EAllusion wrote: Still, I consider the final cut to be a unified artistic statement, however crappy it sometimes might be, and it seems wrong on a variety of levels to edit it for your viewing.
I suppose that's one way to look at it, and for the most part I agree. But I think we need to recognize the many different ways people can enjoy movies, and the many different reasons people watch them.
But it's also possible that the idea of a "filmmaker's vision" is largely a myth in modern Hollywood. There are many, many factors (both practical and artistic) that go into the creation of a film, and the idea that the version of a film that is shown on opening night in theaters is somehow blessed as the One True version of the film just doesn't work for me. It's usually my
preferred version, but I have no qualms about alternate versions as well.
Take, for example, Top Gun. As everyone knows, there is a sex scene in the movie between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis. But what most people don't know is that scene wasn't supposed to be in the movie. Meaning, the film was shot and edited without that scene, and then a few months before its release, it was screened for a group of
movie theater owners in Chicago. These guys loved the movie, but they thought they could sell even more tickets if the relationship between Maverick and Charlie was expanded. So the filmmakers got the actors back, and filmed some extra scenes, including the scene where they're in the elevator, and the sex scene.
Now, you can argue that the sex scene is a legitimate part of the film because it was there when the film was publicly released. But I have no qualms about skipping scenes that weren't the vision of the "filmmakers", but instead were the vision of a group of movie theater owners.
And this isn't an isolated example, although it is exceptional for the late addition of the sexual content. Decisions about language, violence and sex are very often made not because of the "filmmaker's vision", but because of the perceived demand of the desired movie-going audience, and the strictures of the ratings board (sometimes to get a higher rating, sometimes to get a lower one). And these days, "alternate cuts" on DVD and Blu-ray are usually produced not out of artistic integrity, but because marketing surveys show that consumers find the availability of an alternate cut desirable (and it increases the likelihood of someone who saw it in the theater to also watch the DVD).
So while I usually watch a movie unedited, I have no qualms about watching a good movie with my kids and skipping over language or scenes that I don't want them to watch. Sure, we could just skip the movie entirely, but I've found we can still really enjoy watching most movies even without the 30 or 40 seconds of objectionable material.