'Batman v Superman' Editor Reveals the Film's Original Runtime
While there is the R-rated ultimate cut of the film coming in July, Batman v Superman has lost steam quickly, and has lost the love of the general audience, it seems. Now, the film's editor has come out and revealed the films original run-time, and it's pretty massive.
Editor David Brennan has revealed that the original cut of the movie ran four hours long, filled entirely with extra subplots and material intended for those extra scenes. Given that the ultimate cut is already looking immense at three hours long, this is pretty huge.
"In the script there were more story lines than you see in the movie today. That was probably our biggest editorial issue in trying to get the cut down to a reasonable length. For us, the trickiest section was the beginning of the film, until the point where Bruce Wayne tells Alfred the truth about what is on the “White Portugese” [sic] ship… the truth about his plan.
"This moment set into motion everything until the end of the film really. Until that point the movie was always tracking many solo paths, some intersecting, some not. Finally in this scene, the paths fork into one road.
"In the script there are more subplots than you see in the movie right now. Also in terms of building this beginning we had to move things around. In the script, Lex was introduced much later, but we found that in watching the movie – because he’s such an important player, it was best to set him up sooner.
"These people are currently in the movie but we don’t track them, and it’s okay. What’s kind of fun is that we went back and did an extended cut where we put a lot of this stuff back, and we refined it into the same rhythm as the theatrical release. So what was once a nearly four hour cut with absolutely everything was ridiculous – ended up being about a three hour cut, once all these added storylines were refined with the fat was cut out."
So that's essentially the story of how the ultimate edition came about, and there's a small part of me that's very curious about the extra, extra material that won't ever see the light of day. Many have critiqued the film for its editing, so while Snyder believed that addressing script issues in the editing stage could work following the same process on Man of Steel, it may have ultimately failed.
Source: Indiewire
