- Messages
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- Reaction score
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Let's face it, this is not a good movie, it's pretty bad. But that being said, I do like to watch it as part of my Die Hard rewatches. Why? I'm not sure, maybe I like to torture myself. But it does have some good action. The car chase scene is really good. The extended cut adds more action, which is cool, but it also removes all of Lucy, his daughter. Why they did that I have no idea. What little heart the theatrical version had was gone in the extended version.
So what is "The Bailey Cut"?
It started with me just wanting to add Lucy's (Mary Elizabeth Winstead's) scenes back into the extended cut. There are three scenes that feature her, at the beginning, the ending scene and a phone call during the car chase. Adding the two scenes at the beginning and end were pretty easy, but the phone call, not so easy. I could not simply swap the scenes out. The extended cut has an extended car chase, and the theatrical has the phone call during the car chase. This made for a good chunk of the car chase to need to be rebuilt shot by shot.
In addition to adding these scenes I had to do some major color correction. The most I have attempted in any edit I have done. Both versions had terrible color, and completely opposite color from each other. The theatrical was very blah and washed out looking, and the extended cut was very green. Very green. I tried to come up with a happy medium between the two.
But then I kinda went down the rabbit hole of… well while I’m at it, I can fix this… and this… and this…
So this went from a little edit to a complete overhaul of this movie. It’s probably still terrible, but maybe a little more tolerable.
Changes:
Completely re-sequenced and reworked the opening. Removed the news report. Moved the jail scene to later. Removed the CIA scene. Now opens at the shot of Moscow and the opening credits.
2:26 - When Jack shoots Anton, removed the visual of him getting shot in the head. Now we don’t know whether or not he’s dead.
2:31 - Moved the jail scene of Komarov and Chagarin to here, after the Anton shot.
3:54 - Introduction of McClane is now here, after the jail scene.
6:13 - The interrogation of Jack follows.
7:26 - Inserted scene of Lucy dropping McClane off at the airport (not in the extended version).
8:40 - Inserted deleted scene of Russian girls on the airplane. We all know McClane’s history with airplanes, so I thought adding a little bit of airplane humor here was good.
9:57 - Cropped shot of McClane's notes to remove “murder”.
12:21 – Removed the random people getting out of their cars for no reason and leaving them in the road.
21:27 – Cut the CIA tracking Jack during the car chase. They just quit tracking him and helping for no good reason, it doesn’t make much sense. Now, with removing this and the opening scene of the CIA, we find out at the same time as McClane that Jack works for the CIA.
26:53 – Reworked car chase scene to include Lucy’s phone call (not in the extended version).
33:01 – Removed McClane saying he’s on vacation. He’s not.
36:12 – Left an “I’m on vacation” because I thought this one fit even though he is not on vacation.
42:32 – In the elevator, removed Komarov saying “you’ve done this before” because I thought it was dumb.
48:00 – Alik (the bad guy) says “Hi” then asks if he said it correctly, but then goes on to speak perfect English for the rest of the movie, so I removed the question.
48:29 – Removed Alik’s little dance.
1:01:10 – Added deleted scene of Anton showing up while the McClanes are stealing a car. McClane had no real fight scenes in this movie, so I added this one. This scene is why I removed the headshot from earlier and cropped the note. He’s not dead, not murdered, just shot in the arm. This scene also had to be scored.
1:29:02 – Removed another “I’m on vacation”.
1:35:18 – Added the ending form the theatrical cut (not in the extended version) to include Lucy.
On top of these changes, I also added burned in English subtitles for the Russian spoken parts.
So what is "The Bailey Cut"?
It started with me just wanting to add Lucy's (Mary Elizabeth Winstead's) scenes back into the extended cut. There are three scenes that feature her, at the beginning, the ending scene and a phone call during the car chase. Adding the two scenes at the beginning and end were pretty easy, but the phone call, not so easy. I could not simply swap the scenes out. The extended cut has an extended car chase, and the theatrical has the phone call during the car chase. This made for a good chunk of the car chase to need to be rebuilt shot by shot.
In addition to adding these scenes I had to do some major color correction. The most I have attempted in any edit I have done. Both versions had terrible color, and completely opposite color from each other. The theatrical was very blah and washed out looking, and the extended cut was very green. Very green. I tried to come up with a happy medium between the two.
But then I kinda went down the rabbit hole of… well while I’m at it, I can fix this… and this… and this…
So this went from a little edit to a complete overhaul of this movie. It’s probably still terrible, but maybe a little more tolerable.
Changes:
Completely re-sequenced and reworked the opening. Removed the news report. Moved the jail scene to later. Removed the CIA scene. Now opens at the shot of Moscow and the opening credits.
2:26 - When Jack shoots Anton, removed the visual of him getting shot in the head. Now we don’t know whether or not he’s dead.
2:31 - Moved the jail scene of Komarov and Chagarin to here, after the Anton shot.
3:54 - Introduction of McClane is now here, after the jail scene.
6:13 - The interrogation of Jack follows.
7:26 - Inserted scene of Lucy dropping McClane off at the airport (not in the extended version).
8:40 - Inserted deleted scene of Russian girls on the airplane. We all know McClane’s history with airplanes, so I thought adding a little bit of airplane humor here was good.
9:57 - Cropped shot of McClane's notes to remove “murder”.
12:21 – Removed the random people getting out of their cars for no reason and leaving them in the road.
21:27 – Cut the CIA tracking Jack during the car chase. They just quit tracking him and helping for no good reason, it doesn’t make much sense. Now, with removing this and the opening scene of the CIA, we find out at the same time as McClane that Jack works for the CIA.
26:53 – Reworked car chase scene to include Lucy’s phone call (not in the extended version).
33:01 – Removed McClane saying he’s on vacation. He’s not.
36:12 – Left an “I’m on vacation” because I thought this one fit even though he is not on vacation.
42:32 – In the elevator, removed Komarov saying “you’ve done this before” because I thought it was dumb.
48:00 – Alik (the bad guy) says “Hi” then asks if he said it correctly, but then goes on to speak perfect English for the rest of the movie, so I removed the question.
48:29 – Removed Alik’s little dance.
1:01:10 – Added deleted scene of Anton showing up while the McClanes are stealing a car. McClane had no real fight scenes in this movie, so I added this one. This scene is why I removed the headshot from earlier and cropped the note. He’s not dead, not murdered, just shot in the arm. This scene also had to be scored.
1:29:02 – Removed another “I’m on vacation”.
1:35:18 – Added the ending form the theatrical cut (not in the extended version) to include Lucy.
On top of these changes, I also added burned in English subtitles for the Russian spoken parts.
