Why do movie studios cut films short?

[Pengwuino]

"cutting" movies short

One of the things I enjoy after seeing a god awful movie is looking up the reviews for the movies. I notice in a lot of the movies, that a typical excuse for a bad movie is that the film was cut short by the company producing the film. Now, does this mean the film was finished and they actually cut scenes out? Or that they cut pieces out that weren't filmed yet in order to save money? Now, the obvious answer is the latter but the thing is, the scenes that are cut out actually show up in the dvd releases as deleted scenes! This makes me wonder... if they do actually cut movies shorter after they're done (which when I look it up, seems to always be down to 90 minutes)... WHY?

DISCUSS!

 

[ZapperZ]

One of the things I enjoy after seeing a god awful movie is looking up the reviews for the movies. I notice in a lot of the movies, that a typical excuse for a bad movie is that the film was cut short by the company producing the film. Now, does this mean the film was finished and they actually cut scenes out? Or that they cut pieces out that weren't filmed yet in order to save money? Now, the obvious answer is the latter but the thing is, the scenes that are cut out actually show up in the dvd releases as deleted scenes! This makes me wonder... if they do actually cut movies shorter after they're done (which when I look it up, seems to always be down to 90 minutes)... WHY?

DISCUSS!

.. and in some cases, the movie's ending got completely changed by some studio execs. This is what happened to "Brazil" and director Terry Gilliam. The "Love Conquers All" ending was first shown in US movie theaters, while the rest of the world got the original version. It was only later when the Director's Cut of the movie came out on DVD (or was it on laserdiscs first?) that US audiences got to see the actual ending.

The original ending envisioned by Gilliam was more "difficult" to take, and certainly didn't provide the "closure" that's so popular in movies, but it made the movie an uncompromising classic.

Zz.

 

[mgb_phys]

There is always a commercial pressure to make the movie shorter. Cinemas want to show more runs in a day, shorter film = more profits.
The director wants to make the movie as long as possible to show the full breath of their genius.
Sometimes the studio sees the movie, they (or the test audience) hates it - so they cut it down to the good bits and hope for best.

Occasionally there is a good compromise!

 

[Pengwuino]

Ah that makes sense! So a short movie = already determined to be terrible by the execs and screening viewers so no go :D. Gotcha.

 

[MakeUpPlz]

I am not interested in movies that ask audience to...guess.
I don't want to be a psychic and I will NOT be one!

 

[Danger]

It was studio interference that ruined the first Star Trek movie. Not that it was a masterpiece anyway, being essentially a conglomeration of a couple of the series' plots. If you've ever read the original as written by Roddenberry, though, at least a lot more of it makes sense. Paramount cut about 20 minutes of plot points out in order to sub in more special effects.
I'll give just 2 examples. The first is that everyone wondered why Kirk seemed to be in such a squirrelly mood during the earlier parts of the show. The critical scenes that were excised showed that the female admiral who got scrambled in the transporter accident was his wife.
Secondly, it made absolutely no sense when Ilia first entered the bridge and announced that her oath of celibacy was on record. There was a segment prior to that, deleted by the studio, that explained it. Deltan women produce such potent pheromones that men have trouble functioning in their presence, so they have to promise celibacy to prevent male crewmembers from continually coming on to them.
There were other instances as well. Really, it wasn't that great a movie anyhow, but it at least had consistency and logic as originally written.

 

[mgb_phys]

Just nobody get started on Blade Runner, that's all ...