These Director's Cuts Suck!

Should Have Been Left On The Cutting Room Floor.

Directors Cut Sucks!
WhatCulture

As shown recently with the mass salvaging project that was The Snyder Cut of The Justice League film, sometimes actually trusting the director you hired to make your film is a good idea.

Game-changing stuff I know.

Yet you'd be surprised at just how many times directors have their visions for the silver screen utterly blinkered by studios and excessive cuts and mandates from execs, which can leave even thoroughbred ideas destined for the glue factory. Now to be fair to both parties of this outrageous horse metaphor, sometimes studios have to intervene for the sake of all involved, as those at the helm can sometimes start steering the ship towards jagged rocks marked with such horrors as "it's gonna be four hours long!" or "I've blown all the budget on my lead's cocaine habit" and thus make what they deem to be necessary cuts.

Still nobody likes to feel like their work has been ruined by others (just ask our writers whose scripts I butcher on a regular basis) and so Director's Cuts offer a chance for visionaries to "put the record straight". It's just a shame that sometimes these extended, reshot, and retooled versions sometimes come out even worse than the theatrical original. Buckle up, my friends.

5. The French Connection

Directors Cut Sucks!
20th Century Fox

So I think, without question, The French Connection is one of the best crime capers going. It's gritty, it's incredibly harsh with its tones and messages and it absolutely delivers when it comes to the chase sequences (which when coupled with the knowledge that these were shot without permission on public roads, creates a true sense of danger that is almost uncomfortable to watch.)

It's one of those films that is both the product of its time and yet has in many ways stood the test of it, therefore it was actually quite crazy to see that it was getting a director's cut release in 2009 decades after the film hit the cinema. Touting a new and supposedly "colder" look that was achieved through intensive color grade, fans were excited to see what director William Friedkin would deliver.

However, this was less of a wild ride and more of a screeching halt courtesy of a dumpster, as this edition was... ugly. The color grade that the director has insisted on was an utter mess, producing high contrast and almost pastel-like smeared visuals. Fans and critics were reviled at how distracting this color grade was and for many, this was completely unwatchable.

It was bad enough that cinematographer Owen Roizman spoke out about the project with disgust calling the 2009 release "atrocious" and it's hard to argue with him. Well, it was unless you were Friedkin who actively spoke out that he'd done nothing wrong on his end, and that it was the fault of the disc the edition was recorded to.

Claiming that the master was perfect but the transition to disc messed the whole thing up, Friedkin seemed to put out post after post about how it was quite simply, not his problem. Except it was in a way because it had his name on it, plus would have been signed off by him, PLUS should have been quality tested before shipping.

Things got so bad with the response to the 2009 wreck fest that a second Director's Cut that contained the tag that it came from both Friedkin and Roizman had to be released in order to appease the torched fanbase.

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Jules Gill hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.