RichC2

The Hobbit is a mix of cash grab and masturbatory playground for Peter Jackson.

Matthew Chmiel

It's just a three-hour circle jerk per film. There's nothing redeeming in either of the two films released so far and the films, even in their theatrical cut forms, are too bloated. When I saw The Desolation of Smaug in theaters last December, it felt like I was there for eight hours.

However, it's interesting to watch Peter Jackson go from a great director to an absolute shit director in under a decade.

Nick Danger

Kurosawa was definitely reined in. No one in Japan would hire him for decades. Luckily for us, Dersu Uzala, Kagemusha, Ran, and Dreams were financed by foreign producers.

Ash Ketchum

Cimino's best film was the one where he was reigned in the most: THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT. The story is that Eastwood gave him a deadline to finish all the remaining shots and that he--Eastwood--was heading to the airport back to L.A. at such-and-such a time the next afternoon and he had until then. Cimino did it.

Hazel Motes

Nah, The Deer Hunter is his best film. And even with its flaws Heaven's Gate is better than Thunderbolt & Lightfoot. But I still love all 3.

Point is reigned in or not Cimino still got to make the film he wanted with Thunderbolt & Lightfoot. He had creative control, he just had to work with a budget and a timeframe. The film was his. Its not as if the film was taken away from him and recut. All it says about Cimino to me is that he could make a really good film under any circumstance. Until the reception to Heaven's Gate crushed his career and his soul.

kd5

Could you imagine Apocalypse Now as a 90 minute movie? I don't think it would have a fraction of the impact that it does at 153 minutes. Never watched Redux so I can't speak to the additional 49 minutes on top of that.

hanshotfirst1138

There's apparently a rough cut workprint of AN which has kicked around on bootleg for many years in VHS quality which is even longer (I think around 5 hours) and has a whole bunch of interesting stuff in it. It's never had an official release and was never intended to be a final cut by Coppola, but I hear a lot of what is in it is fascinating to see. I never had much interest in see Redux (Maybe because of the sour taste that his friend Mr. Lucas has left me after his horrid "special editions"), but its been a lot of years since I saw AN and was pretty young when I did. I'll have to revisit it one of these days.

Solid Snake

Damn. I never paid attention to the running time on AN Redux. 202 minutes. The theatrical had 153 minutes. the biggest additions to it being the Plantation and the Playboy bunnies bit in that storm.

I like the Redux. It adds something for me. Like it becomes trippier. It's not better than the theatrical but it adds another layer of fucked up. Especially that bunnies bit. Like the sadness that man becomes, the desperation.... gets fucking darker than before.

DaveyJoe

Apocalypse Redux turns an amazing film into an insufferable bore, in my opinion.

Solid Snake

there is that. Pacing issues.

EddieMoney

The worst offender of this right now is Judd Apatow, IMO. We're only talking 120-140 minutes for his films, but my God, do we need comedies that are THAT long?

Ash Ketchum

Only if they're called IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD and THE BLUES BROTHERS.

milo bloom

I don't like to generalize by genre but for comedies pacing is so important that I think you can go too long and lose something in the process.

Fantasy and science fiction are generally helped more since the setting is what helps set the story - the more time you're experiencing it, the more you can process it. I know the extended cut of David Lynch's Dune is a hot mess, but I love that setting so much I'm willing to deal with it just to be in that world. I might even consider that DVD one of my desert island discs.

Jay G.

That doesn't really count, as it was a serial, originally shown as 10 separate episodes ranging from 15 minutes to 60 minutes each.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Vampires

A better example would be the 1924 film Greed, which in its original cut was 462 minutes (almost 8 hours) long. Of course, the studio cut it down to 140 minutes and most of the deleted footage was subsequently lost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed_(film)

The LOTR movies were made by severely editing down the content of the books. Even with 3 movies, a lot was cut, most notably Tom Bombadil.

With the Hobbit movies, very little is actually cut. PJ even includes several songs. In the first Hobbit movie, I don't think they leave the shire until around 40 minutes into the film, and nothing was added to that section in the film.

inri222

And that along with what happened to The Magnificent Ambersons is a travesty

Matthew Chmiel

Saw Redux in theaters, once was enough for me. I have zero problems going back to the original and superior theatrical cut.

I'll second the comment on Apatow. There's great films inside This Is 40 and Funny People, but only if someone grabbed Apatow by the balls and trimmed out 30-45 minutes out of both films. Both films have subplots and scenes that go absolutely nowhere.

I'll also add that all of the Apatow-involved extended cuts are awful.

hanshotfirst1138

At least both versions have been properly restored. Unlike a certain friend of Coppola's . Frankly, the stories about the production on that film are even more fascinating than the movie sometimes.

dugan

It's weird because in The Conversations, Walter Murch wrote that Redux was cut from the original negatives and that the process permanently altered the film.

Why So Blu?

I love Apocalypse Now REDUX and I think the scenes in the French plantation are great. I love the shot of the fog that clears away and you have the platoon of soldiers standing there intercepting the guys. I'm in the minority when it comes to preferring Redux over the TC version.

Dr. DVD

While I do think the Hobbit movies suffer from bloat, I did like that they took a lot of time at Bilbo's house in the first one. It was more true to the book and helped develop the characters. Everything else I could have done without.