![]() As a result, Duvall's Tom Hagen, an important member of the family and the film franchise, was replaced by a new character, a lawyer named B.J. Franchise player Robert Duvall wanted more money to return, and Coppola and company made the boneheaded mistake of not giving him what he wanted. But Sofia Coppola isn't the only bit of miscasting on display in the film. Never one to shy away from using his family members – sister Talia Shire appeared in all three Godfather films, and here she has her biggest role in the franchise yet, serving as Michael's unofficial consigliere – Coppola cast daughter Sofia in the part. But Ryder ended up dropping out of the pic due to nervous exhaustion at the last minute, leaving director Coppola in a bit of a bind. Winona Ryder was originally cast, and it's hard not to imagine some alternate universe where we got that version of The Godfather Part III. To be fair, she was never meant to play the part. Even critics who liked the film couldn't overlook her stiff, wooden performance and her weirdly monotone line delivery that torpedos any sense of emotion or pathos. Sofia Coppola eventually bounced back as an acclaimed filmmaker, but at the time, her work in Godfather III was savaged. Much has been said over the years about the performance (or lack thereof) of Coppola's daughter Sofia Coppola, here playing Michael's daughter Mary. And while that may make for a (slightly) brisker experience, it can't fix all the problems that are irreconcilably baked into the film's DNA. Cuts that indeed make the lengthy film and its sprawling narratives a bit more concise – it's eleven minutes shorter than the theatrical cut. Instead, the filmmaker has made little cuts here and there. Those expecting something drastic, like Coppola's Apocalypse Now: Redux, are going to be disappointed. If you've seen The Godfather Part III, you've essentially seen The Godfather, Coda. He wants to set things right – because death is right around the corner, and who can ever know the true heat of the fires that await the damned? Now, in this third entry, he wants to make amends. By The Godfather Part II, he had become a cold, calculating killer. When we first met him in The Godfather, he was a fresh-faced war hero who was never supposed to be part of the family business. And it's melodramatic, and it's melancholy, and it's bleak. It's operatic – and Coppola isn't afraid to hammer us over the head with that fact, setting a big climactic moment during an actual opera. As Michael tells us, "Just when I thought I was out.they pull me back in." And just when he thought he was finally going to atone for his sins, violence will come back to strike down that which he loves. ![]() "I killed my father's son." Maybe, just maybe, he can use his ill-gotten gains to buy his way into heaven. And so the stage is set for what's to come: Michael will spend almost the entire runtime of The Godfather, Coda chasing redemption and trying to leave his life of crime behind. "I killed my mother's son," he weeps in confession at one point. ![]() Michael has been responsible for the deaths of many people, but it's the murder of his older brother Fredo that hangs over his head like a rain cloud about to burst. Rather, he longs to be seen as a legitimate businessman, not just another greasy hoodlum. And Michael is more than happy to intervene – not because he's a particularly faithful man. The bank has racked up a huge deficit and they want this distinguished mobster to bail them out. Here, the filmmaker nixes that, jumping instead to a scene where aging Corleone Family Godfather Michael ( Al Pacino) meets with the head of the Vatican Bank. It was Coppola signaling the death and decay that lurks in every shadowy corner of the film. The theatrical cut opened with a haunting look at the abandoned, rotting, ghostly Corleone compound at Lake Tahoe. As far as big changes go, Coppola has tweaked the beginning and end and then trimmed down some scenes. But is this new version really all that different? This is what he and Godfather creator Mario Puzo wanted audiences to experience – not the third entry in a trilogy, but rather an epilogue to what came before. Now, in the spirit of his multiple cuts of Apocalypse Now and the more recent Cotton Club Encore, Coppola has gone back and reworked the film into the awkwardly-titled The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |