Natural Born Killers: The Tarantino Cut

You can feel Tarantino’s raw script here, and the film does become a different thing entirely.
The pace is frenetic and it flows very well, on par with the main characters.

The main improvement for me here regarding the original film is reducing the obsession about the mass media. The message is still quite clear without being too much on the nose and over the top.

The choice of songs was peculiar but actually works fine, the music contributes to the main theme.
The removed scenes were really adding a lot of fat, which is now thoroughly trimmed.

This was very interesting. I used to have a copy of Tarantino's script for this (printed in book form), no idea whatever became of it, but I can only assume this is what the Cuddleyninja used as the basis for the pacing and cutting with whatever material he had to use.

The music replacement to match a Tarantino film worked well. In fact, for some I preferred it to the original

Everything worked fine--mostly. Where it sort of didn't work was at the end during the riots. It felt like it moved too fast during this section and then before you know it the short edit is over. I felt it also worked because I had seen the original film 8 million times at this point (a favorite of mine). My enjoyment though is because I already knew the material-- So if I were to view this without ever seeing the film prior how would it hold up? It would still work to a much lesser extent (most of the characterization is gone so you do not get too invested, you just roll with the film wondering a bit more about these individuals), but not as well as if you knew the original

Gets some nice ratings because it was well done. I gave narrative an 8 because it works, but it kind of doesn't, but it kind of does. I gave audio editing a 9, quite a few spots suffer from leveling where either the dialogue or music/effects get too loud or low. I understand dissecting channels to make something new, but people need to pay more attention to this (a few other fan edits I saw suffer from this). It wasn't too bad in this one.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation

I only recommend this edit just to see how Tarantino's script would have looked like had it been followed closely, but this film is a mess. I don't know what Oliver Stone was going for in his direction, but it did not work in my opinion. The script could possibly have worked better in the hands of Tarantino, as it has a lot of his usual tropes, but even still it felt pretty weak. The audio editing was a bit dodgy in places, and there were at least 5 spots that had glitches visually. The edit did well in matching Tarantino's feel by using his musical choices from his other films in fitting places in this one.

This version serves well as an alternate version, in no way is it a proper replacement for the original because way too much good stuff was cut. In fact this edit, as it stands, very quickly moves to the [spoiler alert!] prison ending and to the riot escape which drags on and on just like the original. Don't get me wrong; the Tarantino style and music is a great mood change for a viewing but I would've much more enjoyed an edit that trims the riot ending and other smaller issues and therefore would work as a replacement for the original.

The video quality was decent at 6.5mbps, 1080p, last-gen codec. If the edit was better I would have wanted a more preservation-worthy bitrate.

Let's all hope QT keeps on writing scripts after his 10th and (supposedly) final film!

It's been a while since I watched this but I remember it was INSTANTLY miles above the original Oliver Stone version. It's interesting how when I found out Tarantino wrote NBK I was surprised Oliver Stone made it and not QT himself. At the time Tarantino was just starting out with writing scripts so he didn't have the clout to make a movie yet-- hence why Natural Born Killers and True Romance were written by Tarantino but directed by Oliver Stone and Tony Scott respectively.

But I digress. Seeing Natural Born Killers: The Tarantino Cut was like a breath of fresh air. Whereas the Oliver Stone theatrical version was enjoyable but not much of a repeat viewing movie (read: too insane to put on again), this visual and music re-edit gives it that Tarantino funktacular style that is more stimulating to the senses, engaging, and all out fun.

Furthermore, let me just personally thank thecuddlyninja for ditching the sitcom scenes, the bizarre Indian, the wedding scene, the cartoony and demonic stuff, and all that other stupid Oliver Stone over-the-top crap that made the movie seem like it was trying a bit too hard to be insane. We get it, Oliver, it was the 90s and you were still on A LOT of drugs, but jeez. And don't get me wrong, I LOVE a bunch Oliver Stone movies like Platoon, Wall Street, JFK, and Nixon. But NBK was meant to be a Quentin Tarantino movie. Thanks to thecuddlyninja it now is!