June 17, 2020 – The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974) both won Best Picture Oscars and are considered great films. The Godfather Part III (1990) won no Oscars, and is considered the weakest of the trilogy. On both IMDb (general public) and Rotten Tomatoes (critics), GF3 has much lower ratings than GF1 and GF2.
I hadn’t watched GF3 in a long time, but remembered I hadn’t like it very much. Watching it again, I quickly noticed its flaws.
Though GF1 and GF2 were powerfully subtle movies, 16 years later, Francis Ford Coppola’s direction of GF3 is more heavy-handed. For the most part, his mojo is gone. He telegraphs things. For example, a hitman reveals a small gun hidden in a nut box. Why do we need to see that? We can figure out what’s going on. Coppola also repeats things. We’re reminded half-a-dozen times that Michael killed Fredo. Once or twice would have been enough.
While the first two films were tough and gritty, GF3 suffers from too much melodrama. Neil Smith of BBC.com said: “Anyone with memories of The Godfather and its 1974 sequel will shudder at how Coppola reduces their powerful iconography to the level of a daytime soap.” For example, the scene of Michael’s diabetic stroke is way over-the-top. It’s as if Pacino were acting in a theater, trying to reach people in the farthest seats. To make the scene more cringey, it then goes on too long. (See comparison video below.)
Another chief criticism of GF3 is Sofia Coppola’s portrayal of Mary Corleone. To her credit, she was put in some poorly dialogued, unlean scenes. Yet I still question the director’s decision to cast his own daughter in such a pivotal role. And I wonder what the film would have been like with Wynona Ryder as Mary, who was originally cast but bowed out at the last minute for health reasons.
While working on this fan edit, something became very clear: no fan edit can fully fix this movie, nor give it the tone of its predecessors. GF3’s problems are too vast, and its tone is too different. So this fan edit is an attempt to make GF3 less flawed. The fan edit has 39 minutes less melodrama, redundancies, telegraphing, and Mary’s presence. I do think the fan edit is an improvement. But, again, this film is a different animal from GF1 and GF2.
Original Running Time: 2:50
Fan Edit Running Time: 2:11
For fan edit, click here.