"Kingdom of Heaven retrospectives" Topic

I remember a sense of disappointment when I first saw the theatrical version of Kingdom of Heaven (KoH) soon after release. The Holy Land, the Crusades and the whole Outremer era are a fringe period for me so I let the matter lie there.

Being a keen clicker on YouTube, and given the way it works, things have slid into my 'for your consideration' in-tray like this one:

YouTube link

First posted five years ago it refers to the director's cut version of KoH which is significantly longer than the original but which also contains so much new information that it is almost a new movie. And, I argue, a much better one!

1) there are five more scenes between Balian (Orlando Bloom) and his village priest which explain both what a **** the priest is and why the priest was eventually killed in the fiery forge. The priest had ordered the decapitation of Balian's wife because she was a suicide and because the priest stole her gold crucifix. The priest, by the way, is the superb Michael Sheen.
2) a whole subplot about Sybilla having a young son was deleted from the theatrical version. She is tormented by her brother (the king) being a leper and then discovers her young son has early signs of the disease. She pours poison into the boy's ear and kills him painlessly and as a mercy. Suddenly her decisions later – in the shorter theatrical cut – make a whole lot more sense.
3) Another YouTuber has also thrown up a very good point about the Hospitaller played by David Thewlis. This theory is that the Hospitaller (his only name) is actually a guardian and instructing angel:

YouTube link

There were hints of this in the theatrical cut – such as when he protects Balian in the forest skirmish – but the director's cut makes it more obvious. Now we have him appearing suddenly in the desert when Balian is having a crisis of conscience and again when he is injured. The Hospitaller revives him with just a touch on the head.
Is he an angel? Possibly.
YouTuber Will Massengale who wrote the script for this YouTube film says he likes the fact that the film dips into 'magical realism' and gives us a character who cannot be rationalised in a factual way.
Personally, I like this dialogue:
Balian "You go the certain death".
Hospitaller: "All death is certain".
This last has the inference that what we do in life matters but in the end we all finish the same way; our achievements are more important than our tombstone or epitaph. It is the sort of thing an angel might come out with.

If you have not seen it yet I strongly recommend you hunt down the director's cut. It was a bit tricky to find here in the UK but I eventually got my hands on one. It is a whole new movie.

Barry

Strongly agree. The theatrical cut is an exciting and visually stunning battle movie with strange plot holes. The director's cut tells a full story that makes sense.

Of the other elements reintroduced, Balian's backstory is hugely important. He has never met his father, but he knows who his father is. There is a solid subplot about the tensions between Balian and his uncle (the local lord) and cousin, which makes the cousin's attempts to kill Balian and the Crusaders in the forest more logical. Also, the priest was Balian's half-brother and the pre-murder dynamic between the two is given more color. Lastly, Balian had experience of war in France and helped design and build siege weapons before. This makes his later exploits more believable.

Sounds interesting.

I enjoyed the original movie too.

@enfant perdus:
I like your tastes!

@Thresher01:
I strongly recommend the director's cut, it is almost a new movie.

B

Thank you.

Hadn't heard of it.

I believe it was available on Amazon Prime. Might also check Disney plus.

I saw it on Prime. The 45 extra minutes make it a very good movie.

Indeed ,the Director's cut is infinitely superior to the version released in the cinema. Not least of its virtues is that it fleshes out so many of the other characters that Orlando Bloom no longer has to carry the whole film on his shoulders. Beautifully filmed, with the extra scenes, this becomes a truly remarkable film.

@Mollinary:
Quite so.
In the first You Tube link the film editor said that the first thing that any studio will say with a film is 'too long' and thus the death of a 1000 cuts will commence.

The same thing happened with David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. Good full-length first version for the premiere but then cut to ribbons for the regional cinema circuit as they wanted to show it two or three times a day.
With Lawrence the deleted film was eventually recovered after Lean's death with the likes of Spielberg, Lucas, Scorsese and others actually paying for the restoration of what they consider to be the greatest film biog/drama. The result was a return of a masterpiece.
rouble was… the soundtrack was not with the film, it was gone for good. Luckily everyone was still alive and they re-dubbed the dialogue but Peter O'Toole's decades of cigarettes and booze had not done his voice any good and he sounded well gruff. The simple trick to fix this was that his lines were spoken much slower and then speeded up by a sound engineer. In Britain we call this the 'Pinky and Perky' effect (TV pig characters) but the result was his voice came out higher and roughly where it had been in the 1960s! And the words matched his lips.

Barry

I have the Blu Ray of Directors' Cut and it is a much better movie than the theatrical version. It made for a more coherent film

Totally agree with the critiques of the Director's cut being much better than the theatrical release.

I had no idea until today that the version of Kingdom of Heaven I watched was the director's cut. That probably explains why I didn't find it to be wretchedly bad.

Now I'm wondering which version of Lawrence of Arabia I last watched. I waited a couple decades for it to come to a theater (Stanford Theater in Palo Alto) and then drove an hour each way for the full cinematic experience (totally worth it!), but I didn't remember enough about it from my childhood to tell if I was seeing extra footage or new scenes. <shrug> It's about time I did that again anyway, so next time I'll try to make sure I'm seeing the 227 minute "roadshow" version.

- Ix

Enjoyable film, but poor history. Both versions!

But the underlying premise is still immensely flawed in the KoH. Why not tell the history as it really was? Palestine in the late 12th century was truly fascinating. But Ridley Scott would rather massacre a good historical story for his own bizarre story line.

Mike +1
Brutus +1

Yup. The Director's Cut was a better story, but it was still terrible history.