Screencap: Jason about to fight Van-Damme the Russian. Image courtesy of Disney?
In John Bryant’s The Fluid Text, the author discusses the ‘fluid text moment” as a moment of “apparent slippage between your text of a literary work and someone else’s….” (p. 64) Basically, it’s the moment when you realize that there is another distinct version of a literary text, with differences that make it a unique variation.. (p. 64-69) I’d say this applies to film texts. That is, there are moments when you recognize that the film you’re watching can actually exist in different versions, distinguished possibly by editing, aspect ratio, screen size, language, etc.
For me, the earliest fluid film text moment I can remember is when I first saw the Russian television broadcast version of No Retreat, No Surrender (1985). You see, this was kinda one of my video favorites as I was growing up, a weird little martial arts movie where the ghost of Bruce Lee (!) decides to teach Jeet Kune Do to an American teenager so he can fight an evil Russian(!!!) played by Jean-Claude Van Damme. It’s a ridiculous film but one that was pretty damn fun and entertaining, especially because a) my brother and I loved Bruce Lee films and b) Van Damme was uncharacteristically playing a bad guy.
I saw it so many times on tape, I could remember almost every scene. So, when it came up on TV in the early 90s, I decided to give it a whirl… yet something was different. On tape the movie started with an image of Bruce Lee before dissolving to Jason practicing Karate in his father’s dojo. Yet on TV there was a whole credit sequence set in the streets of New York before the film arrived at the dojo. Then, there were a LOT of these other scenes that I’d never seen before, like more stuff with Jason’s new friend in Seattle skateboarding and dealing with bullies.
That experience first got me to realize: hey wait, you can put stuff in and take stuff out of movies. I didn’t give it that much attention at the time, but it stayed with me. So, as I watched more movies and learned about censorship, scenes getting cut for commercials, director’s cuts, etc., I would recall that moment I saw NRNS on TV as a kid. It may not be a great movie exactly, but it’s provided a great learning experience about film editing and variation.
Anyway, what about you? What’s your first fluid text moment? In other words, what work made you realize that movies (or TV episodes, games, etc.) can exist in different versions? How did that impact your view of the work? Have you seen the different cuts of NRNS? Sound off in the comments below! Or maybe respond with Notes!
Honestly, I probably became fully aware of this due to anime. An American dub is already a new version of the work -- especially in a community where watching subs vs dubs was a constant war -- but then there were also multiple American dubs of most shows all with various degrees of edits and censoring. I think Yuyu Hakusho really hit home for me. It originally aired in America on the late night Adult Swim block, dubbed but largely uncensored, but it was super popular and got moved to the weekday afternoon Toonami blocked where the violence, language, and sexuality was suddenly all censored. It was jarring. I knew shows were altered due to censorship but that was my first time being able to see both versions of a show for myself.
I was thinking about this as well - specifically, Dragonball and Sailor Moon, the latter of which notoriously cut out the queer relationship between Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune. And even Pokemon had some entire episodes dropped in the North American dubs.
I remember finding a site early on called Dragonball Z Uncensored, which offered very thorough breakdowns of the differences between the first 90 or so episodes. Some of the changes were plain funny. Eg. new objects to block nudity or the color of blood becoming white and translucent!
That first American DBZ dub that aired on Toonami was so unintentionally funny. Characters weren't killed, they were "sent to another dimension," Hell was renamed "The Home For Infinite Losers," when Tien lost an arm he yelled "just wait till it grows back!", when Nappa blew up army planes somebody commented that they could see the Pilots parachutes, the city Nappa blew up was empty because it was a Sunday, so nobody died, it was nuts
I remember watching the Dragonball sequence where a particular tertiary character was, unfortunately, interested in children. And then the dub made him, like, a long lost cousin. But it made no sense with the animation.
I also remember watching Sailor Moon when Uranus was first introduced, and seeing all of the Sailor Scouts react to (the male-presenting) Uranus with blushing faces - something to me that indicated a crush, but in the dub, they just said 'whoa, so cool.'
On a very basic level, my first memor(ies) of variations were seeing the differences between the VHS tapes at my local movie store for movies like Die Hard, Bloodsport, and Falling Down, and their broadcast edits that would appear frequently on TV stations. Not only would the actual audio track have the profanities awkwardly dubbed over or blanked out, but many scenes (sometimes large, sometimes small) would be cut out.
