Amazon Prime's Edit of 'It's a Wonderful Life' is Nothing Less Than a Desecration of a Sacred Cultural Institution
If you've ever clicked on a blog I've written in the month of December (Note: you should click all of them, repeatedly. My credit card balance makes it look like I bought the family Juan Soto for Christmas), you've no doubt stumbled on at least one reference to the greatest holiday film ever made, It's a Wonderful Life. In fact, I'll argue it's one of the finest movies of any genre, ever. I recall a special episode of Siskel & Ebert where they each listed the 10 movies they would show if they ever bought a theater and hosted a film festival, and they both had Frank Capra's masterpiece on their list.
A couple of summers ago, I rented a house in the Finger Lakes, and visited Seneca Falls, which considers itself to be the real life inspiration for Bedford Falls. And upon leaving the It's a Wonderful Life Museum, I apologized to the nice lady in charge for the fact I went through the place spitting every line of dialogue. And somewhere in my travels, picked up this little item. It's from the bar owned by the one guy who actually had a better, happier life in the timeline where George Bailey had never been born.
Sorry, Nick. Your bar is exactly the kind of place I'd want to spend my Christmas eve. (Note this place doesn't really exist in Seneca Falls. It's just a novelty souvenir. We don't live in a timeline that good, either.)
Which brings us to that entire alternate reality in the film. The nightmarish sequence in which George is granted his wish to have never been born, only to find that the town he spend his whole life trying to get away from is now a dystopian hellscape, ruled by an evil oligarch. That all his friends and family are trapped in miserable existences. His uncle is in an insane asylum. His beloved brother died as a young child. The wife he adores doesn't recognize him. And naturally their own children, the source of so much joy in his world, were never born either. All of which sets up the most powerful emotional payoff in the history of cinema.
Unless you have the misfortune of watching this version being made available on Prime Video:
What fresh hell is this? How did anybody approve an edit where it looks like George's guardian angel loans him 8,000 bucks and all his problems are solved? With all the bleak, dispirited desolation of his non-existence removed, as well as his redemptive story arc now gone. The whole message of the film that makes is such a timeless classic now reduced to a mere business deal.
Daily Mail - In the original version of the movie, George tells the angel that he believes he is worth more dead than alive. The angel then tells George that he does not know all he has done in his life, before showing him a version of a grim world where he never existed.
That's when George realizes he has a wonderful life and has positively impacted his loved ones, who he is desperate to get back to as the film comes to a resolution.
But in the abridged version of the film on Prime, the moment where the angel tells George he has to earn his wings abruptly cuts to George happily running through the streets after he's reconciled with his own life - without including what led him to his newfound acceptance. …
Amazon Prime has clarified that the full version of the film still remains on their platform.
Moreover, it appears the version of the film was released following a copyright dispute regarding the scene, which was based on a short story.
Oh, so it's shortened for length. Right. Because who has the 2:10 running time to invest in a movie that generations have enjoyed for eight decades? Oh, wait. It's not that. It's a copyright dispute. Despite the fact this thing went into eminent domain sometime in the late 70s, which is why it became a staple on cable. Pfft. Nice try, Bezos. But like the Bailey Brothers Building & Loan when Mr. Potter tried his hostile takeover, nobody's buying what you're selling.
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This is some Grade-A War on Christmas stuff. Diminishing a desperate man's prayers being answered, and meaningfulness of his existence revealed to him by the benevolence of heaven, to just a bank transaction. The limited time 0.0% APR you get when you open a Home Equity line of credit. And exactly the kind of Philistine pig-ignorance we've come to expect from the sort of people with no concept of why an intellectual property like IAWL is so universally admired.
This is like showing Jaws, but jump-cutting from the crew of the Orca heading out to fight the shark, straight to Hooper and Brody swimming back to Amity. It's Lord of the Rings where the Fellowship heads out of Rivendell, only to have Frodo wake up in his bed back in Rivendell. It's the Star Wars prequels saying "Somehow Palpatine returned." Which they literally did:
… because Disney sucks now and Jar Jar Abrams is incapable of an original thought. This is what happens when people with no creativity of their own and no concept of what makes a story truly great are put in charge of respected franchises.
I'd be less outraged about this is if weren't for the fact that over the weekend my family didn't put on the 1942 Bing Crosby movie Holiday Inn, which also on Prime. I won't embed it here because Barstool doesn't need that heat. But you can watch this film in its entirety, blackface minstrel show and all. (Skip to the 2:00 mark. But brace yourself.) And since I'm all about a world free of censorship, I'm fine with this. Give us things as they were created, as they were presented in their time and place, and let us judge them through our own sensibilities. I'd rather see objectionable shit and allow people to process it however they see fit than watch some streaming company take a chainsaw to a perfect piece of art like It's a Wonderful Life. It doesn't belong to Amazon, it belongs to the world. So keep your grubby corporate hands off our timeless entertainment.