelly's biggest crime is to replace the opening song - Echo and the Bunnymen's classic "The Killing Moon" - with his original choice, INXS' "Never Tear Us Apart"; to create an iconic moment and then completely destroy it by replacing the music is a crime, though we'll put this down to Kelly being an (at the time) newbie director who couldn't know any better.
 
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Frequently sleep-deprived film addict and video game obsessive who spends more time than is healthy in darkened London screening rooms. Follow his twitter on @ShaunMunroFilm or e-mail him at shaneo632 [at] gmail.com.