10 Movies That Were Fixed After Release

These movies were all changed after they hit screens.

Alien Romulus
20th Century Studios

It's often said that films aren't released - they escape. 

That is to say, not even the very best movie is perfect, and especially not in the eyes of the filmmaker who made it, who will usually just try to make the best film possible with the time and budget allotted.

And while a film is sent out into the world once it's "done," that doesn't actually have to be the very end of the matter, as some movies have been tinkered with weeks, months, even years after audiences first set eyes upon them.

Now, the very idea of "fixing" a movie post-release is contentious, because a filmmaker's subsequent feelings about their work don't necessarily vibe with those of the film's fans - case in point, George Lucas' controversial, extensive changes to the original Star Wars trilogy.

Yet in the majority of these cases, the filmmakers made a smaller series of changes to repair problems with the release version of the movie, from technical mistakes to bad CGI, and even jokes which ended up missing the mark.

For better or worse, a movie isn't simply a concrete, immovable piece of art once it's out in the wild - it can still be played with years after the fact...

10. Cats

Alien Romulus
Universal

While there was no fixing the fact that Cats was a very, very bad movie, it also went further to release in cinemas with some seriously undercooked VFX, with early viewers pointing out numerous CGI glitches, such as Judi Dench's human hand nightmarishly clipping through her digital fur.

This caused enough of a stir online that, within two days of the film's release, Universal sent a "patched" version of the film to cinemas around the world, which contained numerous fixes to dodgy VFX shots. 

This was reportedly at the request of Cats' director Tom Hooper, who freely admitted that he only completed post-production on the musical blockbuster a single day before its world premiere, which doesn't exactly suggest a smooth journey to the big screen.

The bitter irony however, as many pointed out, is that most of the die-hard Cats fans - who exist, apparently - likely caught the film on opening weekend before the update had been released to cinemas.

By this point, toxic word-of-mouth killed its box office dead with casual audiences, and so was there really much point even "fixing" such a lost cause of a movie anyway?

 
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Stay at home dad who spends as much time teaching his kids the merits of Martin Scorsese as possible (against the missus' wishes). General video game, TV and film nut. Occasional sports fan. Full time loon.