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Kudos to Universal for releasing it with an R-rating, yet it was still cut upon its theatrical release. Although minor scenes of violence were removed, it was mostly story and character details that went out, scenes that Johnston wanted left in. The reason came down to reactions from screen tests, and that it took too long till Lawrence’s first transformation. Talking to Shock Till You Drop, Johnston said, “When audiences say, "Hey, it’s slow for the first 15 minutes," you have to listen to them.” In the Theatrical Version, it’s about 45 minutes till Lawrence first gets hairy. It takes about an hour to reach that point in the Extended Cut.

These days, Extended Cuts often feel like a ploy to get consumers to fork over extra cash on the DVD/Blu-Ray so that they can view worthless scenes that fail to really add anything; scenes that have often been rightfully omitted in the first place. In the case of The Wolfman, the Extended Cut is actually a better cut. It’s probably not enough to warrant an extra star, but certainly an improvement. It just makes me believe that Universal should have released the film as it was, without any tampering. It might have helped with the reviews at the time, since it is a better version.

According to Johnston talking to Time Out, “[Romanek] made a lot of the correct choices. He had set the ship off in a good direction. But I wanted to put my stamp on the film.” To some degree, this might explain the rewrites and reshoots, but also indicates that some of Romanek’s input did indeed make it into the film. Still, it’s anyone’s guess as to what his take would have been had he stayed.

I didn’t think The Wolfman was all that bad. But with Johnston brought in at the last minute, he tried to cut costs by removing scenes, which only resulted in a film that didn’t work. Reshoots ended up making the film longer, and in trying to appease audiences (and possibly the studio) it then had to be trimmed down so that it got to the action quicker. What was released theatrically was quite an unfortunate mess, something critics and audiences highlighted. Johnston at least had a chance to put it all together on DVD/Blu-ray, but the film had unfortunately already been tarnished at this point.

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