I can understand that that's not always possible.
It's never really on the cards. What director is going to
leave in unnecessary scenes that slow down the narrative and add nothing to the story? That's what Bonus Scenes features are for on DVDs and Blu-Rays.
You're assuming that
every scene Mr. Clarke is in is slowing down the narrative and unnecessary for the story. We don't know that the same way he doesn't know whether he's going to make it into the film or not. If it were obvious that his scenes were unnecessary and slowed down the plot of the movie, then I doubt they would have been filmed in the first place.
And I'm still not quite sure what your quote has to do with me saying "that's not always possible." It's almost like you just want an argument for the sake of it. I don't know what's up with that.
Conversely, nothing's worse than a 90 minute film that really needed to be 2 or even 2 1/2 hours long to do the story justice
It's
still the director's and the studio's call. You might disagree with their choices, but you're not really going to know what's missing till the DVD comes out. Movies aren't as restricted on length these days due to cineplexes and multiple screens (and no newsreels, serials or shorts),
but directors don't chop out 30 mins, or add 30 mins, just for the fun of it.
I don't think you're paying attention to what I said. The 90 minute film I was talking about as a figurative example mostly has nothing to do with the director. It all starts with the story. If the story has to be cut for budget constraints, or because the story is based off of a book (like Harry Potter), then it may have to be cut to make the movie a decent length. This can backfire when too much is cut. I think the HP people realized this in the nick of time for the 7th book and decided to give that story enough time, as in 2 films. Twilight seems to be following suit. As soon as the books skyrocketed to 7-800+ pages, it probably should have been 2 films per book from then on out, but they learned... It's not like their audience wouldn't have been okay with that. That has nothing to do with the director, at least not that I can tell. It's the script.
Sometimes you have a story that just wasn't long enough to cover enough content to begin with. The best example I can think of is the first X-Men movie because Bryan Singer (the director) also wrote (in-part) the story for the film. One major complaint was that not enough time was spent building up some of the characters and that the film's length should have been increased for that. He acknowledged that saying that the film should have been longer.
So again, I'm not just talking about the director and the studio. (And trust me, the studio would have been ALL for making
more money off of HP
) It's the over all process. Sometimes people make mistakes; that's all I was saying. It seemed like that's all you were saying too, so I'm not sure where the disagreement seems to be coming from.
