Skybird
03-05-08, 06:30 PM
I think it was in 2005 that Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" was released in the cinemas. It triggered very two-split opinions back then, on the one hand people respected the typical Scott-o-vision overkill visual presentation, on the other hand people left the cinema with many questions and doubts about the ripeness of the screenplay, the complete painting of the characters, the sometimes strange dialogues, the lacking motives which left the main character acting one-dimensional and superficial, in short, the whole thing felt unbelievable and somehow incomplete.
Meanwhile we learned that indeed the co-financers demanded Scott to take the scissor and cut the film very drastically. In fact, this is one of the most badly cut and and shortened movies I know of. A complete parallel theme of action, focusing on the story of the Sybilla character, was left out, also the background history of Balian.
The so-called 3 century director's cut edition is available since longer now, but it was not before last week that I had enough interest again after the mixed experience of back then to give this new cut a try and buy it second hand. When I saw the commercial cut at the movies, I first was impressed, but in the following days was more and more let down by it. The director's cut now adds close to 50 minutes. That means that almost one third of the full material Scott intended to release in 2005 - was cut out by demand of the producers! He has a reputation to be a difficult-to-deal-with director. I can only imagine how massive the fight behind the curtain must have been before they managed to force him down - the very huge disadvantage of the version that then came to the movies.
And the reattached material makes the all important difference! I watched it this evening, and was left most impressed, what before looked like school theatre groups playacting on a fairy tale stage, turned out to be a well thought-out story with richer detail in character description, and an additional plot that suddenly lead all the open ends from before to a convincing conclusion, and finally brought story and character description on eye level with the overwhelming visual presentation. I now rate this as one of Scott's best movies, not en par with Blade Runner and Gladiator, but better than almost all his others.
If you saw the movie version back then and felt disappointed, give the director's cut a second try and enjoy 3 hours of cinema at it's finest - I'm sure you won't regret it. I for myself was completely fascinated.
Only rarely a direcor's cut was in so urgent need, like here. It adds not only much more time, but also quality, and story-telling. A very spectacular enhancement!
Meanwhile we learned that indeed the co-financers demanded Scott to take the scissor and cut the film very drastically. In fact, this is one of the most badly cut and and shortened movies I know of. A complete parallel theme of action, focusing on the story of the Sybilla character, was left out, also the background history of Balian.
The so-called 3 century director's cut edition is available since longer now, but it was not before last week that I had enough interest again after the mixed experience of back then to give this new cut a try and buy it second hand. When I saw the commercial cut at the movies, I first was impressed, but in the following days was more and more let down by it. The director's cut now adds close to 50 minutes. That means that almost one third of the full material Scott intended to release in 2005 - was cut out by demand of the producers! He has a reputation to be a difficult-to-deal-with director. I can only imagine how massive the fight behind the curtain must have been before they managed to force him down - the very huge disadvantage of the version that then came to the movies.
And the reattached material makes the all important difference! I watched it this evening, and was left most impressed, what before looked like school theatre groups playacting on a fairy tale stage, turned out to be a well thought-out story with richer detail in character description, and an additional plot that suddenly lead all the open ends from before to a convincing conclusion, and finally brought story and character description on eye level with the overwhelming visual presentation. I now rate this as one of Scott's best movies, not en par with Blade Runner and Gladiator, but better than almost all his others.
If you saw the movie version back then and felt disappointed, give the director's cut a second try and enjoy 3 hours of cinema at it's finest - I'm sure you won't regret it. I for myself was completely fascinated.
Only rarely a direcor's cut was in so urgent need, like here. It adds not only much more time, but also quality, and story-telling. A very spectacular enhancement!