Recently, Quentin Tarantino dropped a re-edited version of his 2015 revisionist western The Hateful Eight on Netflix as a four-part miniseries. He’s been suggesting that he might do the same with Django Unchained and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, too (despite the fact that the latter has already been criticized for having too much filler in its current form).
As Tarantino pioneers this new form of re-cutting long movies to fit a new format, there a couple of three-hour movies out there that could do with a makeover. So, here are 10 Incredibly Long Movies That Should Be Re-Edited Into Miniseries.
Once Upon a Time in America
Sergio Leone’s crime epic Once Upon a Time in America tells the story of a group of Jewish ghetto kids who grow up to become prominent mobsters in New York’s criminal underworld. With its breathtaking cinematography by Tonino Delli Colli and unforgettable score by Ennio Morricone, Once Upon a Time in America is a gangster movie to remember, but it’s also an unbelievably long one.
Leone actually envisioned the movie as a multi-part story before deciding to make it as one four-and-a-half-hour opus. The European distributors cut it down to three hours and 49 minutes, while the American distributors cut it down to two hours and 19 minutes. Re-cutting it as a miniseries would give audiences a chance to see Leone’s initial vision for the film.
Schindler’s List
Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is one of the most powerful movies ever made. It’s a harrowing look at the horrors of the Holocaust, and it’s arguably the most definitive cinematic portrait of the tragedy, with an ultimately hopeful message. Schindler’s List is a movie that everybody should see, but at over three hours in length, a lot of casual moviegoers are put off.
If it was shuffled around a little bit (changing very little, mind you, because it’s virtually perfect as it is) and re-released as a four-part miniseries, it might be more digestible to a wider audience. Lord knows that Steven Spielberg isn’t averse to tweaking his old classics, since he infamously re-cut E.T. to change the guns into walkie-talkies.
JFK
Oliver Stone’s dark political thriller about the investigation into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the Kennedy assassination is the defining big-screen take on that fateful historical event. It’s also the most successful entry in Stone’s trilogy of films about U.S. Presidents.
However, it’s over three hours long – and Stone has released a director’s cut that’s an extra 20 minutes or so longer. Outside of a movie theater, most viewers don’t watch it in one sitting as it is, so Stone might as well dive back into the cutting room and make the multi-sitting viewing format an intentional part of the experience.
The Deer Hunter
There are already three segments in Michael Cinimo’s The Deer Hunter that could easily be separated for a three-part miniseries. The movie is a sprawling epic about the effects of the Vietnam War on the soldiers that were drafted to fight in it. The first part begins with three working-class Americans getting drafted in the war and ends with a farewell party thrown for them by their friends.
The second part follows their experiences in the actual conflict, involving napalm and Russian roulette. And the third and final part shows the devastating effects that the war has had on their collective psyche: one has PTSD, one is confined to a veterans’ hospital, and one stayed in Vietnam when he couldn’t bear to return home.
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Stanley Kramer’s epic ‘60s comedy It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is a delightful romp about the pursuit of some stolen money, but it’s also really, really long – especially long for a movie from that era, and even more especially long for a comedy.
There are already a ton of alternative cuts of this movie – the original cut was 210 minutes long; the premiere cut was 192 minutes long; the theatrical cut was 161 minutes long; and the restored cut was 197 minutes long – so it wouldn’t be a great stretch to get back in the editing room for one more cut of the film.
Malcolm X
Spike Lee’s biopic of Malcolm X is a terrific movie, but it’s also over 200 minutes long. Denzel Washington’s lead performance as the titular civil rights icon deserves to be seen by every film fan in the world, as well as anyone interested in this integral chapter in American history, but that running time is enough to put some viewers off.
If it were to be separated into four or five episodes, it might be easier for audiences to commit themselves to. Lee has adapted She’s Gotta Have It for Netflix, so there’s probably a chance that this could be worked out.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The final chapter in Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy is one of the finest spaghetti westerns ever made. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a three-hour epic about three guys’ separate quests to dig up some gold that was buried in a graveyard, set against the gritty chaos of the Civil War.
If the movie was re-edited as a miniseries, it could be split up into three parts: “The Good,” following Clint Eastwood as the Man with No Name; “The Bad,” following Lee Van Cleef as Angel Eyes; and “The Ugly,” following Eli Wallach as the Rat. It’s just a suggestion, but it could be a fun way to reinterpret the story.
Magnolia
Paul Thomas Anderson pretty much made Magnolia as a bunch of short films that he then spliced together in an intertwining feature-length anthology. A bunch of characters across the San Fernando Valley who seemingly have nothing to do with one another all converge in a weird climactic sequence.
This would be a prime candidate for a miniseries. In fact, it’s almost as if it was conceived to be a miniseries as opposed to a movie. These disparate tales of lost souls could be left virtually untouched if they were to be cut up into episodes, with the Biblical climax being left for the last episode.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi opus 2001: A Space Odyssey is already conveniently chopped up into segments. It’s practically an anthology movie in its unusual structure. It opens with the “Dawn of Man” sequence, which shows apes discovering violence in prehistoric times, before moving into outer space for a mission to the Moon, a mission to Jupiter, and finally, the trippy, surreal, this-is-what-we’ve-all-been-waiting-for “Beyond the Infinite” rebirth sequence.
There are some arguments over whether 2001 has three sections or four, so whoever was tasked with re-editing the movie into a miniseries would have to settle that debate with their chosen episode count.
The Godfather & The Godfather Part II
Francis Ford Coppola famously didn’t want to make a third Godfather movie. He felt that he’d told the story of the Corleone family to a satisfactory standard in his first two masterpieces and he wanted to leave it as a duology, because although trilogies make for neater box sets, a third installment would be unnecessary.
Of course, Paramount still forced him to make a third movie and it was as unnecessary and disappointing as Coppola suspected it would be. The director is right that the first two movies stand perfectly as the complete story of the Corleone family, but they are awfully long (the first one is just under three hours and the second one is over three hours), so they could do with being cut up into more consumable episodes.