I have lately been seized by a mania to track down interesting re-edits of films, either done by the original creators or by fans.

Ones I have seen

Raiders

Steven Soderbergh — the prolific director best known for Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Ocean’s 11/12/13 — has transformed Raiders Of The Lost Ark into a seductive film school exercise. He changed the color to crisp black-and-white and stripped out all of the sound, even the dialogue, using instead a loop of Trent Reznor’s score for The Social Network.

Why?

I want you to watch this movie and think only about staging, how the shots are built and laid out, what the rules of movement are, what the cutting patterns are. See if you can reproduce the thought process that resulted in these choices by asking yourself: why was each shot—whether short or long—held for that exact length of time and placed in that order? Sounds like fun, right? It actually is. To me.

Fun for me too.

Raiders Of The Lost Ark: The Adaptation

Soderbergh’s experiment is weird film-nerd joy but it isn’t as fun or as gutsy as this variation on the theme.

Back when Raiders Of The Lost Ark was new, a circle of tween-aged kids had a crazy idea: how about taking a parent’s home video camera and making their own version of the movie? They resolved to reproduce every shot from the original film as well as they could, which is bonkers considering that ome video releases of films were not yet a thing. They had no way to examine every scene closely, so they went to a movie theater and furiously took notes, recorded the audio on a tape recorder, pored over stills they found in places like magazines and trading cards.

They spent their whole summer vacation working on it, but they didn’t get as far as they imagined. Filmmaking is hard. So during the school year they kept at it on weekends when they could. Then they devoted the following summer to it again. Then the next summer. They were in too deep to stop. They had almost the whole movie done when they graduated high school and abandoned the project.

Decades later the kids, now grown, dusted off their VHS tapes and did a few showings at theaters willing to spare a screen for a couple of hours for this oddity … despite being unable to charge money lest a plague of studio lawyers descend upon them. Word eventually found its way to Steven Spielberg, who decided he had to meet these foolhardy fans.

He must have twisted some lawyers’ arms, because now you can just buy a home video copy.

I was lucky enough to see it on the big screen with a raucously enthusiastic crowd. Watching it is uncanny and delicious: actors transform back and forth between kids and teenagers from scene to scene, or even within a scene. Because it’s a film you know, after a few scenes it becomes impossible to resist thinking ahead. “I know what comes next. How the heck will a bunch of kids reproduce that in a backyard?” Every time, their solution turns out to be more clever and impressive than one would dare hope.

Gus Van Sant’s Psycho

So. What if it’s not a gang of kids attempting a zero-budget shot-for-shot remake of a Hollywood film? What if, instead, a talented real-deal director had the resources to do it right?

Would it produce the same movie? Would it turn out as a different movie? This should just be a film school hypothetical, impossible to test, but Gus Van Sant cashed in on the moment of his greatest industry pull to actually do it.

What did the experiement reveal?

I find it impossible to describe. Yeah, it’s the same film as Hitchcock’s … sort of. But also sort of not. You just have to see it get it. Van Sant says:

The results were that it wasn’t as frightening as Hitchcock’s film, and I attribute it to the director, me, my DNA, and the different totally immersive style of Hitchcock. Without that, it seemed it couldn’t be reproduced.

I cannot recommend it unless you are a film nerd. But if you are, there’s nothing else like it.

Touch Of Evil — 1998 Walter Murch restoration

I’m glad that I somehow never saw the original theatrical version of Orson Welles’ noir classic despite having meant to catch up with it. The had a reputation for being great despite confused storytelling which resulted from the studio trimming the film down from Welles’ original cut.

Almost 20 years after the film was released, a print close to Welles’ version was found. But that had been an unfinished film, with postproduction work still to be done when the studio took it away from him. Then another 20 years later, after Welles had long since died, sound designer Walter Murch discovered an angry memo Welles wrote to the studio criticizing what they had done to the film. There were 58 single-spaced typewritten pages detailing everything he would have done differently. Murch restored the film, using the memo as the blueprint.

