When assessing a filmmaker’s uncompromising imaginative and prescient, debate nonetheless rages on whether or not a Director’s Minimize is best than the unique theatrical model. With sterling examples on either side of the ledger – Blade Runner being all-time good, The Warriors being all-time unhealthy – one nice cult basic that terminally suffers from the Director’s Minimize is Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly’s piercing psychological style mash-up that’s at its finest when it poses provocative, open-ended questions slightly than offering demystifying solutions that undermine the film’s puzzling surrealism.
The unique Donnie Darko, launched in theaters in October 2001, captured the hearts and minds of angst-ridden youngsters and younger grownup misfits in every single place, solely to relinquish all the favored goodwill by releasing the absurdly foolish Director’s Minimize in 2004. Straight up, the unique Donnie Darko by no means ought to have been tampered with and reedited for financial achieve. Going one step additional, the Donnie Darko Director’s Minimize practically ruins all of the film magic that made the unique such a beloved cult favourite. Because the movie nears its twenty fifth anniversary, it’s time to look at how and why Richard Kelly practically ruined his cinematic legacy with the abysmal Donnie Darko Director’s Minimize!
Now, earlier than delving into how and why the Donnie Darko Director’s Minimize happened, it’s value reminding followers of the important thing variations between it and the unique. Launched in 2004, the prolonged model of the movie contains 20 further minutes re-edited into the movie, enhanced sound, and additional particular results. Moreover, a number of head-scratching adjustments had been made to the unique’s near-perfect soundtrack, which established the distinctive temper and otherworldly tone of the film. Many of the footage inserted into the Director’s Minimize consisted of deleted scenes, a lot of which add little to the story. Worse but, most scenes are awkwardly tainted by heavy exposition and foolish superimposed imagery that excessively overexplain the film’s core thriller.
Whereas practically each newly added scene is pointless and inconsequential to the plot and does extra hurt than good, there are two exceptions. The primary includes Donnie’s English class participating in a Poetry Day. Donnie recites an ominous poem about Frank, by which he admonishes: “A storm is coming, Frank says a storm that will swallow the children and I will deliver them from the kingdom of pain I will deliver the children back to their doorsteps And send the monsters back to the underground I’ll send them back to a place where no-one else can see them except for me because I am Donnie Darko.”
Donnie’s classmates instantly burst into laughter, reinforcing his awkward outcast standing and rising disillusionment. However the sequence additionally portends the apocalypse Frank has been warning Donnie about all alongside, sowing worry and paranoia among the many viewers without delay. This scene would have been efficient if stored within the authentic model, because it does nothing to undermine the film’s overarching enigma. Quite the opposite, the unsettling omen provides to the intrigue of the film’s encrypted that means.
The opposite scene that performs effectively and will have remained within the authentic reduce additionally takes place in Donnie’s English class. His trainer, Karen Pomeroy, speaks about Fiver’s destiny within the ebook the category is studying, Watership Down. Fiver, a rabbit with a five-letter F-name like Frank the bunny who visits Donnie, has apocalyptic visions. Ms. Pomeroy tells the category that trusting Fiver’s disturbing visions will result in their salvation. Gretchen agrees, and Donnie disagrees. The scene ends with Ms. Pomeroy explaining {that a} Deus Ex Machina will rescue the rabbits from loss of life.
Whereas it’s straightforward to grasp why the second scene was reduce, deemed superfluous as a result of Donnie and his science trainer, Mr. Monitoff, talking a few related idea with out naming it a Deus Ex Machina, linking it to Frank within the English class would have made the earlier poem Donnie learn much more unnerving. Then once more, explaining the whole plot away to a handy “God in the Machine” would have been such a handy cop-out that it too would undo the cerebral intrigue of the film’s central puzzle.
Past these two scenes that might have doubtlessly performed effectively within the authentic reduce, practically each different scene within the Director’s Minimize is poorly conceived, horribly executed, and downright embarrassing. Among the many most ludicrous additions is the visible motif of Donnie’s eyeball opening in excessive close-up, with digital water and flames superimposed over it to convey some type of awoken spiritual divination. Frank’s visage can also be mirrored in Donnie’s eyeball. Care to guess what number of occasions this asinine picture seems within the prolonged model? 4. 4 F*cking occasions! Kelly returns to the attention imagery each 20 to half-hour, every time sapping the story of its elementary intrigue and inducing extra laughter than suspense.
