I remember seeing this movie when it came out on DVD originally and shutting it off it was so boring. I was probably 14 or 15. I've been wanting to rewatch it and have heard the DC is vastly superior, but part of me wants to watch the original first just for comparison's sake.
Is it worth the watch, or is it as bad as Rotten Tomatoes says, and I should just forget it and go straight to the Director's Cut?
Certinally director's cut. The original is like watching The Godfather without all the scenes showing that Michael is Vito's son. The director's cut is absolutely wonderful.
"Why would you want to prove that all is for nothing?!"
The director's cut turns a pretty good movie into a great one, and at 189 minutes an enjoyable evening's viewing. If you have a decent size tv go for the Bluray version, well worth the extra cost even though there are no extras in the package.
This means something, this is important.
Destroy any evidence of the terrible TC and watch the vastly superior DC.
Story goes Scott wanted Goran Visnjic off ER as Balian. The studio wanted a 'name' if they were to fund an epic about the Crusades post 9/11. Enter Orlando 'Legless' Bloom. I'm sure Scott was forced to edit the DC to get it into the cinemas. Why would he cut a perfectly fine film?
The TC is also a very different movie then the stately DC. The TC is an action adventure film with a miscast Bloom as Balian. The DC is an epic about the Crusades, with some fine acting by finer thesps which doesn't help Bloom. He's an amateur in the presence of legends. Both films are not helped by Bloom who can't act his way out of a paper bag. I wouldn't follow him out the toilet, nevermind Jerusalem.
I enjoyed both, watched the TC and then bought the DC. I would suggest the DC because it's more complete of course, I wouldn't say it's vastly superior to the TC but if I wanted to rewatch this movie, I'd rewatch DC.
"Please, if you are trying to convert me, this isn't a good time"
Director's cut is the only version worth watching.
An opinion is not offensive just because you do not agree with it.
KOH: Director's Cut is one of the best works I have ever seen in my life.
You should definitely watch that.
The original was OK. but the DC is simply unmatchable
I love you Krysten Ritter
So... did the OP watch it? Would like to know what he thinks if he did.
shareBoth are too PC and pro Islam for my liking, it's a wonder they did not have a free Palestine message in it somewhere, horribly biased film.
shareNot exactly. What came across as 'pro-Islam' was actually post-imperialist guilt, something of which there is an awful lot around in modern Britain. The script of KoH essentially assumes that the Crusader states were a direct equivalent of the British Empire, and post-imperialist guilt dictates that in an imperialist context not only are the white people always evil, greedy, and in the wrong, but the black or brown people are by definition good, noble and in the right.
Scott is really anti-religion in general, but his desire to bash religious 'white imperialists', as he saw them, led him to 'forgive' the Saracens for their own religious fervour and play it down as much as possible. He also assumed that all the brown people were 'oppressed native people struggling for self-determination', failing to notice that Saladin was an empire-building warlord quite as foreign to the local people of Palestine (a large proportion of whom were Christian, and still are) as the Crusaders were: he was a Kurd from what's now Iraq, in fact from Saddam Hussain's home town. (And his secretary Imad, the Alexander Siddig role, was an Iranian from Isfahan.)
Sorry: I hit SEND twice on that!
shareUnlike most of the posters here, I had the unfortunate experience of watching the DC first, and then years later, and looking forward to re-watching it, sitting down to the TC instead, and thinking-where was ..., and ..., and am I going senile and imagining things?.. I wasn't even aware, until I looked into it, that the DC and TC were so very different (after all, if you watch the two versions of 'Aliens', for instance, you hardly miss/gain a lot, do you?).. This is different, however. There is a wealth of extra layering, imagery, abstract allegory and symbolism in the DC which not only enrichens the film, but goes a long way to explaining other questions-I don't want to get bogged down in detail here, to spoil things for those who've still not seen it... I should agree with the majority, and say avoid the TC like the plague-there's an easy trick to know which version you're watching, if it's not been made clear: in a very early scene (within the first couple of minutes), the priest (Michael Sheen) bites into an apple. If this is all you see, you're watching the TC, and should turn it off... If you see him look down at worms wriggling in the apple's flesh, you're watching the DC, and all is well... Sit back and enjoy... The next three hours will fly by... Whether or not you prefer either version, one thing we must all agree on, and is abundantly clear-Orlando Bloom cannot act to save his life-this is brought home in sharp perspective when you see him alongside Jeremy Irons, David Thewliss and yes, even Liam Neeson... A preposterous piece of miscasting, that can only have been forced on Ridley Scott by the studio-he's just too much of a perfectionist to allow it otherwise...
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