Metropolis — The Complete Metropolis

One would guess that Touch Of Evil is the only director’s cut delivered from beyond the grave, but Metropolis may be an even greater miracle. I need to come back to tell some of this amazing story of an almost-lost film resurrected.

Brazil — The Director’s Cut

Terry Gilliam such a hard time getting the film released at all that The Battle Of Brazil is a book entirely about Gilliam fighting against the studio’s attempt to bury it, which then spawned a documentary film. Gilliam showed the movie at film schools and art houses on the sly in his campaign to bring attention to it.

Gilliam was contractually bound to deliver a film within a certain runtime. To keep the studio from hacking the film entirely to bits, Gilliam was forced to cut out ten minutes of footage from the finished film he had been showing around.

That theatrical edit was still hailed as a great film and became a staple of rep houses, where I fell in love with it as a young film nerd. But a decade later Criterion, the prestiguous home video publisher of classic and arthouse films, made Gilliam’s original edit available. Gilliam was right to be frustrated by the theatrical version; losing even those few key scenes made a difference.

Blade Runner — The Final Cut

Possibly the most famous director’s cut to find its way to a broad audience, and one of the few to eventually displace the original theatrical version almost entirely.

Warner Bros had wanted a sci-fi action blockbuster, but director Ridley Scott delivered a textured, alienating science fiction art film. The studio insisted on adding a introductory title card, a happy ending, and voiceover narration throughout to make the film more accessible; Harrison Ford recorded a deliberately stilted voiceover track in an attempt to help Scott talk the studio out of using it, but the trick didn’t work. The resulting film was not the hit they hoped for. But despite the voiceover and other flaws, Blade Runner became a favorite of film buffs, including me. I saw it in its original release, when I was a little too young for it, but I re-watched it obsessively as I developed into a film nerd in college; though I no longer rank it among my top-tier favorites, it remains the film I have watched more times than any other.

Because cinephile love made it a rep house perennial, prints of an early assembly cut from before the studio’s dumb modifications found its way to screens misrepresented as a “director’s cut”, but Scott was frustrated by that version’s lack of polish. Interest in that version led to the studio coöperating with Scott on a proper Director’s Cut omitting the voiceover and happy ending plus a number of subtler changes which made it a different, better film. Ridley Scott’s ongoing success in his career made it possible for him to get yet another bite at the apple, making a host of fine adjustments and even shooting a bit of new footage more than two decades after principal photography had originally wrapped.

I cannot count how many times I saw the theatrical cut. I think I have seen the Final Cut twice. But the Final Cut is so right that it has almost completely displaced the original version from my memory.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture — Director’s Edition

Nerdy, obscure, and amazing.

I grew up a Star Trek kid. I was the right age to be entranced by the goofy Filmation animated series when it was originally broadcast, grew into nerdlove for the original series in syndication, and was still young enough when the first feature film was released that I was uncritically delighted to see new Trek on the big screen at all.

But by the time ST: The Motion Picture was released for home video, my tastes had matured enough that revisiting it revealed that how the film was a clumsy slog. I had heard rumours about how The Motion Picture had suffered from Studio Meddling. Since the special effects shots were expensive, some suit had insisted on including in every bit of them, whether they served the story or not. It filled the second act with a stultifying series of shots of the crew of the Enterprise looking at clouds through the viewscreen. To spare time for that, a bunch of character stuff and ideas were left on the cutting room floor.

It did not stand up in contrast with The Wrath Of Khan and the run of pretty good original cast Trek films which were still coming out. Then there was Next Generation. Then other Treks. I thought I would never look back at Star Trek: The Motionless Picture.

This wasn’t a beloved classic the studio could cash in on re-releasing like Blade Runner. Even the famously enthusiastic Trek fandom admitted that it was a dud.

Director Robert Wise just couldn’t let go of the thought of the better film he had wanted to make. There wasn’t a better cut just sitting on the shelf like there was with Brazil, but the studio still had the footage that didn’t make it in to the theatrical release. And there were nerds eager to make it happen. So painstakingly, as a labor of love, Wise and a host of enthusiasts rebuilt the film. They didn’t just trim out the clouds and weave the story beats back in, they tinkered with everything. They changed the sound design. They cleaned up the effects shots they wanted to keep. They made new effects shots to replace things they originally hadn’t had time, or money, or capacity to do back in the 1970s. They were careful to avoid the jarring mismatch of styles which marred George Lucas’ revised first Star Wars film, reproducing the distinctive look of the original effects to make it feel like they had just always been there.

