Original Editor's Cut was over 3 hours
Surprised nobody has mentioned this on these boards. More than half the original movie was left on the cutting room floor. How often has that happened for a feature film?
The original editor's cut of the film was over 3 hours and 15 minutes. The original script had a B storyline with a young couple played by Landon Liboiron and Siobhan Williams. Their relationship paralleled that of John Henry Clayton and his lost love Mary Alice Watson. Liboiron played a young gunslinger who ran with the bad guys and glorified the life of a gunslinger, when the protagonist was doing the opposite. The producers decided to just reduce the film to all the scenes that involved the father-son relationship and started adding back all the other scenes that supported that relationship, and left everything else on the floor. An opening action scene that showed John Henry and the gunfight that changed his life was also cut: the only shots that remained are the three haunting images that open the film.