That’s not a knife: iconic Australian film Crocodile Dundee gets recut
3 February 2025
The knife, the editing room knife, has recently been taken to ocker Australian film Crocodile Dundee.
Producers deemed the slapstick comedy — that swept the once Sydney Harbour Bridge rigger, and television personalty Paul Hogan, to big screen fame in 1986 — to be out of touch with the expectations of contemporary movie audiences. This necessitated a number of “considered edits”, says Garry Maddox, writing for The Sydney Morning Herald:
Updating classic films can sometimes upset fans — there was a ruckus when George Lucas had Han Solo defending himself from bounty hunter Greedo rather than firing the first shot in a 1997 special edition of Star Wars — but the long tradition of creating new versions includes Francis Ford Coppola with both Apocalypse Now and The Godfather Part III and Ridley Scott with Blade Runner.
Scenes from the film — set between the Australian outback and New York City — where Mick Dundee, AKA Crocodile Dundee, gropes a cross-dresser in a bar, and later a woman at a party, have been removed, while others have been extended. The re-edited version of the film is to be called Crocodile Dundee: The Encore Cut, and will henceforth become the standard edition of the story.
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