Director's Cuts That Need To Be Made

In the wake of WB's successful release of "Zack Snyder's Justice League," fans of the DCEU turned their sights to David Ayer's much-maligned 2016 team-up, "Suicide Squad." While it was a box-office smash to the tune of $746 million worldwide, the film was derided for its weak characters, slapdash editing, and paper-thin story.

After the film's release, it became clear something went wrong during post-production. Stories came out detailing the editing process and how "Suicide Squad" was altered to match the tone seen in the first trailer, regardless of writer/director David Ayer's original intent while shooting the film. Some characters had their roles severely reduced; most egregiously, Jared Leto's version of The Joker plays a negligible role in the final movie, and both Leto and Ayer have lamented how much footage of the character was unceremoniously removed.

An "Extended Cut" of "Suicide Squad" was released on home video alongside the theatrical version, but it doesn't add much aside from a couple of deleted scenes; it's not a game-changer like the "Ultimate Edition" of "Batman v Superman." Many actors and crew members involved with the production have expressed their support for a proper Director's Cut for "Suicide Squad," along the lines of "Zack Snyder's Justice League," but WB has been mum on the prospect. All the while, fans have taken to the internet, taking every opportunity to make #ReleaseTheAyerCut a trending social media topic. 

As it stands, "Avengers: Age of Ultron" is not a bad film, and its positive reputation has only grown as subsequent Marvel projects have expanded upon its numerous plot threads. However, it is a BIG film, with such a grandiose and densely thematic script that it can be a bit of an unruly beast when taken on its own merits. Still, it's a miracle the film is as good as it is since writer/director Joss Whedon reportedly butted heads with Marvel's Creative Committee, a team of bigwigs who frequently clashed with filmmakers over the decisions made for each MCU film.

For "Age of Ultron," the Creative Committee was against setting a significant portion of the film on Hawkeye's family farm, and only agreed to it if Whedon included the oft-maligned "Thor in a cave" sequence, which itself was significantly cut down from what was initially shot. There were also rumors of an extended cut that would add at least a half-hour of footage to the film, though no MCU movie has ever received an official extended cut.

Whedon deserves another shot at "Age of Ultron," a chance to re-edit his existing footage without the intervention of the Creative Committee, especially if he can do so without breaking the precious canon that has evolved in the years since the film's initial release. And while we're at it, how about cleaning up some of the wonky CGI during the opening raid on the HYDRA base?

Director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. took on an impossible task when he signed on to helm the 2011 remake/prequel to John Carpenter's seminal 1982 horror classic, "The Thing." The movie was always doomed to failure, since fans of the original would never accept a new movie stepping on the toes of their beloved classic, seeing the new film as nothing but a cheap cash grab, regardless of its own artistic merits. Unfortunately, the studio forced the creative team to completely change the final act and replace the beautiful practical effects of Amalgamated Dynamics with CGI. The final theatrical film, while not a complete dud, clearly suffers from this studio intervention, as its ending borders on nonsensical, and the CGI effects are woefully inconsistent; some shots look amazing, while others look rushed and incomplete.

For a decade now, fans have asked for a true Director's Cut of "The Thing" 2011, restoring the original ending and reverting the effects back to their practical roots — the original plan for the CGI team to use their computer wizardry to enhance the practical effects, not to literally paint over the entire Thing, pun intended. A Director's Cut of "The Thing" would restore the effects to their original glory while retaining the unused ending that was thrown out in favor of an alien that looked like a collection of Tetris blocks (no, really).

The theatrical cut of Josh Trank's 2015 "Fantastic Four" reboot is not the movie he set out to make. In fact, Trank controversially tweeted as much, saying: "A year ago I had a fantastic version of this. And it would've [received] great reviews. You'll probably never see it. That's reality though." The film was notoriously reshot and recut before its release, with Kate Mara's extremely fake wig clearly denoting which scenes were made without Trank's involvement. The final product was a critical and commercial failure.

