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Rufus T. Firefly
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is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Uber KruX
chop off the ending of AI: Artificial Intelligence when he stares at the fairy. no need to go into the alien crap. i hate spielberg. |
Jesus God Almighty, yes! Even my then-11-year-old daughter understood, without prompting, that that was where the movie ended.
In a similar vein, Mystic River should have ended with Kevin Bacon talking to Sean Penn the morning after. The next 15 minutes -- especially Laura Linney's completely-out-of-left-field monologue -- are unnecessary, unearned, and completely anti-climactic.
And while we're bashing Spielberg: who here is old enough to have seen the original Close Encounters, before Spielberg himself recut it and actually made it worse? In the original, Dreyfuss goes into the ship, but we stay outside; the wonder of the ship remains a thing of the imagination. But our boy Steve never, ever, leaves to the imagination anything he can show in all its banality (scored to "When You Wish Upon a Star," just in case anyone missed the point). Blech.
But here's my all-time, number one gripe in this vein: Face Off should have obviously ended with the two protagonists completely switching places, rather than going back to their own lives; this is clearly where it was headed (especially since that would have mined a theme that is so wonderfully John Woo-ish), and Hollywood just as clearly chickened out, opting for happy ending over powerful myth. Double blech and then some.
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JohnT
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Capitalist
Mar 1999
time: 00:32
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quote:
And while we're bashing Spielberg: who here is old enough to have seen the original Close Encounters, before Spielberg himself recut it and actually made it worse? In the original, Dreyfuss goes into the ship, but we stay outside; the wonder of the ship remains a thing of the imagination. But our boy Steve never, ever, leaves to the imagination anything he can show in all its banality (scored to "When You Wish Upon a Star," just in case anyone missed the point). Blech. |
Iirc, that's not how Julia Phillips recounts the story. She claims that the extra footage was shot but wasn't inserted because Spielberg had final cut on this picture... but not on any re-releases.
Therefore the original was shown as Spielberg wanted it at that time.
However the re-release (I think it was in '79 or '80) was not under Spielbergs control and the extra footage was added in. From what I remember about Columbia's financing at that point in time, they really had no choice but to do it - Dave Begelmann was about to get arrested for kiting checks (in the name of Cliff Robertson, if you can believe it), the company was under severe financial constraints due to a series of VERY expensive misfires (Annie for example) and was eventually sold to Coca-Cola in '82.
Sadly, Spielberg has come to terms with the special edition and allowed all that extra footage that he originally didn't want in the DVD (which he did have final cut).
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Rex Little
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Not really one of my favorite movies, but perfect for this topic: "Fools Rush In". In my version, Salma Hayek doesn't stop the truck in time. Matthew Perry is knocked over the side of Hoover Dam, and falls toward the river. On the way down, he has a vision of what would have happened if the truck did stop. It goes just the way the movie really ended, with the tearful reconciliation, the birth of her baby, her agreeing to move to New York with him, their marriage. But the vision continues to their life a few months later, and shows her *****ing at him about how miserable she is in New York--a constant nag, nag, nag, day after day until he just can't stand it anymore. Just as he's about to hit the water, he smiles and says "I'm better off."
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Rufus T. Firefly
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is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:32
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quote:
Originally posted by JohnT
quote:
And while we're bashing Spielberg: who here is old enough to have seen the original Close Encounters, before Spielberg himself recut it and actually made it worse? In the original, Dreyfuss goes into the ship, but we stay outside; the wonder of the ship remains a thing of the imagination. But our boy Steve never, ever, leaves to the imagination anything he can show in all its banality (scored to "When You Wish Upon a Star," just in case anyone missed the point). Blech. |
Iirc, that's not how Julia Phillips recounts the story. She claims that the extra footage was shot but wasn't inserted because Spielberg had final cut on this picture... but not on any re-releases.
Therefore the original was shown as Spielberg wanted it at that time.
However the re-release (I think it was in '79 or '80) was not under Spielbergs control and the extra footage was added in. |
My memory, though, is that the re-issue was aggressively promoted as Spielberg's version as well; that could have just been studio hype, or I could be mis-remembering, but that was my sense.
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Vesayen
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quote:
Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
Neverending Story: I'd remove the end, the ending, the possibility of ending. I would make it a neverending story. Lying to children is baaaad. To call a film a neverending story and them make it only 2 measly hours long. I know children have no attention span, but that's taking the piss.
So no more ending for Neverending Story. That'll teach them for lying. They can play their characters for the rest of eternity! MWAHAHAHAHAHAA! |
LOL!
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Rufus T. Firefly
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is one way of saying it, though I prefer "mensch"
Sep 2000
time: 07:32
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quote:
Originally posted by JohnT
quote:
My memory, though, is that the re-issue was aggressively promoted as Spielberg's version as well; that could have just been studio hype, or I could be mis-remembering, but that was my sense. |
Note that the Special Edition was called "special edition" and not "directors cut", which even then was a big deal. |
True, but the phrase "director's cut" wasn't a part of Hollywood's advertising lingo back then; they didn't start using it until well into the age of video (at various points in the 80s, for example, the theatrical releases of director's cuts of Brazil, Heaven's Gate,and Once Upon A Time in America were all promoted as the "European Versions"). "Special Edition" was merely a way of saying, "please see it again; it's different from the one you've already seen." As for the question of who authorized it, I'm still not sure (my coniderable library of film books is in storage in the US), but here's the Special Edition's entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (with my bold-facing):
quote:
This slightly shorter, re-edited version of Spielberg's huge 1977 success, which contains some new footage, represents a curious piece of cinematic history. Many critics saw it as inferior to the original, though the idea was that Spielberg now had so much commercial clout that he could, at last, release the film exactly as he had always wanted it. New material includes a scene where Neary, the UFO-obsessed power worker, makes his family hysterical; a surrealistic shot of an ocean liner left stranded by puckish aliens in the Gobi Desert; and a sequence inside the mother ship (so-so special effects) with an ill-judged soundtrack of "When You Wish Upon a Star" from Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940). The new Neary sequences darken the film; the new ending, in contrast, lightens it by emphasizing its fairy-tale aspect. Whatever, the new version,which is the one now normally shown, made a lot of money. |
http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~ntucs82...6017/sf/20.html
That conforms to my memory about the original hoopla around its release. Though it does make me wonder how it is that Spielberg had more commercial clout in '80 -- after the disaster of 1941 -- than he did in '77. But then, Hollywood's a strange place.
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JohnT
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Capitalist
Mar 1999
time: 00:32
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However, your account goes against that of the actual producer of the movie, and is not even a declarative sentence but rather an assumption:
"the idea was..."
Spielberg had the commercial clout to get the film done the way he wanted to in 1977 - don't forget that he had just directed the (at that time, non-adjusted) all-time box office champion. Spielberg had final cut on the film. Therefore, the 1977 version was exactly as Spielberg wanted it at that time. If he changed his mind, as is possible, then he changed his mind. And, given his and Lucas' prediliction to rewrite the past (and their own movies), I'm sure that if you asked him now he'll tell you that he always wanted the extra footage in. 
The fact is, however, that I don't have a copy of Julia Phillips' two books in front of me, so I'm left relying on memory which is something I don't care to do. So you win by default. 
Anyway, I agree with you and those who said the ending to the Special Edition sucked.
Last edited by JohnT on 01-12-2003 at 18:37
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30-11-2003 21:50
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