The 11 Essential Director's Cuts

With the incoming release of Zack Snyder’s ‘Rebel Moon’ director’s cuts, Polygon has decided to name the “9 best director’s cuts” and explain the history behind this phenomenon, which has been mastered by Ridley Scott in the last few decades.

A few titles are mentioned that I hadn’t inserted in my original list, published in 2023, which can be seen below. They have the director’s cuts of Rob Zombie’s “Halloween II,” James Cameron’s “Aliens” and “The Abyss,” Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush,” and Michael Cimino’s 4-hour cut of “Heaven’s Gate” (which I still think isn’t all that great).

Of course, we’re still waiting on Scott’s 4-hour cut of “Napoleon” which might or might not be streaming on Apple TV soon. Scott is well known as a director who improves some of his films via director’s cuts, especially when it comes to “Blade Runner” and “Kingdom of Heaven.” There’s a chance “Napoleon” can be improved.

I’m still waiting on Andrew Dominik’s 195-minute cut of his masterpiece, “The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford,” which the filmmaker confirmed does exist. A few years back, I spoke to a filmmaker who had seen it and claimed it was like watching “the great American film” unfold onscreen.

Another unreleased director’s cut that should be on any movie fan’s bucket list is Billy Bob Thornton’s 3-hour version of “All The Pretty Horses,” which was butchered by Harvey Weinstein in the editing room and released in a heavily truncated version. Thornton is said to have a VHS copy of this cut at home. It should absolutely get released. The story goes that Mike Nichols walked out a private screening of this one with tears in his eyes and proclaimed it to be “the greatest American film I’ve ever seen.”

Also, should we believe David Ayer when he says that his cut of 2016’s “Suicide Squad” is “vastly better” than the theatrically released version? Purely based on the theatrical cut, nothing would indicate to me that a good movie is hidden somewhere inside that mess of visual debauchery.

The truth is that nine times out of ten, a movie that a studio heavily interferes with is probably not that good to begin with. Of course, there are always exceptions … As far as I’m concerned, never has there been finer examples than these 11 re-edited films, which might have started off as good films, but turned into grand, sometimes masterful, personal statements in their fully reinstated original visions:

Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret”
Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner”
Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon A Time in America”
Ridley Scott’s “Kingdom of Heaven”
Richard Donner’s “Superman II”
Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil”
Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now Redux”
Terrence Malick’s “The New World”
Ari Aster’s “Midsommar”
James Cameron’s “Aliens”
Eric Von Stronheim’s “Greed” (5-hour Cut)

What am I missing?

There’s a fascination with director’s cuts; they have a redeeming quality about them, especially the rare ones that improve upon the original vision. They are artistic statements through and through, whether it's Sergio Leone releasing his, once butchered, "Once Upon A Time In America" in its original structure or even, more popularly, and him again, Zack Snyder starting an online movement with his own cut of "Justice League”. It's a chance for a director to show us what he truly intended.

One of the more recent examples of a film drastically bettered by a DC is Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret,” which was supposed to be released in 2005, but Lonergan (“Manchester by the Sea”) took too much time in completing his magnum opus in the editing room. This resulted in multiple lawsuits between Lonergan and Fox Searchlight Studios. Eventually, Fox Searchlight released a truncated 150 minute version of the film in 2011.

Critics were initially mixed on it: It garnered a 61 on Metacritic and a 73% on Rotten Tomatoes. Eventually, Lonergan would complete his own three-hour extended cut of the film, incorporating extra footage and a revised score. The result? “Margaret” is one of the best movies of the last decade, expressing the disillusionment of Post 9/11 America. It would end up placing 13th in our critics poll of the best films of the 2010s.

However, there might not be no finer example of a richly improved director’s cut than what happened to Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil.” The definitive cut of Welles' masterpiece only showed up 20 years after his death. When the original version was released back in 1958, Welles found out that a large batch of the scenes were re-shot with a different director. Welles also noticed that Universal had ignored nearly all of the notes he had given them.

The iconic opening shot, one of the greatest long-takes ever conceived on celluloid, even had, in the earlier version, credits stamped on the screen, marring its effect. In 1998, some 30 years later after its release, several filmmakers used Welles' notes to create a movie "that was as close to his vision as possible."

Speaking of Welles, the search is still ongoing in Brazil to find the “holy grail of cinema” which is the original cut of his “The Magnificent Ambersons.” The story goes that during editing, RKO, with the help of filmmaker Robert Wise, re-edited the film from 131 minutes to 88 Minutes, adding a “happy ending” and destroying Welles’ original vision on the film. If they ever find the original, it’ll be a monumental moment in cinematic history.