Everybody knows movie studios exist only to make a profit. Unfortunately, directorial creativity is often times not in line with what a studio sees as a big money maker and since studios, more often than not, have say in the final cut of the movie, a lot of ingenuity gets scrapped in favor of playing it safe. Fortunately for us we live in an era where home video formats are prominent enough to enable more than one release of a movie. Granted, most of the unrated or director’s cuts released are quick money grabs adding in only a few extra scenes most of which don’t help the movie or make it differ much from the original release. But once in a while a director’s cut is released that was given proper time and attention, falls more in line with what the director had originally intended and warrants a second chance.
Daredevil
With misguided direction, an inane script and the bloated inclusion of Elektra the theatrical release of ‘Daredevil’ was lackluster at best. Fortunately for us, a lot of these faults were rectified with the director’s cut which tacks on another 30 minutes onto the running time.
The first thing to notice is this cut’s loyalty to Frank Miller’s comic. The origin story is much more fleshed out and a better sense of the relationship between Matt and his father is shown. We also see a lot of little back stories that were glossed over in the original cut. The struggles Matt has in dealing with his Catholic upbringing along with a clearer depiction of his abilities and the psychological toils that come with having super-senses.
The fighting, especially at the end with Bulls-Eye and Kingpin is a lot bloodier and more intense, which fits in with the overall mood of the cut which in turn has been bumped up to an R-rating. Elektra wasn’t a terrible character, but her inclusion did detract from Daredevil’s story in the original and has been stripped down for this cut. This allows the story to be more dark origin and less romantic action.
Troy
At 2 hours and 45 minutes the original cut of ‘Troy’ dragged on far longer than it needed to. The director’s cut adds 30 minutes of footage, standing at 3 hours and 15 minutes,and ends up feeling shorter than its lighter counterpart. The director’s cut, which Warner Home Video reportedly invested more than $1 million into, contains “over 1,000 cuts” in it.
Among one of the many improvements in the new cut is the violence. Rather than nicks and cuts we get gashes and decapitations. Babies are thrown from ledges and women are raped in the street. None of which is superfluous but justified as a result of the brutality of war. The love scenes are more fully fleshed out, literally, but is done out of the need to deepen relationships which as a whole throughout the movie are much more developed than in the original. Even the musical score, which initially sounded generic and cartoonish gets completely revamped with a new mix that is more emotional and better suited to fit the undertones of the movie. One of the best additions to director’s cut however is the extended sacking of Troy sequence, which felt glossed over in the original cut.
No matter how much recutting and reediting you do it’s still hard to change certain things; among them is the script. The film still has trouble standing up to Homer’s original tale, but this director’s cut does a much better job of communicating this dramatic tale than the theatrical release ever did.
Alien 3
While this “assembly cut” of ‘Alien 3′ isn’t exactly a director’s cut, it’s the closest thing we’re going to get. 
Due to the insurmountable amount of annoyance and frustration David Fincher had to overcome in dealing with 20th Century Fox it comes as no surprise that he refused to create a director’s cut for the Alien Quadrilogy box set released in 2003. What we are left with is an early cut made for test screenings in late 1992.
Nearly 3/4 of the scenes in the assembly cut contain footage not found in the theatrical release. One of the key differences between the cuts is the use of an ox rather than a dog as the alien host. From there we get a variety of new shots such as Clemens discovering the EEV that Ripley landed in on the beach, the discovery of a dead facehugger which is visually different from those previously seen and the innmates preparing to fight the alien. A lot of plot holes are filled in such as the innmates successfully capturing the alien only to have the psychotic alien worshipping Golic set it free again.
Like ‘Troy’ the film unfortunately still suffers from script troubles, however this assembly cut has allowed Alien 3 to rise from the shame of the Alien series to a worthy addition.
Kingdom of Heaven
Apparently 20th Century Fox doesn’t have much faith in the directors they hire as this is the third movie on this list they’ve meddled with. Ridley Scott’s epic examination of religious conflict originally ran 3 hours and 15 minutes. 
The studio execs at Fox balked at this run time claiming that “modern” audiences wouldn’t want to watch a movie over 3 hours and ordered Scott to reduce the run time to 2 hours and 25 minutes. Which in turn ended up neutering any sort of character development and left us with what could be best called a misplaced action movie. Fortunately Fox Home Entertainment decided to release the director’s cut of the movie as Scott originally envisioned it.
The overall intelligence of the film is increased with additions to the film including, but not limited to, the revelation that the tormenting priest who Balian kills at the beginning is actually his half-brother, Balian’s combat experience is explained in more detail, and there’s much more blood, gore and violence to go along with the historical accuracy of the battles. And while all the characters are fleshed out more fully it is Eva Green’s Sybilla who benefits the most from this cut with having her character’s role increased significantly.
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