I know that's not quite the same as a different cut of a film done by a director or studio, but it was the first time I remember realizing movies could (and sometimes had to) exist in different forms.
For sure, those are great examples! In fact, I do believe that's how a lot of people learn about this, especially when it comes to profanity and nudity.
Myself, I don't recall exactly when I became aware of TV censorship. It might've been when I started seeing more movies on TV in the US, where I first discovered basic cable. At one point though, I def-ly remember getting a British videotape with 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,' where the gorier bits - like the hand going inside the kid to pull the heart out, were cut out.
If I understand correctly, you had a video tape (bought where ? In Russia ?) of that film and later watched the Russian version broadcast, right ? Then what's the official version, the one the filmmaker intended ? It's kind of scary for a filmmaker, but it's not something you'll find everywhere. In France (where I live, and used to work in audiovisual labs), rights are different than in USA (and I guess Russia), final cut doesn't ever need to be discussed (although strong suggestions can be made by producers and diffusers), censorship is almost non existent (compared to the moral dictatorship in USA with the MPA for instance - there's still a rating) and films can't be manipulated that much. Only differences you could spot (or have spotted) are logos at the beginning and the aspect ratio (not anymore though). The aspect ratio used to be a peculiar thing before. You probably know that, some filmmakers (including James Cameron) used to check their films (while shooting) in two different aspect ratio, one for cinema and one for TV. So they knew how the film will look in TV, years later, and avoided bad surprises. Anyway, it's an interesting topic !
So, yes, we had it on videotape, which meant a pirated US Cut of the film with a Russian voiceover translation. Most tapes in Russian were like that - you'd get multiple American movies with the original audio track intact, which was way better than dubbing.
The Russian broadcast version though was, as I later found out, based on the International Cut of the movie. Now, which one was the official or preferred? I have no idea. And I actually tried to find BTS info on this but have not been successful (though there is a source I haven't yet consulted). Movie-censorship refers to the International Cut as the 'original version' (the film was directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Corey Yuen) but I have no confirmation that this is the case. (https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=767156)
Thank you for the information about France. This lines up with what I know, based on a French book about the concept of the director's cut, I read a few years ago.
Would you know though what the policy of the French is towards modifying foreign films for distribution? I'm quite curious about that.
Foreign films are never modified nor censored, just rated like French films. For instance, we got the original version of "The Descent", not the American ending. The work that a distribution company does is mostly translation and advertising : a new title (not always, sometimes also in English, it's very dumb, like The Hangover is called Very Bad Trip, probably because of the film Very Bad Things), subtitles, dubbing, the poster, etc. Normal distribution things. This difference of policies caused a lot of frictions between French filmmakers and American producers (last one I know was that about the film Grace de Monaco). This is also why many foreign filmmakers are financed by some public or private French companies (the CNC, which has a special funding for films coming from "under-developed" countries, Canal+, that helped David Lynch for instance). The way film production works in France is very different from USA (these are actually the two main models worldwide). None of them is perfect though. They are just shitty, but in a different way.
Ah, thank you! That's very interesting. I do wonder if maybe US filmmakers sometimes make changes in advance for the French distributors and/or market. When 'Unbreakable' came out in France in 2000, it apparently had a text-less alternate (or rather original) ending and I've wondered if maybe that was an accident or done deliberately for French distribution.
But what about you? Was there a specific title that made you realize there can be different versions of the same movie? Do tell!
I just read your article about Unbreakable end text. I've never seen that before, I don't remember seeing any text in the DVD neither but it was a long time ago (I have the DVD somewhere, I'll check at one point). That particular point was probably just because the text was added last minute in the US, after the material (the film, the textless, etc) was sent to other foreign distributors. I know Stanley Kubrick had European and American versions (aspect ratio wise), but I don't think American filmmakers need any adjustment for the French market. I don't see anything they would need to change. As I said, films are just rated (in a laxer way than USA). To answer your question, I think it was with the Empire Strikes Back. It didn't say Episode 5 when it was released (anywhere), it was added a bit later. I wasn't born at the time, but had later a bootleg video tape of the film without "Episode 5" (still have it). Also, later there were the Special Edition that I watch in a movie theatre, but I knew I would spot differences, it wasn't a surprise.
