Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Are there two different versions of National Treasure?

This is topic Are there two different versions of National Treasure? in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 11-29-2004, 05:24 AM:

On an European forum, people maintain that there are two different versions of this movie, and that the overseas version is much longer because it contains 25 or so minutes of historical background info which the US version doesn't have since most people here know the background anyway.
I think that's unlikely, but I am still curious how long exactly your prints are.

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 11-29-2004, 05:38 AM:

the one i saw (in the u.s.) ran 2:10:55 not including ratings band. the imdb doesn't list any alternate versions. however they list a running time of 100 minutes. maybe it's the u.s. version that is 30 minutes longer because americans know less about their own history than do people of other nationalities.

carl

Posted by Daniel Alt (Member # 2303) on 11-29-2004, 06:47 AM:

The version we ran had a number of short reels, especially reel 5. It came on eight total, which seemed at least one more than it needed. That would tend to support the theory that some footage was cut late in the game, at least.

Posted by Dick Vaughan (Member # 540) on 11-29-2004, 06:50 AM:

Running time in the UK is 130minutes 58 sec according to the BBFC who classified it last THursday

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 11-29-2004, 08:49 AM:

Interesting that you should bring this up. The newspaper movie synopsis here listed the running time at 1:40. The actual running time was over 2 hours. I didn't clock it or anything, but my guess is it came in at pretty close to 2:10.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-29-2004, 08:53 AM:

I wasn't timing the print I saw last Friday, but that sounds about right. I can't think of any 'historical background' section that could easily be cut without disrupting the plot, though. Most of the historical information is built into the dialogue scenes (about the one aspect of the film that was done quite well, I thought). I suppose you could cut the odd shot or dialogue sequence here and there if you were careful about it.

Posted by Dustin Mitchell (Member # 372) on 11-29-2004, 01:09 PM:

Dick's running time sounds about the same as ours, so at least the US/UK 'versions' are the same.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-29-2004, 02:43 PM:

I might not have seen a standard UK print - I saw the film at an advance preview (it hasn't been released here yet). There was no British censor certificate at the start, though the print did look new.

Posted by Barry Martin (Member # 1376) on 11-29-2004, 10:55 PM:

Ours runs about 2 hours 15 minutes with 8 minutes of non-attatched trailers, so with credits and all figured 2 hours 10 minutes sounds about right.