Some directors should be cut...

If you are a Star Wars fan, you might be interested in visiting the website for the Original Trilogy petition. I must say, with the advent of DVDs and gigabytes of storage, it's a wonder more damned movie directors/movie studios aren't producing extended editions or director's cuts of the original films.

For example, King Arthur (is Arthur the correct spelling?) was released recently on DVD. Being a checkout operator at Park Beach Plaza's Big W, I don't know how many copies of the Directors Cut DVD I scanned compared to the original theatrical release (if there is even a theatrical version available for purchase). It is obvious consumers wish to purchase and enjoy more of their beloved movies.

Another example, the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Kudos to Peter Jackson and Wingnut Films. They deserved every bit of gold in those awards they won for the Lord of the Rings movies. I really really really really wish more movies released on DVD were released as the original directors cut as opposed to the original theatrical release. This crap that movies need to be under 2 hours is rubbish. Look at Titanic. If there is any movie that should have been under 2 hours that was it.

Now I want to have a bitch about Paramount Pictures, Rick Berman (successor to Star Trek's creator Gene Roddenberry - aka the "Great Bird of the Galaxy") and Stuart Baird. Firstly, Paramount is composed of idiots. They expected the tenth Star Trek movie, Star Trek: Nemesis to be extremely popular when releasing it against Harry Potter 2 and a few other more popular movies. Naturally, the movie flopped. Furthermore, it was more a movie for the fans - so it was handicapped. Paramount are a bunch of goons because they overcharge Star Trek season-by-season DVDs and put 50% effort into the DVD releases for both the series and the movies. The DVD for Star Trek: Nemesis could have been so much better - hell, we didn't even get no stinkin' trailers! Rick should be shot because he's running the Star Trek franchise into a wall. Enterprise just isn't good enough. Deep Space Nine was Star Trek at it's finest. It's time to up the ante and exceed people's imagination. Rick and Stuart are also on my hit list because they should have released Star Trek: Nemesis in the original 2 hours and 40 minutes cut (I agree that 1 or 2 scenes should have been cut, however). Alright, so they didn't release the directors cut at the cinema... but they didn't do it for the DVD which to me, seems so illogical (this is justified in the next paragraph). Stuart Baird must have a great deal of fun cutting - the movie would have been so much better if he had kept at least some key scenes in.

But wait, there's more! In the teaser trailer for Star Trek: Nemesis, there was a scene that didn't make it into the movie which had clearly come from post production as there were special effects in the shot. (For those who remember the teaser, it was Worf talking to Picard saying "I recommend extreme caution" - one could see stars flying past the ship from the window in the room.) We got this scene in the DVD - sans post production modifications but poorer image quality. . This makes no sense to me. If you spend the money editing a scene for a movie and then cut it out, you might as well include it in the Deleted Scenes section of the DVD - not return to the original piece of film and lazily chuck it in. Talk about poor quality & effort. Having said the words "Deleted Scenes section" - movies should have the scenes integrated into the movie - none of this isolation business.

This is also an example of how much time a passionate fan spends analysing teasers instead of doing something else more constructive :-)

I bet you're going to laugh when you read the next sentence because I've gotten onto this bandwagon that could have been summarised in a sentence. In summary to my incessant babble, demand for "extended editions" or director's cuts of films loved by many people is significant, as illustrated by the examples of King Arthur and Lord of the Rings. So why can't more directors or movie studios do the same?

On a side note, it is concluded that Paramount are goons, Rick Berman needs to get up, close and personal with a lead projectile and Stuart Baird should have delivered Star Trek: Nemesis at 99% as opposed to 70% (1% including the 1 or 2 scenes that I agree should not have been included in Star Trek: Nemesis).

Any thoughts?