“It was wrong”: the 2005 movie scene Ridley Scott called “the only real regret I’ve ever had”
Thanks to his bullish, no-nonsense, and unfiltered approach to discussing his work, Ridley Scott has effortlessly mastered the art of not giving a fuck, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have regrets.
He doesn’t seem like the type of fella who would, right enough, based largely on how he constantly waves off any criticisms of his work, whether it be casting, historical accuracy, or anything else, by saying in roundabout terms that anybody who’s got an axe to grind with his films can piss off.
This is a guy who literally told someone to go fuck themselves when they questioned one of his many historical epics, has enough of an ego to name some of his own movies as the greatest of all time, which isn’t inaccurate, it should be pointed out, and generally does whatever the hell he wants.
At very few points in his career has Scott come across as someone who wistfully looks back on their filmography and feels the painful twinge of regret, which says a lot, looking at how Blade Runner was put through the post-production wringer and still turned out to be a seminal sci-fi flick.
However, trimming 17 minutes from Kingdom of Heaven hit him differently. The theatrical cut of the sweeping period piece was alright and nothing special, but the director’s cut transformed it into maybe his finest big-budget historical effort, which is saying something when he’s made so many of them.
Eva Green might take second billing behind Sylvester Stallone’s arch-nemesis, Orlando Bloom, as Sibylla, but that wasn’t really reflected in the 144-minute version that underperformed in cinemas. Green was devasted, as was her mother, who shouted at the director for excising so much of her daughter’s screentime, and in hindsight, he was sorry.
“The one, the only real regret I’ve ever had over the years, funnily enough, is the cut on Kingdom of Heaven,” Scott explained. “I removed 17 minutes which I thought, at the end of the day, were emotionally essential.” The director’s cut adds an additional 45 minutes, but those 17 were the ones that stung the most.
That sequence revolves around Green’s Sibylla poisoning her young son to death to spare him from the same fate as her brother, Edward Norton’s King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, who suffered from leprosy. In the theatrical edition, her character’s motivations aren’t explained or explored in depth, and Scott knew it.
“It was wrong, really, to take it out,” he confessed. “Because it was all about the demise of the young kind, and therefore, it was also a very nice thing for Eva Green. I always regretted that. The three-hour version of that was somehow more complete.” Lucky he’s got a thing for releasing extended cuts of his movies, then, so he can at least get some sense of peace about his only regret.