The resulting labor of love is not just a marvel of craft or just a good Trek film. It’s a great Trek film. It may not have quite the appeal to non-fans of The Wrath Of Khan or The Voyage Home (the one with the whales!) but anyone who likes Trek at all will enjoy it. For anyone who ever loved the original series, it is a magical gift.

Alien³ — The Legacy Cut

The theatrical version of this film was so bad that it nearly killed the franchise. I saw it on its original release, which was an unnerving experience. The first few scenes were so gripping that I thought the universally negative reviews were lunacy. The next few scenes didn’t quite work. Then the next few scenes were weaker still, and it continued to decline through an incoherent second act, and then further still to an excruciatingly hokey ending. Strong turns by Sigorney Weaver and Charles Dance couldn’t save it. It’s a pile of crap.

It was well known to have come out of a horrendous production process. There had been a succession of scripts and directors — including a script by William Neuromancer Gibson which one can now find adapted to comics and as an audio drama — and was already wildly over-budget when young David Fincher took the reins to direct his first feature. The filmmaking and wrestling with the studio was such a mess that Fincher is said to have come close to refusing to have his name on it. He hasn’t just refused to attempt a new cut of the film, he has refused to ever talk about the movie at all.

The studio tried to lure fans into paying for a home video release of this unloved mess by creating a box set of Alien films with a bunch of special features, including what they called the Alien³ Assembly Cut, a Frankenstein’s Monster made without Fincher’s involvement incorporating a bunch of unused footage and reference images for special effects that were never made. I gather that the result is a hash that makes one wonder what might have been … which inspired a crew of nerds to create this fan edit by tinkering with the arrangement of scenes and fleshing out the missing effects.

The result is not as good as the original Alien or James Cameron’s Aliens sequel, but that is praising it with faint damnation. I think it’s better than the sequels Ridley Scott has given us, so if you have a taste for the series it’s worth a couple of hours.

The Abyss — Extended Edition
Aliens — Special Edition

While I’m nerding out, I have to point to these James Cameron re-edits of two of his films. The theatrical release of The Abyss was good but sloppy, and the ending is completely broken, so we are lucky to have the the Extended Edition, though it remains more than a little shaggy. I understand why some people prefer the theatrical version of Aliens — it’s so tight that you could bounce a quarter off of it — but I concur with Cameron’s judgement in creating the Special Edition.

Ones I want to see

The Dark Side Of Oz

Probably the most-seen fan edit ever made, in part because anyone can re-make it DIY: it’s just The Wizard Of Oz with the sound off, playing Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side Of The Moon as a soundtrack. There was a craze for it back in the 1990s, when video rental through Blockbuster was at its peak; reputedly there’s a lucky alchemy in the way the tracks of the album align with events in the film.

Despite listening to the album a billion times when I was young (I expect to go to my grave having listened to it more times than any other piece of music even if I never listen to it again) somehow I never got around to trying this. One of these days.

Silent Hill — Restless Dreams

I have not played the vidya game, but an enthusiast for it introduced me to the film adaptation. It doesn’t quite work, but it is so atmospheric that I found it seductive anyway.

Fan edit enthusiasts rank this one of the best examples of the form; rumor has it that even the movie’s director likes it.

Raising Cain — Director’s Cut

There are a lot of director’s cuts broadly recognized as better than the original theatrical version. There are a lot of fan edits which many fans call better than the original theatrical version. There are even a few fan edits which directors have praised. But I think this film is unique in being such a good a fan edit the original film’s director annointed it “The Director’s Cut”!

Admirable humility by Brian De Palma.

Bateman Begins: An American Psycho

This is a weird one. Since Christian Bale played both Patrick Bateman, the titular main character in American Psycho, and also Batman in the three Christopher Nolan films, an enterprising fan has stitched the two films together to suggest that they are the same guy.

