When a person sits down for a “director’s cut,” they expect certain things, like a definitive vision, but can often end up longing for the theatrical version halfway through. I’ve never been a huge fan of them, and it turns out I’m not alone. Fans are calling out great movies with terrible director’s cuts, and the takes are pretty spicy.
Over on Reddit, film lovers have been debating which movies’ Director’s or Extended Cuts are way worse than the original theatrical cut, and the responses are both fascinating and brutally honest. Director’s cuts may promise “more movie” but, as many pointed out, more footage often means less pacing, less mystery, and a lot more filler. The viral r/movies thread revealed a clear theme: editing is an art form, and not every filmmaker should tinker with their masterpiece.
More Doesn’t Always Equal Better
Right at the top of the thread sits Donnie Darko, a cult classic that even its biggest fans think should’ve been left alone. The original poster wrote, “The original cut was soooo good. Everything was just right, but in the director’s cut, they overexplain everything and kill the pacing.” Another user agreed, saying the mystical ambiguity that made Darko unforgettable gets lost under all the exposition. User NewSunSeverian summed it up perfectly:
Donnie Darko is a prominent example here yeah. Don’t “explain” shit that doesn’t need to be explained. To me it’s the ultimate example by far. Apocalypse Now’s cut does muck up the pacing some but you still easily get re-immersed. Donnie Darko’s DC comes close to ruining the entire philosophical underpinning of the story, it’s actually just bad.
Not everyone agrees, though. Interestingly, when CinemaBlend reviewed Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut, it received a strong 4.5 out of 5 in its original review. Meanwhile, another divisive example, Zack Snyder’s Justice League, may have redeemed 2017’s Justice League for some fans. CB gave it a solid write-up, but even that extended cut took its fair share of criticism. The original post read:
On another note, the Justice League 2017 sucked so bad it should have never been made, but ZSJL’s stretched 4h+ runtime was just okay. Like, it’s wayyy better than JL, but still not great. The story was so drawn out, and the slo-mo in every scene was just so uninteresting/uninspired (sesame seed falling from the trucker’s burger, Lois putting down her coffee cup). As one reviewer put it, “You could cut an hour without affecting the plot even a little.” Also, why format a film for IMAX full knowing it would be released on the HBO streaming service. (Disclaimer: not hating on ZS, it’s just my opinion.)
I’m not entirely on board with that take. Personally, I really enjoyed Zack Snyder’s Justice League, though maybe that’s because I disliked Joss Whedon’s theatrical version so much. Either way, I’ve revisited it several times with my HBO Max subscription and still think it holds up.
Another comic book movie that caught flak was Frank Miller’s Sin City and its “Recut, Extended, Unrated” edition. Fans agreed that some of the changes “completely ruin the flow.” User One-Earth9294 put it bluntly:
Sin City is the ultimate version of this for me. I think the leaping around works much better, and also the director’s cut ends each segment with a full credit roll. And that entirely takes the viewer out of the film. It even uses the exact same score for each time it does it.
More than one user felt this way about the Sin City Recut. User NobodieInteresting wrote:
Sin City Recut should have never existed. Felt so disoriented…
Comic book flicks don’t seem to fare so well with Director’s Cuts. However, there is another genre that might have it even harder when it comes to bad extended versions.
Comedy Suffers The Most In Director’s Cuts
If there’s one genre that can’t survive indulgence, it’s comedy. As Redditors pointed out, comedic timing lives and dies in the edit. Dumb & Dumber came up repeatedly as the prime example of how a few extra seconds can kill a joke. “All the ‘jokes’ drag on for so long that they just become tedious and uncomfortable,” one user wrote, while another lamented that it’s now the only version available on Blu-ray.
The same sentiment applied to Tropic Thunder, where added scenes “repeat information the next scene already tells you” and stretch punchlines until they lose their sting. As one commenter put it, “Brevity is the soul of wit. Director’s cuts tend to take the brevity out.”
All in all, the real takeaway wasn’t just which movies were ruined, it was why. In nearly every example, fans agreed: editing is storytelling. When filmmakers revisit their work years later, they sometimes forget that what they cut wasn’t a mistake, but instinct.
There are, of course, rare exceptions, Kingdom of Heaven and the unrated M3GAN come to mind as director’s cuts you definitely should check out, but those are outliers. Director’s cuts may sound romantic yet, as these fans made clear, that “truer” vision often proves just how much a great editor matters.
For more cinematic releases on the horizon, check out our 2025 movie schedule to see what’s still headed to theaters this year. Who knows, one of them might get its own director’s cut someday.