By: Nathan Teitelbaum
Movies, everybody loves movies, except when you don’t. A lot of the time movies have an extremely troubled production which causes them to go through this dark path. When Zack Snyder was able to release his version of Justice League it popularized director’s cuts. Every movie has scenes they cut for time but what if that movie has a completely different version that almost no one has seen.
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Spider-Man 3 had an extremely troubled production with many scenes needing to be altered or changed in many ways. Some cut scenes include many scenes where Sandman talks to a doctor about his daughter's illness, Venom was supposed to be an animatronic, an alternate death scene for Venom, and many more. In 2017 an “Editor’s cut” was released but it only added the unused music, one new scene, and is shorter than the theatrical cut. Even though Sam Raimi’s vision for this film hasn’t been released yet, the novelization follows Sam Raimi’s vision.
Fantastic 4 (2015):
This film was awful, when you think of a bad superhero movie, this one will come to mind. To summarize, this film was extremely rushed and is shown with the lack of a second act. Supposedly the director Josh Trank claims that he made a “Fantastic” version of the film and said we would probably “never see it”. I personally think that little to nothing can save whatever this movie was.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
There is a rumored alternate cut of this film from the director JJ Abrams but personally, I doubt it exists. Interest for this cut came after news of the Zack Snyder cut for Justice League being released was spread around the internet. It could exist but this movie was so bad I really don’t know how much better an alternate cut would be.
Superman II (1980)
Okay, Maybe I’m cheating on this one but I will have no other way to talk about this one. Superman 2 was released in 1980 with fairly mixed reviews about how the film was handled. In 2006 Richard Donner’s cut was released after almost 30 years of no Richard Donner cut. This version is widely considered to be the superior cut of the film.
Thomas and The Magic Railroad (2000)
This film was supposed to be way different than the release version was and was the inspiration for this article. Interest for this cut was first expressed when a video was put on YouTube depicting the final chase scene in the final act of the film. The difference between this chase scene and the release version is that a human antagonist named in the movie PT Boomer went on top of the train antagonist. In the final release this human antagonist was completely cut out. In 2020, on the 20th anniversary, an early workprint was leaked online with all of the PT Boomer scenes intact. The reason Boomer was cut was because of a bad test screening where many viewers complained about him being “too scary” and with his cut, plot holes were plentiful.
In conclusion, Many of these director's cuts that weren’t released will probably never see the light of day officially. In one of my previous articles I said how important it is for sequels to have just as much care as the original. Sometimes the movie company has to have respect for the director’s original vision for the film because it is usually always better.
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