"That particular point was probably just because the text was added last minute in the US, after the material (the film, the textless, etc) was sent to other foreign distributors."
Oh, I hadn't thought of that. But that's a great point. I've heard of stuff happening like this. (eg. Across the Spider-verse being a recent example).
Also, really interesting to hear about Empire. Are you sure it was Episode 5 though? I def-ly know they didn't have the Episode 4 subtitle when that one was theatrically released for the first time - and I got myself a rare DVD copy where it's just called 'Star Wars.' But I've never heard that this happened with Empire as well.
The short answer is probably the 'Han shot first' controversy in Star Wars. I would have been maybe 8-9; I can remember my dad and his monthly SFF group discussing this change in the late 90s. In my own media, it was (as mentioned below) the 90s Sailor Moon dub, which removed all queerness.
Where it became something I actually thought about more seriously was probably in the realm of video games. I played and loved Final Fantasy X when I was about 12, but then I learned about the 'International Version.' Before video game patching and DLC (something worth thinking about, as video games are now always being re-versioned at a much faster pace than, I think, any other medium - FF XV was released effectively with an entire chunk of story missing, never mind cases like Cyperpunk 2077), they were just fully releasing (rare) new cuts of a game, on new discs, with commentary and extra bosses. Could I find a copy? Did I want to replay it just for a few new elements?
And then came the never-ending stream of remasters and remakes, some just to port content to new systems, and which, don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore. I have probably 4-5 versions of FFX. But there are entire Discourses about what is a real definitive version. Next year's Persona 3 Remake is coming off of four versions of the original - the base game on PS2, the PS2 version with an epilogue, the PlayStation Pocket version with an entirely new set of paths to take with a female MC (but which, for the handheld, had to make the game effectively a point and click adventure), and the recent remaster on PS4/PS5. A definitive version would ideally contain everything - the PSP content, the PS2 epilogue - but the remake is just a remade base game. Why!? Who wants that!? Ack lol.
And then finally on TV, it was probably David Simon's essay on the bluray version of The Wire. It made me think way more about directing in TV (since, until then, for me, TV had been such a writerly medium compared to film).
I actually started but ironically never finished a post called "Are Videogames Ever Really Finished Nowadays?" I wanted to talk about how videogames are very iterative in general and have become much like computer games used to be in the 90s: there was always the potential of them being modified or patched sometimes years after the fact. New DLC, new remastered editions or ports. Then, there's the fact that trailers for videogames regularly reveal material that never ends up in the title proper.
In my case, I wanted to take about Resident Evil Village, the debut trailer of which had a bunch of scenes that were cut from the game itself. Also, I think I would've talked about a long-delayed 'Evil Within' remaster and the numerous versions of 'Kingdom Hearts.' I guess I should get back to that at some point!
Honestly, I probably became fully aware of this due to anime. An American dub is already a new version of the work -- especially in a community where watching subs vs dubs was a constant war -- but then there were also multiple American dubs of most shows all with various degrees of edits and censoring. I think Yuyu Hakusho really hit home for me. It originally aired in America on the late night Adult Swim block, dubbed but largely uncensored, but it was super popular and got moved to the weekday afternoon Toonami blocked where the violence, language, and sexuality was suddenly all censored. It was jarring. I knew shows were altered due to censorship but that was my first time being able to see both versions of a show for myself.
I was thinking about this as well - specifically, Dragonball and Sailor Moon, the latter of which notoriously cut out the queer relationship between Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune. And even Pokemon had some entire episodes dropped in the North American dubs.
But I thought Uranus and Neptune were "cousins"! 😝
I remember finding a site early on called Dragonball Z Uncensored, which offered very thorough breakdowns of the differences between the first 90 or so episodes. Some of the changes were plain funny. Eg. new objects to block nudity or the color of blood becoming white and translucent!
