Apocalypse Now: Final Cut coming to Tribeca Film Festival

There's a joke that the theatrical cut is from the director of The Godfather while Redux is from the director of Jack.

Some director's cuts/special editions that were done mostly for financial reasons:

-Alien (Even Ridley Scott said it was a marketing thing)

-The Exorcist (Director's Cut or Version you've never seen)

-Star Wars trilogy special editions

Coppola: "I often felt that the original 1979 was too abruptly shortened, and Redux was too long, and settled on what I now felt was the perfect version, which is what we’re showing at Tribeca later this month."

“By having a record of all old cuts on Betamax, I was able to see what steps had been made toward the final version released,” he said. “Interesting, even though I’ve had ‘final cut’ since Godfather‘s success, I always tried to be reasonable about ideas or suggestions made by the ‘finance’ partners, distributors or studios. However, their unanimous comment of ‘too long’ often led to trimming things out, whereas in retrospect the solution can often be to put more in. Also changes often beget other changes and you don’t quite realize then the road you are following.

“Given that the Apocalypse original was not only long, but also unusual in style and substance for a film at that time, we tended to cut whenever possible not only in time but also in what then was considered ‘weirdness,’ ” he said. “Maybe 15 years later I happened to catch a TV viewing of it in a hotel, and as I always enjoyed seeing the beginning, started watching and ending up seeing the whole film. I realized that just with that time elapsed, that the film was not as weird as I had thought, and had become more ‘contemporary.’ The avant garde art of the present often becomes the ‘wallpaper’ (mainstream) art of the future. That plus many people’s (including distributor’s opinion) that so much great stuff had been cut out, led to what was later called Apocalypse Redux, which actually had a successful theatrical distribution thanks to Harvey Weinstein. But that version had all that had been cut out, restored. Later on, once again, when asked which version I personally wanted to be shown, I often felt that the original 1979 was too abruptly shortened, and Redux was too long, and settled on what I now felt was the perfect version, which is what we’re showing at Tribeca later this month, called Apocalypse Now Final Cut.”


deadline.com/2019/04/francis-ford-coppola-megalopolis-directing-this-year-1202588167/?fbclid=IwAR1i7lxxtDenfKc3M4bcq2KaCCRU7j-gQS802QSZYOSead0jY-WzZDQdZWs

Wow, so I guess we're actually getting a new third version of "Apocalypse Now" at the Tribeca Film Festival in April. Makes me wonder what footage is being added/subtracted. It sucks that Coppola is changing his movie once again. I don't need to see him become like George Lucas with the original Star Wars films. But at least Coppola is kind enough to make the theatrical cut and Redux available to own.  I don't see how you can do better than the theatrical cut though.  

A featurette on the sound of the Final Cut:

Sunday (4/28) marks the day of the Final Cut premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.  This new version runs 3 hours (according to the Tribeca website) in 4K restoration and will have an interview with Francis Ford Coppola conducted by Steven Soderbergh after the screening.  As far as I know from news sources, this new version won't have any new footage to it.