It’s so crazy, it just might work. I have to find out.

The Blackened Mantle

Akira Kurosawa’s original version of the story of Annakin Skywalker’s fall from grace.

Well, obviously not. But that is what it is meant to feel like.

Star Wars has enough enthusiastic fans that there are countless fan-made re-shufflings of the films. They follow in the footsteps of The Phantom Edit, a pioneering fan effort from before just anyone with a laptop and a lot of patience could re-cut a film; it re-arranged scenes from the first prequel The Phantom Menace and cleverly transformed Jar-Jar Binks into a wise sage by snipping out his slapstick moments and replacing his dialogue with an invented alien language and wholly new lines revealed as subtitles.

Mantle takes that trick much further.

Star Wars is a pastiche informed by a host of sources. George Lucas had originally wanted do a Flash Gordon film but could not get the rights, so Star Wars wound up stirring that together with a host of other sources including Westerns, Edgar Rice Burrough’s Mars stories, flying ace movies about both World Wars, Frank Herbert’s Dune, and … the films of Akira Kurosawa set in Japan’s feudal era, most directly The Hidden Fortress.

So The Blackened Mantle refines Revenge Of The Sith by presenting it in the style of a Kurosawa film. It’s in black-and-white, with bits of the other prequels woven in as sepia-toned flashbacks. The dialogue has all been replaced with a dub in Japanese so that subtitles can tweak it to reshape the storytelling.

A friend recommending this got me going down this whole alternate-edit rabbithole in the first place. I have seen a couple of scenes and they are delicious, so I am keen to sit down with the whole thing.

End Of Skywalker

Nosing around the internet, I find a lot of people calling this the best of the sequel trilogy re-edits, mining footage from all three films and using the subtitles trick to assemble a single feature telling a significantly different story. That’s not as seductive as the Kurosawa conceit, but I’m curious.

As with the Star Wars prequel trilogy, the sequel trilogy is frustrating. The Force Awakens demonstrates impressive craft but not quite the resonance someone who grew up with Star Wars hopes for, The Last Jedi is divisive (I adore the way it brings Luke Skywalker full circle), and The Rise Of Skywalker wraps it up with … a total trainwreck. That last is particularly bitter given the gorgeous production design, actors’ strong performances, and nifty action setpieces it wasted.

The Empire Strikes Back — Revisited

It’s easy to pitch me on the fan edits above attempting to improve on the clumsy Star Wars prequels or the gawdawful The Rise Of Skywalker, but a better version of The Empire Strikes Back? Generally recognized as the best Star Wars feature film?

I found fans insisting that this edit is actually better than the original film. I didn’t think I needed to see Empire again at all, but my curiousity is piqued.

I want to come back to write these up in greater detail.

Highlander 2: The Renegade Version

The movie the director actually wanted to make. Sort of. But do I care?

Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut

A little like rebuilding Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but with a weirder backstory, because Donner had made a lot of the film before it was handed off to Richard Lester to re-make.

Doctor Sleep — Director’s Cut

The theatrical release does amazingly well at sweating down the doorstop of a novel and reconciling King’s novel The Shining with Kubrick’s film The Shining along the way. But there is a lot more to say, so I wonder how it does that.

Once Upon A Time In America — Extended Director’s Cut

The massive, true original cut is lost to time. But more of it has been recovered than one would imagine possible, in a series of different releases, including a very long cut which recently became available. I haven’t even seen the drastically-cut theatrical release, but knowing that this is available has me curious.

Little Shop Of Horrors — Director’s Cut

Lots of little changes, plus a big change to the ending, reputedly making it even more Faustian.

Das Boot — Director’s Cut

The theatrical release was already a great film … and it turns out there is a much longer version available.

I Am Legend — Alternate Version

The only major change is in the last few minutes … but that is reputedly a profound change.

Kingdom of Heaven — Director’s Cut

A fair bit longer than the original theatrical version, which evidently makes it land as completely different on a thematic level. During the Iraq war era I had no appetite for a film about the Crusades, but I’m curious.

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23 January 2026

Reconstructed movies