Still from Blade Runner with added significance in the director’s cut
Ben van Welzen examines the trend of filmmakers returning to their films with modern technology as they contemplate their original or new vision for their work.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man,” says Greek philosopher Heraclitus. In 2021, Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai quoted this phrase in a director’s note accompanying a rerelease of seven films from his massively influential catalogue, using the sentiment to justify the alterations to his work. Indeed, audiences quickly recognized — and widely condemned — the substantial changes to the familiar versions: aspect ratios stretched, voiceover narration disappeared, and a new pervasive green tint had overwhelmed several of the films. Moreover, these new editions became the only way to watch these movies in the West, and this exclusivity caused a vicious uproar among Wong’s fans. However, this phenomenon is certainly not new. In the era of home releases, directors continue to recut, remix, and remaster their work for a new audience experience, and much ink has been spilled about the danger of reworking and replacing classic films. In spite of these complaints, though, Wong offers a new perspective; elaborating on his quotation above, he writes, “I invite the audience to join me in starting afresh, as these are not the same films, and we are no longer the same audience” (Wong). He embraces the criticism that the remastered versions border on becoming completely different films. In fact, such is the nature of cinema, and such is the life of a cinephile.
In an article in Film Comment, critic Greg Solman delivers a harsh denouncement of this pattern of re-releases, writing, “Rather than artistic deliverance, the [director’s cut] trend represents a significant disturbance of film history and — equally important — the popular cultural memory of the original audiences … the director’s cut means the practical elimination of a film record, in that the market valorizes the new to the point that it supplants the old version” (20). Though Solman’s 1993 article predates DVD and streaming, his criticisms remain indicative of the prevailing negative attitude, and his worries have not lost their salience regarding the revision and elimination of film history. Indeed, the recent tendency for streaming services to quietly modify their content without official announcement raises concerns that I will not defend nor justify here. Regardless, in Solman’s own critiques lies the essential complication in the matter of remasters and recuts: memory. Solman himself doubles down on the dominance of memory, the end of his article lamenting that “original versions soon will exist only in the fragments of our collective memory” (27). However, perhaps the single “original version” of a film could never have existed, but rather each person has a different original version of a film in their individual — not collective — memory.
Perhaps the most well-known example of a director retroactively altering their films, and one that calls forth the importance of memory, is George Lucas and Star Wars. Ever since the DVD release of the original three films in the franchise, Lucas has famously continued to insert CGI and add new scenes while removing old ones to supposedly get closer to his original vision with modern technology. In the wake of his changes, fans have reasonably clamored for the old editions, to which Lucas has never conceded. However, we must ask what these fans truly want and what they expect from such a release of these films. Likely, many Star Wars fans fell in love with the franchise by watching the movies at home, an environment markedly different from the “originally intended” movie theater experience. Watching a movie off of a fuzzy VHS tape on a tiny CRT screen will look, sound, and feel much further from its original form than watching it in the theater, even if the theatrical version has been slightly changed. The movie fan does not have an attachment to the original camera negative of the film, they have an attachment to their original experience, the memory of their introduction to that world. In fact, when the British Film Institute screened a rare 35mm print of the unaltered Star Wars, viewers immediately recognized this disconnect. Robbie Collin, a critic for The Telegraph, notes that he “felt like [he] was watching a completely different film,” a “joyously craggy, grubby, stolidly carpentered spectacle” (Collin) unlike the film he remembers. Though Collin enjoyed the old print, he acknowledges the fundamental distinction between the Star Wars he knows, and the Star Wars originally shown in 1977.
The new version of Star Wars includes CGI creatures and ships added by George Lucas
Even without the intervention of the artist, film has always been ephemeral and dynamic. By its very nature, a film strip scratches, burns, warps, and deteriorates with every projection, a phenomenon of tactility that cinephiles often praise and romanticize. This very spring, IU Cinema hosted a wonderful screening of a grimy and discolored 35mm print of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to replicate the grindhouse environment in which the film gained a cult following; as such, Tobe Hooper’s film took on a vicious and wicked splendor I had never seen — and will likely never see again — watching the high-definition Blu-ray at home. Even DVDs naturally change with the smallest deformity on the disc; to briefly return to Star Wars, my personal version of Episode II includes an unauthorized cut over the scene on the planet Kamino because of my tendency to scratch the back of every DVD my dad let me watch. Like a car leaving the lot, a film begins to irreversibly change the moment it releases.
So, then, when a filmmaker or studio revisits and changes a film, they embrace the impermanence of the medium, and introduce new opportunities for audiences to add another installment of the film to their personal catalogue of individual versions. Indeed, these rereleases often trigger a theatrical run, allowing new audiences to experience an environment closer to how audiences first saw it, even though the film has changed. New cuts of The Exorcist, Apocalypse Now, and Blade Runner, as well as 3D versions of Jurassic Park, The Wizard of Oz, and Titanic, all made their way to theaters, refreshing the cultural memory and forcing viewers to reevaluate their relationship with these films. Even films originally made in 3D, such as Dial M for Murder, have been restored to their original format for audiences. These releases don’t just provide the ability to revisit an old favorite in the theater, but also in our memory. Every image, new and old, incites the thrill of meeting an old friend and seeing how much they’ve grown, for better or for worse.
Of course, all six of those movies still have their theatrical cuts and their two-dimensional versions available to the public. Unlike Star Wars and the work of Wong Kar-wai, the updated material has not outright replaced the old, and nobody has used them to attempt to rewrite history. Returning to Solman’s criticisms, he observes that “in a way, [director’s cuts] redress artistic grievances by treating movies as mere product” (20), which provides a more cynical but realistic view on the theatrical rerelease of old versions. Studios undoubtedly welcome the chance to sell a well-known property to a reliably loving fanbase without the burden of creating an entirely new film, and they likely have no qualms allowing filmmakers to unilaterally overwrite film history. Ideally, every rerelease would exist strictly in conjunction with original versions, never removing the old but only adding to it. Still, the excitement and intrigue of a new take on a favorite film is undeniable and I’ll happily dive into the new river again and again.
References
Collin, Robbie. “As a Child I Thought Star Wars Was the Greatest Film Ever Made. Now It Looks Terrible.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 13 June 2025, www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2025/06/13/star-wars-greatest-film-looks-terrible/.
Solman, Greg. “Uncertain Glory: Director’s Cut Editions: The Redemption of an Art or the First Step on a Slippery Slope?” Film Comment, vol. 29, no. 3, 1993, pp. 19–27. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43454953. Accessed 16 Aug. 2025.
Wong, Kar-wai. “World of Wong Kar Wai: Director’s Note.” Current, The Criterion Collection, www.criterion.com/current/posts/7325-world-of-wong-kar-wai-director-s-note. Accessed 16 Aug. 2025.
Dial M for Murder will be screened in its original 3D format at IU Cinema on August 29.