Additional stripping away each morsel of thriller that makes the unique reduce so timeless, ambiguous, and debatable is the inclusion of Roberta Sparrow’s The Philosophy of Time Journey Handbook. For some motive, Kelly felt the necessity to spoon-feed the viewers solutions relating to Donnie’s inexplicable destiny with one laughable web page of scientific jargon after one other. Chapter by Chapter, Kelly superimposes textual content from Sparrow’s manifesto onto the display, fortunately making a gift of all of the cryptic secrets and techniques and hidden plot gadgets, to the purpose that there’s no thriller left in any respect. The foolish imagery overlaid with the philosophical textual content doesn’t come off as deep or intellectually difficult. Quite the opposite, it shamefully dumbs down the movie’s quizzical occasions and explains them with such precision that each one the summary provocations that the unique was constructed upon rapidly crumble. A couple of times is likely to be excusable. However Kelly overlays pages from Chapters 2, 7, 4, 6, 10, 9, and 12. Within the quest for coherence, Kelly finally ends up wanting extra silly than sagacious, forcing hardcore followers of the unique to digest such foolish topics as “Water and Metal,” “The Manipulated Living,” The Ensurance Entice,” “The Living Receiver,” and different lofty lunacy that makes the Director’s Minimize far inferior to the theatrical model. Within the try and make clear plot factors, Kelly solely confounds his viewers extra with pretentious nonsense.
The second-most important alteration to the Director’s Minimize pertains to the soundtrack. Kelly initially wrote the script with sure songs in thoughts, for a lot of of which the unique funds couldn’t afford the licensing. Probably the most obvious instance is the opening monitor, with the unique model’s tone-setting “The Killing Moon” by Echo and the Bunnymen changed with INXS’ “Never Tear Us Apart.” If that wasn’t unhealthy sufficient, Kelly moved “The Killing Moon” to the Halloween celebration scene, which beforehand performed The Church’s “Under the Milky Way” with such ethereal perfection. Within the Director’s Minimize, “Under the Milky Way” now performs within the automobile when Donnie and his father virtually hit Roberta Sparrow on the highway. Straight up, these adjustments do a disservice to the viewers, making the inventive deserves of the unique really feel like they had been stumbled upon accidentally slightly than a deliberate, absolutely fleshed-out imaginative and prescient. Is Richard Kelly the true visionary genius that his cinematic debut, the unique reduce of the movie, introduced him to be? That’s the dialog that started to effectively up within the aftermath of the severely pointless Director’s Minimize.
Now, for a phrase on how and why the prolonged model was even conceptualized within the first place. Per normal, the whole lot in Hollywood boils all the way down to cash.
Certainly, it’s not typically {that a} Director’s Minimize of any film is common solely three years after the theatrical one. With the good thing about time and hindsight, most Director’s Cuts are made a long time after the unique. In Donnie Darko’s case, the concept to create an prolonged model was straight born out of the film’s cult following on the midnight circuit and the will to capitalize on the film’s rising reputation. The thought was to compensate for the unique model’s poor ticket gross sales, which many attributed to unhealthy timing within the wake of 9/11.
Following its premiere on the 2001 Cannes Movie Competition, the unique reduce of Donnie Darko struggled to discover a distributor for months. Based on Kelly: “People like to dismiss it as something that doesn’t work. So, after Sundance, we sort of deemed it as a failure, an impressive, interesting failure, but as an experimental film that just doesn’t work. But then Newmarket finally picked it up.”
