I am going to do a series of these ‘Which Cut should I watch?’ articles, each one on a different film and explain in each one why you should watch the version I recommend. The reason I am doing this is because the version you choose can really make a big difference to your viewing experience – it can ruin a movie, it can make a movie even better or it can just be the movie you remember watching growing up.
As you may or may not know several movies that you have seen in the cinema have different versions of the film available to watch when they are released on DVD/Blu-Ray. Some only have a theatrical cut and a director’s cut but others can have several versions like the Terminator 2 and Avatar Blu-Ray releases, the most famous of these being Blade Runner which has more cuts than Freddy Krueger’s bed sheets. The theatrical cut is the version you would see in the cinema. However when the film is released on DVD they will sometimes come with a director’s cut. This is the way the director had intended audiences to watch their film i.e. this is their true vision. The reason we don’t get to see this version in the cinema can be anything from running time issues (the Lord of the Rings films) to ratings to big wig executives calling the shots and butchering the film. So really the films we see in the cinema are (most of the time) not what the director wanted you to see. Very few directors have final say on a films final cut, exceptions being the Coen Brothers (probably because their scripts are too weird and intelligent that others wouldn’t know what to change) and directors who are more powerful than the big wigs (they are even bigger wigs) like Spielberg and James Cameron.
The first in this series of articles will be the classic 90’s action movie Con Air. Con Air has always been one of my favorite action movies ever since it’s home video release in 1997. Obviously I was too young to see it in the cinema so I had to wait like the good old days for it to be released on VHS at my local xtra-vision. I miss those days. Nowadays people stream movies on their phones that aren’t even out in the cinema yet, how is this even possible I ask, but a more important question is why would you do that? This is another topic which I won’t get into because it annoys me so much. Anyway, so my Mum let us rent Con Air when it was released and we watched it as a family and loved it. I loved it so much I had to have it in my ever-growing VHS collection. However what I did to acquire the VHS was sneaky but I will confess right here on this blog. Back then I was still in my early days at school so I didn’t have much money. I remember Con Air was still expensive because it was a new release so I couldn’t afford it myself. So I conned (no pun intended) my younger brother into going halfers with me. I chatted to him and told him how awesome it would be for “us” to have it in “our” collection and he fell for it. Poor kid probably had no pocket money left for the rest of the month. I was a bad boy and should have been sitting on that plane next to Cyrus the Virus and Garland Greene. Sorry brother.
The Con Air I grew up watching for years was amazing, to me almost perfect. It wasn’t a perfect movie by any means but it was perfect in the sense that I wouldn’t have changed it in any way. But then one fateful evening a few years ago I sat down to watch the new Con Air DVD I had bought. Halfway through I started thinking “this isn’t the film I remember”. Something just wasn’t right. There were new scenes I had never seen before and I didn’t like it. In fact one scene ruined the whole movie for me (see below). I looked at the DVD cover and it was the unrated extended version. I thought an extended version would have been a bit more violent with more action scenes but no, I was wrong. It simply wasn’t the same film I had always loved watching. I never want to see that version again. After I had recovered from this shock I purchased the theatrical version on DVD and it was amazing, just as I had remembered. This was really the first time I had realised just how big a difference there can be between the theatrical, directors and extended cuts of a film.
I won’t go into the full details of every difference between the theatrical and extended cut of Con Air because this article is already way too long. I will only highlight the one that ruins it for me. And plus I found an excellent article which already compares the 2 versions with photos and details of every added scene. Here’s the link Con Air: Theatrical vs Extended Cut. Good job Movie Censorship!
The added scene that ultimately ruined it for me was when Cameron Po was being used for the prisoner exchange at Carson City but decided to stay on to help his friend Baby-O. Diamond Dog then questioned why he wants to stay on all of a sudden. When Cameron says his name Pinball say’s he recognizes it and then tells this story of him killing some other prisoner. Not only is this wrong because he is supposed to be a good guy but the whole dialogue exchange just doesn’t work, and this scene just doesn’t flow with the added footage. For me it was much better the way it was, just like the rest of the movie. This is only 53 seconds additional footage but it just shows how any changes, small or big , can change a movie so much.
Conclusion: Watch the Theatrical Version
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