When supernatural urban fantasy film "Night Watch" (2004) was released outside of Russia, a new version was produced. An inferior one, imo. Since then the "International" version became the one distributed across all formats, and the original 115 min cut became confined to a DVD released only in Russia.
@dosnostalgic@Judeau that's the version on the Russian DVD I imported into the UK back when it first came out, I guess? It's the only version I've ever seen and I honestly had no idea it was a different cut of the film! Still one of the most unique items in my DVD collection
@COMPU73E@Judeau This is the one, the original. If you're familiar with this one, you might as well check out the International Cut to see all the changes.
There are two variations of the International version too:
One is in Russian, but with fancy animated subtitles.
No animated subtitles, but choice of regular English subtitles or an okay-ish dub.
@dosnostalgic It would be interesting to watch it again, I totally forgot what happened.
The sequel (Day Watch) stuck with me more but only because it was so weird. I remember a giant ferris wheel rolling through a city and a very important, magical chalk that turned out to be used to write down the soup of the day or something at a restaurant.
@loadhigh I do like the sequel as well. Fortunately the shortened International theatrical version of Day Watch was seen by very few, and only the original cut made it onto every home video release around the world. With Night Watch I really feel the changes made the movie worse.
Since it's Russian media produced by the state, here's a quick note:
The director of the film Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) spoke out against Russian war in Ukraine.
The writer of the source novel Sergey Lukyanenko banned Ukrainian translations of his books, denies Ukraine's existence, and wished violence on Ukrainian children.
@thomasfuchs Most people did. It became the one that took over even in Russia over time. Which is unfortunate because it takes out things that should have been left in, and adds stupid exposition dumps as well as other additions that just weren't needed.
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