Trank told Screen Rant in 2020, "We all know, obviously, Fantastic Four wasn't my cut." Much of Trank's original footage, and even footage from the first round of reshoots, was left out of the finished film. Sequences depicted in the trailers are absent from the movie, which is disjointed and missing chunks that could have made the narrative more cohesive. There's no doubt Trank's original footage exists, though it would likely require millions of dollars worth of VFX work to make a Snyder Cut-esque definitive edition of "Fantastic Four."

While Trank has moved on from the whole affair, he diplomatically told Screen Rant: "It was just the wrong combination of people to make something together. That was a group of people who just did not see eye to eye. We were all responsible for it not being a coherent movie. Everybody saw a different version of what movie they wanted it to be."

By the late 1980s, the "Friday the 13th" movies were under siege from the MPAA, the ratings board that notoriously cracked down on violence, particularly in the teen-oriented horror series. While "Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives" was able to sidestep the issue by avoiding too much onscreen bloodshed, the 1988 entry, "The New Blood," was not so lucky; despite being released with an R rating, much of the blood and gore was stripped out of the slasher sequel. The end result is a movie with kills that lack the visceral impact one might expect.

The more recent home video releases of "Part VII" feature workprint footage of nearly every kill in the film, how they were originally intended to be seen: bloodier, gorier, and nastier than ever. The death of Ben, in particular, is downright gross, with Jason crushing his head into a bloody mush with his bare hands. Alas, the workprint footage is of poor quality, but reintegrating the complete kills into the movie has long been a dream scenario for cinematic gorehounds.

Nowadays, "Mission: Impossible II" is seen as the weakest entry in the Tom Cruise spy franchise, but it was a huge hit when it first released back in 2000, thanks to the star power of Tom Cruise and the signature visual style of director John Woo, who revolutionized the Hong Kong action scene with movies like "A Better Tomorrow," "The Killer," and "Hard Boiled." The team-up of Cruise and Woo was seen as a dream combination, and proved a recipe for box-office success.

Still, the finished film, in hindsight, suffers from action sequences that were clearly edited down to a PG-13 rating. There are multiple instances of characters performing neck snaps that lack the requisite bone-crunching sound, and the numerous extended gunfights that notably lack even a drop of blood. It's a situation where the numerous minor edits add up and result in a film that doesn't carry the same punch as other entries in the series, which aimed for a hard PG-13 from the outset. Now that the "Mission: Impossible" franchise is at its peak following the success of its sixth entry, "Fallout," perhaps it's time for Paramount to revisit the proverbial black sheep of the franchise — maybe as a Paramount Plus exclusive?

Mickey Rourke was reportedly unhappy with how his "Iron Man 2" character, Ivan Vanko, was reduced to a stock villain, as opposed to the fully formed three dimensional character he created on set. Mickey Rourke described the Marvel leadership at the time as "breaking [Jon] Favreau's balls" in terms of making Vanko a standard mustache-twirler in spite of everything the writer, director, and actors came up with during production (via Screen Rant).

Today, "Iron Man 2" is seen as one of the weaker entries in the MCU, though it certainly has its fans. Still, even the film's most ardent defenders must admit "Iron Man 2" pulls its punches when it comes to characterizing Vanko, who has a justified grievance against the Stark family. Now that the dust has settled on the Infinity Saga, maybe it's time for Kevin Feige to make things right by Favreau and Rourke by releasing a new edit of "Iron Man 2," with more of Rourke's character development intact.

As it stands, "Iron Man 2" doesn't confirm whether or not Vanko's father was guilty of the crimes that got him deported back to Russia, or if Howard Stark betrayed him to get full credit for the Arc Reactor technology. Perhaps that particular ambiguity works in the film's favor, but if Favreau and writer Justin Theroux originally wanted to paint the Stark family in a non-flattering light, they deserve the chance to show their original vision to the public.