That first American DBZ dub that aired on Toonami was so unintentionally funny. Characters weren't killed, they were "sent to another dimension," Hell was renamed "The Home For Infinite Losers," when Tien lost an arm he yelled "just wait till it grows back!", when Nappa blew up army planes somebody commented that they could see the Pilots parachutes, the city Nappa blew up was empty because it was a Sunday, so nobody died, it was nuts
I remember watching the Dragonball sequence where a particular tertiary character was, unfortunately, interested in children. And then the dub made him, like, a long lost cousin. But it made no sense with the animation.
I also remember watching Sailor Moon when Uranus was first introduced, and seeing all of the Sailor Scouts react to (the male-presenting) Uranus with blushing faces - something to me that indicated a crush, but in the dub, they just said 'whoa, so cool.'
On a very basic level, my first memor(ies) of variations were seeing the differences between the VHS tapes at my local movie store for movies like Die Hard, Bloodsport, and Falling Down, and their broadcast edits that would appear frequently on TV stations. Not only would the actual audio track have the profanities awkwardly dubbed over or blanked out, but many scenes (sometimes large, sometimes small) would be cut out.
I know that's not quite the same as a different cut of a film done by a director or studio, but it was the first time I remember realizing movies could (and sometimes had to) exist in different forms.
For sure, those are great examples! In fact, I do believe that's how a lot of people learn about this, especially when it comes to profanity and nudity.
Myself, I don't recall exactly when I became aware of TV censorship. It might've been when I started seeing more movies on TV in the US, where I first discovered basic cable. At one point though, I def-ly remember getting a British videotape with 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,' where the gorier bits - like the hand going inside the kid to pull the heart out, were cut out.
I actually remember that about Temple Of Doom as well! That one in particular seems like a more intrusive edit, because that scene is SO memorable.
If I understand correctly, you had a video tape (bought where ? In Russia ?) of that film and later watched the Russian version broadcast, right ? Then what's the official version, the one the filmmaker intended ? It's kind of scary for a filmmaker, but it's not something you'll find everywhere. In France (where I live, and used to work in audiovisual labs), rights are different than in USA (and I guess Russia), final cut doesn't ever need to be discussed (although strong suggestions can be made by producers and diffusers), censorship is almost non existent (compared to the moral dictatorship in USA with the MPA for instance - there's still a rating) and films can't be manipulated that much. Only differences you could spot (or have spotted) are logos at the beginning and the aspect ratio (not anymore though). The aspect ratio used to be a peculiar thing before. You probably know that, some filmmakers (including James Cameron) used to check their films (while shooting) in two different aspect ratio, one for cinema and one for TV. So they knew how the film will look in TV, years later, and avoided bad surprises. Anyway, it's an interesting topic !
So, yes, we had it on videotape, which meant a pirated US Cut of the film with a Russian voiceover translation. Most tapes in Russian were like that - you'd get multiple American movies with the original audio track intact, which was way better than dubbing.
The Russian broadcast version though was, as I later found out, based on the International Cut of the movie. Now, which one was the official or preferred? I have no idea. And I actually tried to find BTS info on this but have not been successful (though there is a source I haven't yet consulted). Movie-censorship refers to the International Cut as the 'original version' (the film was directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Corey Yuen) but I have no confirmation that this is the case. (https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=767156)
Thank you for the information about France. This lines up with what I know, based on a French book about the concept of the director's cut, I read a few years ago.
Would you know though what the policy of the French is towards modifying foreign films for distribution? I'm quite curious about that.
Foreign films are never modified nor censored, just rated like French films. For instance, we got the original version of "The Descent", not the American ending. The work that a distribution company does is mostly translation and advertising : a new title (not always, sometimes also in English, it's very dumb, like The Hangover is called Very Bad Trip, probably because of the film Very Bad Things), subtitles, dubbing, the poster, etc. Normal distribution things. This difference of policies caused a lot of frictions between French filmmakers and American producers (last one I know was that about the film Grace de Monaco). This is also why many foreign filmmakers are financed by some public or private French companies (the CNC, which has a special funding for films coming from "under-developed" countries, Canal+, that helped David Lynch for instance). The way film production works in France is very different from USA (these are actually the two main models worldwide). None of them is perfect though. They are just shitty, but in a different way.