As soon as Newmarket acquired the movie, Donnie Darko was slated for a restricted U.S. launch on October 26, 2001. Nevertheless, as a result of morose temper People had been in six weeks after the tragic occasions of 9/11, the film did not resonate among the many lots. Keep in mind, a big plot ingredient within the movie issues a jet engine falling from the sky and colliding into Donnie’s bed room, an all-too-painful reminder of the hijacked airliners crashing into the Twin Towers. Coupled with the jumbled tone and fusion of science fiction, horror, teen comedy, and coming-of-age film genres, the movie merely couldn’t discover an viewers throughout its preliminary launch section. As such, Donnie Darko grossed a meager $110,000 on opening weekend and simply $420,000 by the tip of 2001. But, regardless of the poor early returns, the movie steadily gained large reputation throughout midnight film screenings, primarily at The Pioneer Theater in Manhattan, the place the movie ran for a surprising 28 consecutive months. Phrase of mouth stored the film viable for the subsequent two years till it gained a fair greater following within the U.Okay.
The success of Donnie Darko’s midnight screenings straight led to a hike in DVD gross sales for the unique reduce. When the worldwide launch outperformed its home run, incomes $2.5 million within the U.Okay., Newmarket, and twentieth Century Residence Entertainment noticed greenback indicators flash in entrance of their eyes. Throw in the truth that Gary Jules’ haunting cowl of Tears for Fears’ “Mad World,” the hypnotic track that ends the movie, shot to #1 within the U.Okay. file gross sales, and the concept to make a Director’s Minimize began to form. The film was extra fashionable than ever, and there was cash to be made.
Newmarket Movies’ President, Bob Berney, instructed re-editing the movie to increase Donnie Darko and capitalize on the favored midnight film screenings. As Kelly tells it: “I’d always artistically felt like there was a longer version of the film that I wanted to exist and assemble at some point.”
Nevertheless, Kelly by no means anticipated the possibility to craft his true imaginative and prescient, particularly as a first-time filmmaker, and positively not so quickly after the unique launch. Kelly provides: “I thought I’d maybe get to do [a new version] in like 10 years or something further down the road. Yet they decided that they really liked that idea because if would go through the trouble of putting it back in theaters this would give them the opportunity to market something new for people to see. So it became a win-win situation for everyone.”
Did it? Did it truthfully turn into a win-win for the diehard followers who felt a wierd kinship with Donnie Darko’s adolescent angst, existential dread, and remoted alienation? Kelly claims the additions and subtractions made to the unique reduce had been meant to make clear the extra esoteric plot factors, whereas Berney maintained that the Director’s Minimize was: “A combination of artistic and financial decisions. We felt that there would be some sort of closure by making these finishing touches and re-releasing it.”
Yeah, it sounds just like the powers that be noticed more cash to take advantage of and did no matter was obligatory for the Director’s Minimize to web as a lot dough as the unique edit misplaced, detracting from the inventive brilliance that made the unique so timeless and returnable. The result’s web page after web page of Roberta Sparrow’s nonsensical time journey theories splayed on the display, and different compromising measures taken to take away the Lynchian ambiguity and dreamlike surrealism that warranted repeat viewings within the first place. Extra like a Unhappy World, ay Gary Jules?!?
Whereas some might favor the prolonged model, the most important indictment of the Donnie Darko Director’s Minimize is that it makes the unique really feel prefer it was assembled by happenstance. The cool cinematic curio that repeatedly challenged viewers to untangle its that means misplaced all of its provocative attraction as soon as the Director’s Minimize cheated each reply to the take a look at.
Now, virtually 25 years later, Richard Kelly has returned from a long time of absence with plans to make a 3rd Donnie Darko film. In 2017, Kelly teased followers with plans to make a sequel “much bigger and more ambitious than the original.” In 2021, Kelly claims he was inspired by James Cameron to proceed the Donnie Darko mythos, who, after seeing the movie in 2010, referred to as it “disturbing.” Whereas that’s hardly a ringing endorsement, Kelly took Cameron’s phrases to imply, “there was really something big, something epic that could be done” with a possible sequel, and that “an enormous amount of work” had been accomplished on the script.
No matter destiny holds for Donnie Darko, the Director’s Minimize was a missed alternative to enhance the unique theatrical model. Not solely did the alterations woefully demystify the enigmatic attraction of the unique, however in addition they confirmed that Kelly won’t have been the cinematic wunderkind he introduced the world to be in his function debut. If Kelly does make Donnie Darko 3, right here’s hoping that he’ll lean extra into the thriller than draw back from it. To retain it slightly than clarify it.
