KombatGod

Great review.
One nitpick I have is about the remake, I know you didn’t properly cover it here, it was just a mandatory mention, but saying that you have to watch the original ending eeeeehhh… I disagree.

Sure, you may say that the original cut of the movie is better, with an ending that’s grander, darker, has a wonderful extra musical number, is more faithful to the original, and more appropriate to the morals of the story… only problem being that while you can watch the original ending you can’t watch the original cut as a whole!
DVD and Bluray editions did a great job restoring the ending, but the original movie shown to test audiences had a lot of other differences… it was a different movie! For the theatrical releases they changed various scenes, removing dark foreshadows and making Seymour more sympathetic, all leading to a different ending (which btw gets crapped on a lot but it’s not an awful ending, it works in its own way and does have a bit of a dark cliffhanger). Not only that, but the ending itself in the original version shown to test audiences was cut shorter! The restored version is uncut, meaning it weighs even more and kinda drags!
Putting the uncut original ending at the end of the theatrical cut is wrong, it doesn’t fit, you’re watching a Frankenstein-like project that is neither as originally intended nor as packaged for a more lighthearted experience.

Until the full cut is restored my suggestion is to watch the theatrical cut and then the alternate ending on its own.