Comparison between Theatrical Version and Director's Cut and Unrated and German DVD and...

January 4, 2011 8:58 AM

Movie-Censorship.com is a resource to provide amazingly detailed comparisons between different versions of movie releases.

Some examples (may include NSFW screenshots):

Aliens, Apocalypse Now, Army of Darkness, Babylon A.D., Blade Runner (1), The Crow, Donnie Darko, The Evil Dead, The Exorcist (1), Fight Club (1), Grindhouse, Inglorious Basterds, The Killer (1), Leon - The Professional, Mad Max 2/ The Road Warrior (1, 2), Natural Born Killers, The Prophecy, RoboCop, Stargate, Terminator 2 (1, 2), Tropic Thunder, Underworld, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Yellow Submarine

posted by quin (16 comments total)

It's not censorship, it's not censorship, it's not censorship! Goddammit, goddammit, goddammit! Censorship only refers to... nah, I'm just kidding.
posted by box at 9:00 AM on January 4, 2011

why hello there

i have a definition of that word you used that is different from the definition that you used, and other people in this thread understood

however, my definition is correct, and yours is not

you should feel bad, and then, embrace the correct definition

have a nice day
posted by LogicalDash at 9:09 AM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

This is a great project, and very detailed, but the information is presented really badly. A little cleanup in the layout would make it a lot easier to tell how things are being compared.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:10 AM on January 4, 2011

It also seems doesn't English originally written. In.
posted by Curious Artificer at 9:13 AM on January 4, 2011

Naturally Ms. Weaver would have objected to having her most emotional scene cut from Aliens - even though giving her a dead daughter pushes her relationship with Newt (which is essentially the entirety of the film) into Anvilicious territory. And naturally Cameron wanted to keep in his nifty robot guns - even though they bring the movie to a dead halt while we listen to the actors counting down numbers.

But with all due respect to two important film artists, they've got their heads up their respective asses on this one. Nearly every scene cut from the theatrical release is one that Mrs. Beese and I fast forward through during our frequent viewings of the movie. Special stink points for Paxton's "ultimate badass" speech - which does nothing to enhance our understanding of either: A) how well-armed the Marines are, or B) what a goofball Hudson is.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:13 AM on January 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

Seems funny that they are so detailed as to have something like Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat, but nary a mention of the almost epic battle of Brazil, where even netfilx carries the "Love conquers all" version.
posted by edgeways at 9:15 AM on January 4, 2011

"Sorry, your search beverly hills cop didn't return any results."

I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out which version of The Killer I've seen...
posted by mrgrimm at 9:19 AM on January 4, 2011

What I love about the director's cut of RoboCop is that it takes a gruesome scene with a lot of black humor and makes it outright hilarious.
posted by brundlefly at 9:19 AM on January 4, 2011

Also interesting that some are much more detailed than others. One of The Fight Club write-ups says "Norton fighting the blonde guy has been re-edited" while the other one painstakingly points out the multiple bloody faces of Jared Leto.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:21 AM on January 4, 2011

Faint of Butt: This is a great project, and very detailed, but the information is presented really badly. A little cleanup in the layout would make it a lot easier to tell how things are being compared.

Indeed. Beyond that, this is one of a few similar comparison sites, such as DVD Compare (comparison of runtimes, features, decent layout with a final summary on the best edition to get) and DVD Beaver (comparison of image and audio quality, terrible layout). If someone were to combine the information from these sites into something with a fancy dynamic layout, where you could toggle the information you cared about, that would be amazing.
posted by filthy light thief at 9:23 AM on January 4, 2011 [2 favorites]

Wow this is exceptionally interesting, thank you for this
posted by Enigmark at 10:27 AM on January 4, 2011

This is goddamn fascinating. Goodbye, productivity.
posted by EatTheWeak at 2:15 PM on January 4, 2011

Aliens and Donnie Darko are two films whose directors' cuts are much worse than the theatrical releases.

Aliens for the sentry gun scene, which changes the aliens from cunning, devious predators into herdlike creatures stupid enough to keep running towards the guns no matter how many of their broodmates lie dead around them, despite presumably having no idea how many bullets are left or even that they will eventually run out.

Donnie Darko for the extra information the director's cut gives us about what the hell is going on, which changes the film as a whole from a fascinating metaphysical puzzle and parody of alienated youth into a tedious, pointless fantasy about benevolent dead people animated by flying metal objects. Unfortunately Richard Kelly's other films (e.g. The Box) indicate that he doesn't realise why this is bad.

/Plinkett voice
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 3:13 PM on January 4, 2011 [5 favorites]

Aliens for the sentry gun scene, which changes the aliens from cunning, devious predators into herdlike creatures stupid enough to keep running towards the guns no matter how many of their broodmates lie dead around them, despite presumably having no idea how many bullets are left or even that they will eventually run out.

Exactly.

In the theatrical cut, when Hudson says "How could they cut the power? They're just animals!", it ratchets up the fear level because we're sure that he's wrong.

In the Cameron cut, coming as it does after the sentry guns, it's more like "That's true, they were acting mindlessly just a while ago. So why did the power go out?"
posted by Joe Beese at 3:44 PM on January 4, 2011 [1 favorite]

The first time I saw Apocalypse Now, it was the Apocalypse Now Redux version, a sort of director's cut that stuck in a bunch of scenes. It was curious, but I could immediately tell which scenes had been put in as part of the redux. Not because they were so poorly inserted, but because their mere presence slowed down the flow of the movie and in some points derailed it entirely. I remember going to IMDB to check that I was right, and found that every scene that I thought had been added had been added. It made me really think of a film as a collaborative effort, and on the importance of editing. Where the authorial vision of the director is not the final word at all.
posted by X-Himy at 4:37 PM on January 4, 2011

The dropping of Hey Bulldog from the video versions of Yellow Submarine always bugged me; it's a great song and a great sequence with a lot of witty animation.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 4:55 PM on January 4, 2011