Ah, thank you! That's very interesting. I do wonder if maybe US filmmakers sometimes make changes in advance for the French distributors and/or market. When 'Unbreakable' came out in France in 2000, it apparently had a text-less alternate (or rather original) ending and I've wondered if maybe that was an accident or done deliberately for French distribution.
But what about you? Was there a specific title that made you realize there can be different versions of the same movie? Do tell!
I just read your article about Unbreakable end text. I've never seen that before, I don't remember seeing any text in the DVD neither but it was a long time ago (I have the DVD somewhere, I'll check at one point). That particular point was probably just because the text was added last minute in the US, after the material (the film, the textless, etc) was sent to other foreign distributors. I know Stanley Kubrick had European and American versions (aspect ratio wise), but I don't think American filmmakers need any adjustment for the French market. I don't see anything they would need to change. As I said, films are just rated (in a laxer way than USA). To answer your question, I think it was with the Empire Strikes Back. It didn't say Episode 5 when it was released (anywhere), it was added a bit later. I wasn't born at the time, but had later a bootleg video tape of the film without "Episode 5" (still have it). Also, later there were the Special Edition that I watch in a movie theatre, but I knew I would spot differences, it wasn't a surprise.
"That particular point was probably just because the text was added last minute in the US, after the material (the film, the textless, etc) was sent to other foreign distributors."
Oh, I hadn't thought of that. But that's a great point. I've heard of stuff happening like this. (eg. Across the Spider-verse being a recent example).
Also, really interesting to hear about Empire. Are you sure it was Episode 5 though? I def-ly know they didn't have the Episode 4 subtitle when that one was theatrically released for the first time - and I got myself a rare DVD copy where it's just called 'Star Wars.' But I've never heard that this happened with Empire as well.
Well, sure, it was the same for the first Star Wars. The “episode 4” and “episode 5” were added in 1981, about a year after the release of Empire.
NRNS had a great rifftrax, and the star of it is from Louisville, KY! (where I live now) so I feel a bit of extra fondness towards it.
The movie is... well i won't say it's great, but it is a great time and entertaining.
The short answer is probably the 'Han shot first' controversy in Star Wars. I would have been maybe 8-9; I can remember my dad and his monthly SFF group discussing this change in the late 90s. In my own media, it was (as mentioned below) the 90s Sailor Moon dub, which removed all queerness.
Where it became something I actually thought about more seriously was probably in the realm of video games. I played and loved Final Fantasy X when I was about 12, but then I learned about the 'International Version.' Before video game patching and DLC (something worth thinking about, as video games are now always being re-versioned at a much faster pace than, I think, any other medium - FF XV was released effectively with an entire chunk of story missing, never mind cases like Cyperpunk 2077), they were just fully releasing (rare) new cuts of a game, on new discs, with commentary and extra bosses. Could I find a copy? Did I want to replay it just for a few new elements?
And then came the never-ending stream of remasters and remakes, some just to port content to new systems, and which, don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore. I have probably 4-5 versions of FFX. But there are entire Discourses about what is a real definitive version. Next year's Persona 3 Remake is coming off of four versions of the original - the base game on PS2, the PS2 version with an epilogue, the PlayStation Pocket version with an entirely new set of paths to take with a female MC (but which, for the handheld, had to make the game effectively a point and click adventure), and the recent remaster on PS4/PS5. A definitive version would ideally contain everything - the PSP content, the PS2 epilogue - but the remake is just a remade base game. Why!? Who wants that!? Ack lol.
And then finally on TV, it was probably David Simon's essay on the bluray version of The Wire. It made me think way more about directing in TV (since, until then, for me, TV had been such a writerly medium compared to film).
Thanks a lot for sharing these, John!
I actually started but ironically never finished a post called "Are Videogames Ever Really Finished Nowadays?" I wanted to talk about how videogames are very iterative in general and have become much like computer games used to be in the 90s: there was always the potential of them being modified or patched sometimes years after the fact. New DLC, new remastered editions or ports. Then, there's the fact that trailers for videogames regularly reveal material that never ends up in the title proper.
In my case, I wanted to take about Resident Evil Village, the debut trailer of which had a bunch of scenes that were cut from the game itself. Also, I think I would've talked about a long-delayed 'Evil Within' remaster and the numerous versions of 'Kingdom Hearts.' I guess I should get back to that at some point!