The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone

Optional like the film it re-edits, but if you watch Part III at all, watch this one. It is not a director's cut in the usual sense of a longer version with restored scenes. It is shorter, and the changes are at the two ends.

The opening is the significant one. Part III began with the Corleone estate in decay and a long party sequence echoing the first film. Coda opens instead on Michael negotiating with the Archbishop over the Vatican's bank, so the first thing you see is the deal that the rest of the film is about. The retitling comes with it: Coppola has said he and Mario Puzo wanted The Death of Michael Corleone in 1990 and the studio refused, on the grounds that Part III sold more tickets.

The ending is the other change, and describing it spoils the thing people watch this version for, so take it at this: the 1990 cut adds a coda after the opera that states its point plainly, and the 2020 version stops earlier and lets the image do it. The later ending is better, and it changes the film from a tragedy about a man dying alone into something flatter and colder about what he had already lost.

Roughly nine minutes shorter overall, with trims throughout and a reordered early stretch. None of it fixes the central performance problem, and anyone who disliked the 1990 film for that reason will dislike this one. For everyone else it turns a sprawling disappointment into a tight, sad, minor film, which is what it always should have been.