Comparison between the censored Encore Cut on the Australian 4K UHD Blu-ray from Madman Entertainment and the international version on the US Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures

- 2 cuts
- Duration: 190.4 sec (= 3:10 min)

Censorship in the Encore Cut around 40 years after its theatrical release

The Australian comedy Crocodile Dundee made Paul Hogan a star in 1986, and he reprised his role as the nature boy overwhelmed by city life in two sequels. In 2019, Come Back, Mr. Dundee took another self-deprecating look at the role of his life. In 2025, the first two parts premiered worldwide in 4K in their home country of Australia. Part 2 is uncut, as before, but Part 1 offered a surprise.

Intuitively, eager Movie-censorship.com readers may have hoped that this would finally make the longer original Australian version available again, after the film was cut by 6 minutes for international release. In pretty much all other countries, this international version has been the norm until now. But quite the opposite is true: the “Encore Cut” (available on 4K Blu-ray as an import from Australia since July 16, 2025) refers to a new version that has been censored in two scenes and is based on the international version.

Whether the scene that followed, which contained a reference to marijuana use, was also cut due to censorship is highly doubtful, given that the cocaine scene remained intact. Sue's suspicion that her ex-lover is now probably with “gay Nazis” and Dundee's questionable comment that Aborigines only live in the countryside without owning it remained untouched. This is just to clarify that not all of the controversial scenes described in the Guardian article linked above were censored. However, the Aborigine issue was indeed addressed with an additional text panel at the beginning.

Politically heated, but acceptable in view of the target audience?

As always with such changes, there has been emotional debate, especially in English-speaking countries, since the first concrete information became available. The ideal solution, especially for the home cinema market, which tends to appeal to a loyal fan base (probably also older viewers), would have been to include the uncut original version (as mentioned above, preferably the even longer Australian version with e.g. the pimp saying "fuck" instead of "screw"!) as a bonus feature, so that viewers could choose for themselves.

Such jokes were undoubtedly common in many films in the 70s and 80s and can hopefully be understood by an older audience that is not completely clueless or ignorant – even without moral finger-wagging. But the context here is at least open to critical discussion. In contrast to many other examples like this, which clearly cater to a more adult audience, Crocodile Dundee is intended as entertainment for the whole family, especially younger viewers as well. This raises the question of whether such scenes, that can be classified as trans-/homophobic and in which our clear role model is actually cheered, really fit into the overall picture of what is actually quite harmless entertainment.

In comments to Newswire, director Peter Faiman was quite critical of such interventions in older works:

Before the wild “everything was better in the old days, down with censorship!” mob starts cheering, it should be emphasized that he distances himself from any kind of provocative intent and still considers the cuts justified in order not to water down the film's essentially positive attitude:

Paul Hogan himself was even more explicit on the matter. Besides highlighting the naive idea behind these scenes, he acknowledged they are problematic and also had a clear message for the usual culture warriors, who of course immediately jumped on the bandwagon to criticize the Zeitgeist:

Running times are listed according to the following scheme
Australian 4K Blu-ray in 24fps / US Blu-ray in 23.976fps