Top 10 alternative versions of famous films – review addiction

Zach Snyder Justice League became one of the main cinema events of 2023 – after this version, it is simply impossible to watch the original. However, for the film industry, correcting errors through reprints is not at all new.

Today we will recall 10 alternative versions of famous films that can partially or completely change your impressions of the films you have already watched. We decided to limit ourselves to the entertainment mainstream, so “Apocalypse Now” or “Once upon time in America” you won’t find it here. But a couple of candidates will surely surprise you anyway.

10th place. Mad Max: Fury Road

And we will start with a version that does not add something new to the film, but, on the contrary, removes unnecessary things from it. After director George Miller finally finished his grandiose long-term construction titled Mad Max: Fury Road and reaping a harvest of awards, he wanted to release the film in the form in which it was originally conceived. That is, black and white. This is how a version appeared called Black & Chrome… And if you think that instead of buying a special edition of the film, it is enough to simply tinker with the settings of the TV or monitor, then you are greatly mistaken. Each scene was repainted separately so that the picture did not look like a gray mess. As a result, the Hollywood blockbuster turned into a punk art house of the 70s – that is, it became closer in spirit to the original “Mad Max”. Having got rid of bright colors, the wasteland appeared before the audience in its true guise: lifeless, cruel, oppressive. Here it is, post-apocalypse in all its glory.

By the way, after Miller, director James Mangold released the so-called “noir” version of his “Logan”… Yes, and the “sniderkat” has a black and white version. But as bright, excuse the pun, an impression, like the chrome-plated “Road of Fury”, they do not produce.

9th place. “I’m legend”

The ending is the most important part of the film. The ending sums up the results, pushes the viewer to some conclusions and leaves the strongest impression. Well … that’s if it’s lucky. And if not, then the rest of the picture will shrink. The clearest proof of this is “I’m legend” with Will Smith.

The tape is based on the novel of the same name by Richard Matheson, but the theatrical version has only the most common plot in common with the original source: Dr. Robert Neville is alone trying to survive in a world captured by vampires. This is where the similarities end. Along the way, the protagonist meets a woman with a child, and in the end he saves them, undermining himself along with a pack of ghouls. Well, the vaccine against vampirism created by Neville is successfully delivered to the camp of the survivors. Happy end.

The alternate ending of the film is much closer to the ending of the original novel. During the last defense, Neville realizes that the leader of the vampires only wants to return his beloved, whom the doctor kidnapped for the sake of experiments. The hero realizes that the infected are intelligent and they have feelings, and he himself has been killing their fellows in cold blood for months on end. This strong scene is still followed by a formal happy ending, but it doesn’t taste so sugary anymore.

8th place. “Daredevil”

“Daredevil” with Ben Affleck at one time snatched a lot of harsh criticism, and deservedly so. The film was released a year after the first Spiderman and seemed like an attempt to cash in on his popularity, because he was filmed by another studio. And, in general, the way it was: at least this was the goal pursued by the producers who mercilessly cut “Daredevil” so that the picture would be suitable for family viewing.

The R-rated (18+) director’s cut was released on DVD a few years later and received a much warmer welcome. It turned out that not just a few scenes had disappeared from the theatrical version, but a whole storyline. In it, Matt Murdock and his partner Foggy are trying to defend a petty criminal in court who is accused of murdering a woman. In the process, it turns out that the case is directly related to the main villain of the film, Kingpin, and it is this investigation that leads to the arrest of the antagonist in the finale. That is, the producers almost completely threw out the elements of the detective story and the judicial drama from the picture – just what distinguishes the comics about Daredevil from other superheroics.

And in the director’s version, the action has become much tougher, the actions of the characters are more logical, and the plot holes are smaller. It doesn’t make Daredevil a completely different movie, but it definitely makes it better.

7th place. “Legend”

There is hardly another director who loves returning to his own films as much as Ridley Scott. 11 of his films have alternative editions, and we will get to two of the most significant ones. But let’s start with “Legends” – a picture that today almost no one remembers. This is understandable: the film was released in 1985, in the heyday of the era of sword and magic on the big screen, and was somewhat lost against the background of such mastodons as “Conan the Barbarian”, “Endless story” and “The Princess Bride”… And besides, “Legend” is one of Scott’s weakest films. In any case, in its rental version. Even with a modest timing of an hour and a half, it seems terribly drawn out and simply boring. And this despite the young Tom Cruise, the phenomenal make-up Tim Curry and the soundtrack of the band Tangerine Dream. There seems to be magic, but somehow it is not enough.

