“I shouldn’t have!” : Ridley Scott regrets cutting scenes from one of his classics

During the promotional marathon surrounding his Napoleon, in theaters yesterday, Ridley Scott gave a lengthy interview to the reference site Deadline. A dense exchange, as it generously deconstructs the career of a filmmaker who never hesitates to go back to evoke painful memories. In this case, his heavenly kingdom.

A very good film that was unfairly shunned when it came out in 2005 for some, a botched film and never free of Ridley Scott’s directorial tics for others, heavenly kingdom It did not work to divide opinion.

The verdict in theaters was clear: a big failure in the United States and Canada, as the film brought in only $47 million from 130 investments. It didn’t fare much better at the worldwide box office: just over $218 million.

Ridley Scott was very angry at the time with Twentieth Century Fox’s marketing teams, who he said completely misled audiences by selling an adventure film mixed with exoticism and a love story; Instead of a close study of the bloody conflict of religions during the Crusades.

“I took 17 minutes out of Kingdom of Heaven, and I shouldn’t have. It was about the dilemma of Sibyl, the princess of Jerusalem, who discovers that her son has leprosy. So the whole plot was left out and I ate up 17 minutes of the film. For me, it made the film more substantial. I deleted it to lighten the story and I regret it. Now I’m watching the movie and I realize it’s good. Very good.” The filmmaker comments in an interview.

“I foolishly agreed to cut the film!”

The theatrical version is 145 min. For its Director’s Cut version, which was released on DVD at the time and has since been available on Blu-ray, it clocks in at 187 minutes. In December 2005, the much-anticipated Director’s Cut version of the film premiered at the Laemmle Fairfax Theater in Los Angeles. Because it balances the psychology of the characters, but above all develops the political subplots, which were greatly reduced in the editing for the theatrical release and greatly reduced the scale of the show.

Still on the subject of the film, we can add other opinions of the filmmaker, which are mentioned this time in the October 2023 issue of “Premiere” magazine, which rightly dedicated the cover to Miss Napoleon, which will also be the subject. Almost 4 hours long version, which will be released on Apple in 2024.

“What happened with Kingdom of Heaven was a bit silly. When you’re making a movie, you’re all alone at the head of a huge team. And everyone has an opinion. You wrote the movie, you produced it, you produced it. , shoot, shoot… When I got there, I was completely exhausted. , a lesson I’ve learned over the years: Never sit down to edit at the end of a shoot because it clouds your judgment.

After this story, I work on it before shooting. I’m in a room with six monitors because I shoot with six cameras at the same time. The only reason I quit Kingdom of Heaven was because I was really tired. And then the studio asked for a version: “Come on! We don’t need all this secondary story around this woman! Stupidly, I agreed.”