Coming off the Oscar-nominated “Hell or High Water,” there was a lot of buzz surrounding David Mackenzie’s latest film, “Outlaw King,” when it debuted at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. However, the film received mixed reviews. Well, before the film hits theaters and streaming in a little over a month, the filmmaker decided to go back to the editing bay and take another stab at his historical epic, chopping off a significant amount of the 137-minute run-time.
According to Deadline, Mackenzie wasn’t told to re-edit his film by anyone at Netflix or producers. When he sat in the premiere, he felt something uncomfortable in the crowd and knew something was wrong. “I could feel what the audience was like in the theater,” says the filmmaker. “I’m sensitive to the way they felt.”
So instead of deciding to stand by and watch his film get ravaged by critics and fans when it hits Netflix, Mackenzie immediately went back to edit the film down by 20 minutes. He said that three days after the premiere he went back to work. “It was entirely my decision,” Mackenzie affirms.
So, what was cut? Well, the director won’t give exact details, but does say that significant parts of the first act and the early third act were cut completely, as well as some minor characters that didn’t move the story along. “The play-ability is better now and the access to the characters,” says Mackenzie.
However, those worried that Chris Pine’s penis didn’t make the cut, never fear! The infamous appendage will be seen in all its glory when the film hits Netflix. And frankly, Mackenzie doesn’t understand all the hoopla that stemmed from the scene.
He said, “I made ten films and most of them had male frontal nudity; it’s a bathing scene and people do tend to get out of the bath without clothes.”
Mackenzie said that he doesn’t feel that anything he cut was actually bad, per se. Instead, he wanted to improve the flow of the narrative. In fact, he said that if he really wanted to, he could have gone the other way and make it even longer.
“I’m sure if I had the appetite, I could do a three-part mini-series as there’s lots of characters, lots of history, but the name of the game is to make an entertaining narrative-driven film with great performances; you have to whittle down, it’s a hard game especially when there’s so much history to put in,” says Mackenzie.
And of course, the only remaining question is why did he quickly backtrack from his original cut of the film?
He says that there’s a big difference between what happened with “Hell or High Water,” which received no changes after it debuted at Cannes, and the situation with “Outlaw King.” Mackenzie explains that it was a mad rush to get the film ready for TIFF, and that ultimately hurt the film.
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“But if changes were needed [on ‘Hell or High Water’], I would have certainly done them if I felt things were not quite working. The thing about that film is that we finished it three months before Cannes and there was time for the dust to settle. With ‘Outlaw King’ we didn’t have time to settle as we wanted to get into the fall festivals,” says the filmmaker.
As for the new cut, Mackenzie explains that those who saw the early version should give the new one a shot. “It’s worth another look, and I encourage critics who saw it and didn’t connect with it to see it again. It has a different sense since it’s under two hours, but it’s still very much an epic,” he concluded.
“Outlaw King” hits theaters and Netflix on November 9.