10 Films That Only Make Sense If You See The Director’s Cut
4. Apocalypse Now
As anyone who loves the smell of napalm in the morning will tell you, Redux is the definite version of Apocalypse Now and the only cut which captures the full essence of its source material, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Director Francis Ford Coppola reissued his Vietnam War classic in 2001 with an additional 49 minutes of footage tacked on to its already considerable runtime.
Most of the additional scenes focus on the de Marais rubber plantation scenes, and while this section of the film becomes somewhat drawn out, the extended cut preserves Conrad's all-important subtext on colonialism.
Although the original cinematic cut of Apocalypse Now was rightly hailed as one of the greatest movies of the 1970s, Redux is the version which successfully conveys Conrad's political commentary and proves you can indeed improve on perfection.