Subject:
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Re: Legend Ultimate Edition
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.fun
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Date:
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Mon, 3 Jun 2002 20:08:47 GMT
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Viewed:
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728 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.fun, Jeff Stembel writes:
> I'm going to have to disagree with you here. I think the original US release
> is the better of the two. The additional scenes in the Director's Cut don't
> really add much to the film, and Jerry Goldsmith's score, while very nice, does
> not convey the same "fairytale" feel or emotion that the Tangerine Dream score
> does.
Well, this must be why George Lucas still has a career...
The director's cut/international version develops the characters and the
plot more fully. In the U.S. version you may surmise that Lily is a
princess, but it is not discussed with the woman in the cottage as it is
here, who also asks about Lily's father. Maybe you guessed that Lily and
Jack spoke to the animals but here Jack says so explicitly, claiming also
that next time he will teach Lily "rabbit" -- this sequence provides some
knowledge of what they have been doing together the preceding days when they
have visited with each other. Gump is shown to have a somewhat duel
"trickster" nature, which is absent from the U.S. version -- this lends a
greater sense of danger to Jack's entering into the adventure. Darkness is
not unveiled, and then dramatically so, until near the end of the film -- at
which time we are able to share in Lily's astonished reaction to the monster
stepping out of the mirror. The international version plays up class
structure and the unlikely or impossible nature of the relationship between
Lily and Jack. The ending of the international version more closely
resembles real world "make believe" adventures in that however frightening
or tumultuous the adventure of today, there is always room for more tomorrow
-- and this more than almost anything champions the innocence of youth. This
ending also shows the viewer that the relationships are all make believe,
that there is no engagement or promise between Lily and Jack -- they are
merely children at play in the forest during the afternoons -- and a very
necessary deflation of the seriousness and scarier aspects of the preceding
film, probably a must for a younger audience.
The U.S. version has an obnoxious "explain everything to me" opening text.
Talk about unnecessary. There is also a rather gruesome and prolonged
opening sequence featuring images of the underworld (and while the
international version is still iffy, even young children could probably see
it -- not so here -- we flash back to the image of a bouncing corpse as it
is dismembered no less than three times!). And while the melodrama of the
opening Darkness bit is fun, it takes the wind out of the subsequent
unveiling of Darkness when he steps out of the mirror to Lily much later in
the film. And while I don't dislike Tangerine Dream, Bryan Ferry, and Yes
taken on their own -- actually I like them all quite a bit, and I even like
Tangerine Dream's other soundtrack work (e.g. "Thief") -- I REALLY didn't
like them here. This film calls out for a more classical approach, with
Lily's singing and folk dancing and so on -- which is exactly what we get in
the international version.
When one is able to compare the two films together, one is easily able to
discern the somewhat slapped together nature of the U.S. release. Follow
early sequences more closely and you will see that certain headshots and
such don't follow from the immediately preceeding sequence. And that kind
of stuff matters...
-- Hop-Frog
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Legend Ultimate Edition
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| (...) I'm going to have to disagree with you here. I think the original US release is the better of the two. The additional scenes in the Director's Cut don't really add much to the film, and Jerry Goldsmith's score, while very nice, does not convey (...) (22 years ago, 3-Jun-02, to lugnet.off-topic.fun)
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