10 Film Director's Cuts That Actually Made The Movie Shorter
3. Superman II: The Donner Cut
Shorter by: 11 minutes
Arguably the model for the current Snyder Cut debate, Superman II was the last time that Warner Bros. fired a director mid-production on a Superman movie and brought in someone new for reshoots to make it lighter and funnier. And, as with Snyder, Warner eventually realised that there was money to be made by letting the original director release his vision for the movie as well.
Where Richard Donner's version of Superman II, which was finally cobbled together nearly three decades after it was shot, is likely to differ greatly from the infamous Snyder Cut, though, is in length.
Both Joss Whedon's version of Justice League and Richard Lester's Superman II clock in at around two hours, but while Snyder had intended to make a gigantic epic, Donner was looking for a pacy action-adventure film. As a result, Donner's version of the Super-sequel is actually closer to 110 minutes, or "about half a Snyder Cut", in length.
The two Superman IIs are more radically different than most theatrical and director's cuts, with Lester only using about 30% of the material shot by Donner. Although not completely seamless in its attempts to piece together Donner's version, this director's cut does at least give a sense of a movie whose action is more dynamic and comedy less indulgent, which may well account for its shorter length.