But there is much more of it in the director’s cut, which was found and restored in the early 2000s. It lasts as much as forty minutes longer – and the scenes cut from the theater give the film’s events the necessary context. As a result, what is happening no longer seems to be a surreal dream, where everything happens simply “because”, but a completely understandable and well-built fairy tale. The perception is also facilitated by the alternative soundtrack from the great Jerry Goldsmith: it is much more suited to heroic fantasy than retro electronics. Although here, of course, a matter of taste.

6th place. “Keepers”

But let’s move on to Zach Snyder, who was also known for his love of alternative editions long before the “Justice League”. Although it all started with superheroics too – with “Keepers”… While purists consider the Alan Moore / Dave Gibbons comic unscreened, and the adaptation itself is called a failure, the 2009 film has many fans. At the same time, Snyder himself was not particularly happy with the theatrical version: too much had to be put under the knife. well and Warner Bros. was not particularly happy with the box office, but made a compromise and released the director’s cut on video.

The extra 20 minutes and alternate cuts don’t really affect the plot, but they do give you a better understanding of the characters and the world of the film. The cruelty and madness of Rorschach, the romance between Dan and Laurie, the views of Doctor Manhattan are revealed in more detail. After all, it is in the director’s cut that the Comedian utters the phrase that became the film’s slogan: “Justice will overtake each of us. It doesn’t matter what for. “

Later, the “Warners” also released the so-called “ultimatum” version lasting three and a half hours. There, a short animated cartoon “The History of the Black Schooner”, whose plot acts as an allegory of the plot of the “Guardians” themselves, was inserted into the film. But, frankly, animation inserts only break the rhythm of the picture. So we recommend that you limit yourself to the director’s version.

5th place. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Well, and how to ignore the second victim of the Warner Bros. intervention after Justice League. – “Batman v Superman”? It seems that it is not accepted to learn from other people’s mistakes in the film industry, because exactly the same thing happened to Snyder’s film that happened to Daredevil thirteen years earlier. In both cases, the gloomy film comic strip, in which considerable emphasis is placed on revealing the characters and unraveling the riddle, tried to cram it into the framework of a family blockbuster, throwing out both the disclosure of the characters and the unraveling of the riddle. The result was very predictable. Neither critics nor viewers appreciated Batman v Superman. Only fans of comics and Snyder defended him – and even then without much confidence.

But then the director’s version saw the light, and some of the claims dropped. Dawn of Justice still has something to scold for, but a few gaping plot holes have indeed been patched. Actually, these holes appeared solely due to the fact that the picture was reduced by as much as half an hour, and not at all unnecessary scenes were thrown out. For example, the episodes in which Clark is investigating the activities of Batman, and Lois is trying to find out who and why is setting up Superman – in general, everything that the studio bosses recklessly considered too boring.

4th place. Superman 2

However, this was not the first time a man of steel had suffered from studio interference. Back in 1980, Richard Donner, director of the original “Superman” with Christopher Reeve, was fired right in the middle of filming the second part. The reason was the conflict between the director and the producers. The film was already about three-quarters ready when Richard Lester was urgently seated in the director’s chair. He quickly finished shooting something, reshooting something, and throwing something out, after which Superman 2 was released, proving to be a disappointment for both the audience and the studio. Sounds familiar, right? But if Snyder’s fans have been clamoring for a corrected version of the spoiled film for three years, Richard Donner’s fans have dreamed of it for 26 years.

The idea was realized only in 2006, when the release Superman Returns returned the public interest in the franchise, and the rough materials of the original second part fell into the hands of enthusiasts. Under Donner’s supervision, they were restored, in some places supplemented with digital effects, and the missing episodes were tried to be assembled from test takes. The result is a completely different film. It has fewer unnecessary jokes, better staged fights, more relationships between Clark and Lois, and the plot is more logical and slender.

