10 Times Film-Makers Ruined Their Own Damn Movies

Though it wasn’t well received by many mainstream critics after its 1979 release, Walter Hill’s The Warriors has been redefined as a cult classic in recent years. Until, that is, Hill buggered it up with his Ultimate Director’s Cut edition in 2005.

Released to coincide with the launch of a video game adaptation of The Warriors by Grand Theft Auto creators Rockstar Games, Hill’s Ultimate Director’s Cut only adds a little over a minute’s worth of extra running time but managed to insult its audience’s intelligence in the process.

You see, back during filming Hill had wanted to include a couple of sequences that referenced both movie’s literary origins – it being based on Sol Yurick’s novel of the same name, itself an adaptation of Greek epic Anabasis – and his own love of comic books.

Thanks to a mixture of time constraints, limited budget and studio finger-wagging, Hill didn’t get to include these in the classic cut of The Warriors but indulged himself when reediting for his Director’s Cut by adding a narrated sequence explaining its Greek origins and comic book-style interludes in between live action scenes. As if it wasn’t pretty easy to deduce the film’s themes and influences with a little research anyway.

Maybe Hill thought a new generation of viewers, which he presumably viewed as less intelligent, needed the film explained explicitly to them. We didn’t, but thanks anyway.