Synopsis:

The infamous flop shortened by half an hour, distracting side-plots removed from the film to hopefully make it feel a little more buoyant.

Intentions:

Producer Lord Lew Grade’s attempt to start a franchise based off the techno-pulp thriller novels by Clive Cussler (featuring his character Dirk Pitt) was a dismal failure, he later noted “It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic.” For all its flaws though, I think it has some good performances (with the incomparable Alec Guinness appearing for a few minutes), decent effects work and great music by John Barry, so was convinced on first viewing that a somewhat more watchable film lay hidden within. The aim of this edit is pretty much to simplify the story as much as possible in order to try keep the pace up and the viewers interested, taking away almost everything not directly connected to the salvage operation. Most significantly, these are a Soviet espionage plot that goes nowhere interesting and Pitt’s ex who is now seeing his project partner, I later found that Roger Ebert had the same sentiments, in his words the main issues are “The Girl and The Russians”.

Change List:

v1 – as originally released: • Added personal plate and FanEdit disclaimer • Removed introductory photo montage of the real-life Titanic, best to withhold any sight of the ship until we see the model Alec Guinness’ character shows and wanted to reduce the number of times (from 4 to 3 by my count) the main theme is used • Cut all scenes with (and any references to) the Russians (barring the one in Siberia) and their spy in the operation • Cut scenes with reporters barring the press conference • Completely removed Pitt’s ex • Removed Pitt’s “Well, we’ll see” just before Sandecker comes to announce the operation going ahead • Cut scene of Pitt and Seagram meeting Burke and Walker in the submersible hanger, cut straight from Sandecker’s “We’re in business” to Pitt giving the briefing • Cut equipment being prepared at ocean surface after the two establishing shots of ships that followed the Cornwall scenes • Cut scenes of submersibles surfacing before Pitt’s helicopter comes in • Trimmed TV news announcement, the public no longer has any idea about the Sicilian Project or byzanium • Compressed dropping of lights and hydrazine tanks into a single montage, the latter overlaid at reduced opacity over the former • Removed Sandecker’s unnecessary elaboration on why he is relieved about the outcome of the operation • Cut short Sandecker walking away, went on a bit long for my liking v2 - addresses a couple of points that I felt could be improved on: • Removed a short, awkward, exchange during the pub scene that I previously didn’t know how to cut (would have led to another character teleporting between shots), realised that Bigalow’s dialogue from a different section could be pasted over video of him saying what I wanted to get rid of with quite close matching of the mouth movements • Redid the montage of lights and hydrazine tanks being dropped, footage is no longer overlaid apart from when in original.

Additional Notes:

• Boosted saturation throughout to compensate for washed out blu-ray image, boosted contrast a little too for much of the runtime o v2 – remade almost exactly but with more thorough colour grading to try and better address awful-looking blu-ray image • Exported 1920x818 H265 with 5.1 audio, total runtime of 84 minutes with 2.43 Gb file size.

Other Sources:

Special Thanks:

Many thanks to Dwight Fry and Cero for previewing this edit, their input is much appreciated, also to Blueyoda for additional help and words of encouragement as well as Blackhawk for creating English subtitles for the v1 edit completely unsolicited.