Are you trying to decide if it’s worth it to check out the A Star Is Born extended cut? Here’s what you missed in those 12 extra minutes.

In what can best be described as one last wring of the proverbial sponge, Warner Brothers re-released an extended cut of A Star Is Born into theaters this week in a final attempt to squeeze any remaining profit out of the movie. Although, you can’t really blame them considering the film has raked in over $400 million between its domestic and foreign box office pull.

After premiering to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival in September, many thought A Star Is Born would go on to take home the Oscar for Best Picture. In Hollywood, however, things rarely go according to plan. Despite a successful box office performance, rave reviews, and several nominations, Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born won only a single Oscar — Best Original Song.

A Star Is Born ended up playing second fiddle to movies like Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody. Personally, this felt like a real missed opportunity to award a film that not only featured stellar performances and an impressive directorial debut from Bradley Cooper, but also set a new standard for what we should expect from movies of this genre.

However disappointing the Oscars may have been, A Star Is Born didn’t really need to win any Oscars; its legacy is safe without adding a few more awards into the mix.

While Warner Brothers may have hoped their encore release of A Star Is Born would be a victory lap, the extended version functions primarily as a treat for superfans. Given that the movie has already been released online for rent or purchase, it’s difficult to imagine the extended version appealing to those who haven’t seen it. Moreover, if you already saw it and didn’t like it, there’s nothing that will change your mind.

‘A Star is Born’ extended cut scenes

The extended cut of A Star Is Born includes 12 minutes of new, rather marginal, footage. These new pieces primarily work to extend the length of familiar performances or add in new ones. For example, the performances of “Black Eyes” and “Shallow” are both slightly longer and include new shots that were cut from the theatrical cut.

Additionally, Ally’s first time singing “Shallow” a capella in the grocery store parking lot is slightly longer, including the moment she sings the “Sha-ha-la-la-la-lala-low” part. Sure, it’s a small moment, but it also shows just how much of the song came directly from Ally instead of Jackson.

Aside from extending familiar songs, the extended cut of A Star Is Born also includes footage and songs that weren’t in the theatrical cut. The most important, in my opinion, is the inclusion of “Is That Alright?”

Not only is “Is That Alright?” one of the best songs to come out of the 2018 version of A Star Is Born, but its inclusion helps bring greater depth to the central romance. The extra footage is set against the backdrop of Ally and Jackson’s wedding party. Ally dedicates and performs the song for Jackson at their wedding reception in one of the most beautiful moments in the film. In a film that smartly uses songs as a textual component of the narrative, it’s a real shame that a song so integral to understanding Ally’s love for Jackson was cut from the theatrical cut.

Speaking of moments that shouldn’t have been cut from the movie, one of the most substantive additions included in the extended cut of A Star Is Born follows the performance of Shallow. In the original cut of the film, we see a short montage of Ally on the road performing with Jackson. This crescendos, a bit too quickly, with her performance of Always Remember Us This Way.

In the extended cut, the time between these two performances is almost doubled. The montage of Ally on tour with Jackson now includes a scene of them writing a song together (“Clover”) as well as several additional shots of them living and touring together set to a cover of “Midnight Special.”

This sequence feels particularly important — making it all the more frustrating that it was taken out of the final cut — because it more firmly establishes the timeline of Ally’s rise to stardom and the progress of her relationship with Jackson. Unlike the original cut that rushes through these scenes, the extended version is given a bit of room to breathe and it’s worth it.

There are several other small additions in the A Star is Born extended cut, including more time with Noodles (Dave Chapelle), Ally meeting Jackson’s therapist at rehab, the zipline scene from the trailer, Jackson rehearsing for the Grammys, and Ally choosing costumes for her world tour.

All of these moments are marginal enough to justify being cut from the final version, but they also represent what is so obvious to fans of A Star Is Born: the final theatrical cut only represents a fraction of what this movie could have been.

The extended cut of A Star Is Born proves just how much footage was left on the cutting room floor. It makes me long for the days when Hollywood made three hour epics that weren’t about superheroes. Part of what makes A Star Is Born so special is how full of life and energy it is; this is a movie busting at the seams, yet its final version is only a fraction of what could have been.

The encore of A Star Is Born doesn’t significantly alter the final product, but it does give audiences a look at what a longer, more fully realized version of the film might have looked like. A Star Is Born was always intended to be a musical epic and the extended version helps honor that intention just a little bit more.