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Lethal Weapon: The Ragged Edge Extended Cut:
So I got ahold of this to watch this year around Christmas (as I do every few years) and it was my first time seeing a lot of the extra footage. It's very interesting for perspective on the film, which I consider one of the all time classic action movies. The visual quality of the re-inserted scenes varies tremendously, as does the audio in those scenes, so really you're not watching this for immersion. If you watch this cut, it would be for the extra story bits, so the question is: how well do they work in the film?
Well, there is an issue of placement, as neglify's review here already mentioned. But aside from that, there's the issue of what these scenes ADD to the movie. Most of them work really well on their own...they're good scenes! But added back into the film, few of them serve any purpose. For example, there's a scene where Riggs lets an active shooter at a school take shots at him so that he can snipe him with his pistol. It's supposed to show that Riggs is A.- not especially concerned with living, and B.- an amazing marksman.
But we already learn A in several other scenes in the film, and B in the conversation with Murtagh after dinner, and again on the shooting range. You can't get rid of these other scenes, so you're just repeating the same point again and again if that scene is included.
Another example is the scenes with Riggs and Murtagh waiting for the kidnappers to call back. We see that Riggs really cares for this family, and Murtagh thinks ahead to give his wife his backup piece. There are nice details in these scenes. But neither of these conversations is ever followed up on, and we've already gotten these relationship dynamics from previous scenes. It's needless repetition.
If you haven't seen this material before, I'd definitely recommend watching it, as it's quite good. However, its inclusion in the film just made me realize what a lean, effective cut of the movie we had in the first place. We don't need an extra 20 minutes of establishing characters at the start, there's already plenty. And the visual quality difference might be really distracting for some, as it was for me. I'd actually like to just take out a few cheesy one-liners from this film, and re-insert just a couple of the deleted bits, if the quality could be cleaned up. Then it would be a perfect film. But if you simply want to see all the stuff that's available, this is an enjoyable Christmas watch.
https://ifdb.fanedit.org/lethal-weapon-the-ragged-edge-extended-cut/discussions/10778/
So I got ahold of this to watch this year around Christmas (as I do every few years) and it was my first time seeing a lot of the extra footage. It's very interesting for perspective on the film, which I consider one of the all time classic action movies. The visual quality of the re-inserted scenes varies tremendously, as does the audio in those scenes, so really you're not watching this for immersion. If you watch this cut, it would be for the extra story bits, so the question is: how well do they work in the film?
Well, there is an issue of placement, as neglify's review here already mentioned. But aside from that, there's the issue of what these scenes ADD to the movie. Most of them work really well on their own...they're good scenes! But added back into the film, few of them serve any purpose. For example, there's a scene where Riggs lets an active shooter at a school take shots at him so that he can snipe him with his pistol. It's supposed to show that Riggs is A.- not especially concerned with living, and B.- an amazing marksman.
But we already learn A in several other scenes in the film, and B in the conversation with Murtagh after dinner, and again on the shooting range. You can't get rid of these other scenes, so you're just repeating the same point again and again if that scene is included.
Another example is the scenes with Riggs and Murtagh waiting for the kidnappers to call back. We see that Riggs really cares for this family, and Murtagh thinks ahead to give his wife his backup piece. There are nice details in these scenes. But neither of these conversations is ever followed up on, and we've already gotten these relationship dynamics from previous scenes. It's needless repetition.
If you haven't seen this material before, I'd definitely recommend watching it, as it's quite good. However, its inclusion in the film just made me realize what a lean, effective cut of the movie we had in the first place. We don't need an extra 20 minutes of establishing characters at the start, there's already plenty. And the visual quality difference might be really distracting for some, as it was for me. I'd actually like to just take out a few cheesy one-liners from this film, and re-insert just a couple of the deleted bits, if the quality could be cleaned up. Then it would be a perfect film. But if you simply want to see all the stuff that's available, this is an enjoyable Christmas watch.
https://ifdb.fanedit.org/lethal-weapon-the-ragged-edge-extended-cut/discussions/10778/