Alas, it is still obvious that the alternative version is not a real picture, but a Frankenstein monster, revived by the power of fan love. The special effects are very ridiculous in places, the gluing is uneven, and the hairstyles and clothes of the actors change between shots. Even so, Donner’s Superman is better than Lester’s Superman.

3rd place. “The Kingdom of heaven”

Ridley Scott again. After phenomenal success “Gladiator” the British director received almost unlimited creative freedom, and therefore took on an even larger project. Scott conceived an epic epic about the Crusades, religion and faith, and the role of man in history. Putting the idea into practice cost a whopping $ 130 million by zero-based standards. However, the studio 20th Century Fox was dissatisfied with the result: “The Kingdom of heaven” didn’t like focus groups. Too dark, too bloody, too long. As a result, the picture reached the cinemas, “losing weight” by 40 minutes, and, despite all the efforts of the producers, did not gain much popularity.

But the disappointed Ridley Scott did not abandon his brainchild. A couple of years later, he released the director’s cut, and everyone finally saw the “Kingdom of Heaven” as it was intended. The main character, the blacksmith Balian, has a backstory and understandable motivation. Sibylla, performed by Eva Green, was revealed in a new way in a tragic storyline with a sick son. And the rest of the characters had more episodes that turned them from extras into full-fledged supporting characters. The plot no longer gallops across Europe, but develops gradually; the horrors of war are not shyly smeared over, but paraded.

The director’s cut of Kingdom of Heaven is one of Ridley Scott’s finest films and one of the most underrated blockbusters of the 2000s.

2nd place. “Lord of the Rings”

Of course, you will find something to scold in the comments anyway, but if we had not included “Lord of the Rings”, we would have been torn to pieces. Although few people know that the same version of the trilogy with two additional hours is not just called “extended”, and not “directorial”. Peter Jackson himself, according to him, prefers the theatrical versions of his films. Everything else is nice but optional bonuses for fans. And this is exactly what you can argue with.

Yes, in “The Fellowship of the Ring” and “Two fortresses” you can find episodes that tighten the story and easily fall under the knife. And the scene of the capture of the ship in “The Return of the King” and completely spoils the subsequent surprise when Aragorn, along with the ghosts, disembarks in the middle of the battle. However, there are also enough scenes that are simply necessary. Take, for example, the death of Saruman: without it, the storyline of the evil wizard simply ends. Although most of all from theatrical editing, perhaps, Eowyn and Faramir suffered. In the extended version, they were allowed to open up and given a hint of joint happiness.

Unfortunately, until recently, the enhanced version existed only in the Blu-Ray edition with very strange color correction. For some reason, the picture was made noticeably colder than it was in the original. But last year “The Lord of the Rings”, including the augmented one, was reissued in 4K, where the color problem was fixed. So now there is no reason not to revisit the trilogy for the hundredth time.

1st place. Blade Runner

But we will still give the first place to the ubiquitous Ridley Scott and his most long-suffering masterpiece – Blade Runner… Over the 40 years of the film’s existence, it has accumulated as many as seven different versions. And the one that you can now find in some online cinema is very different from what came out in real cinemas back in 1982.

In those days, Scott did not yet have such an authority as he does today, and therefore the studio bosses deprived him of the right to final editing. They thought Blade Runner was too confusing and depressing. And the producers did not like the hints that Descartes might be a replicant. To make the plot clearer, a voiceover by Harrison Ford was inserted into the tape. The actor didn’t like the idea or the lines he offered, so he muttered them in a tired, monotonous voice. But the decision to end the film with a happy ending was much worse: in the final of the theatrical version, the characters fly out of the rainy city into nature, and Descartes says off-screen that they lived happily ever after.

After the release, the original version of Scott surfaced here and there, but officially it was first published in 1992, and without the knowledge of the director. He himself returned to Blade Runner only in 2007. Under his supervision, the famous unicorn scene and the original ending were returned to the tape, the color correction and special effects were improved, the unsuccessful dubbing was corrected and a little more blood was added. After that, viewers all over the world finally had the opportunity to see the final version of the film that started cyberpunk.

This is what our ten alternative versions look like, which change the perception of films the most. And which of these did you watch? And what pictures, in your opinion, could add to this top? Write in the comments and see only the best!