From there, “The Godfather Coda” plays out in ways that will be familiar to fans of the 1990 version.

Everyone who really matters is at that party, which happened much later in the original cut. And then it dives into an extended sequence that mirrors the wedding from the first film, while also getting Andy Garcia’s Vincent involved more quickly. Instead of dragging its feet, “The Godfather Coda” opens with Corleone doing business to legitimize his family and reputation. Gone is the wishy-washy opening segment of the film that connects it more directly to “ The Godfather, Part II,” as this new version opens in Italy with Michael Corleone ( Al Pacino) meeting with Archbishop Gilday ( Donal Donnelly) to discuss his contribution of $600 million to the Vatican, followed immediately by the after-party. The biggest change that Coppola makes is to get right to the heart of the story, and it's a drastic improvement. Overall, this version feels even more elegiac-a true coda instead of just another part of the same story.

In this interesting endeavor, he hasn’t radically altered the bulk of the film in a way that feels designed to appease critics-his daughter’s performance hasn’t been cut, for example-and yet “The Godfather Coda” does seem different, thanks largely to how he opens and closes the film. The director has a long history of recutting his work with alternate editions of films like with “ Apocalypse Now: Final Cut” and “ The Cotton Club Encore”. The legacy of “ The Godfather, Part III” has largely been reduced to two statements: “It’s not as good as the first two” & “ Sofia Coppola isn’t good in it.” Neither of these declarations are false, but they turn what was always at least a solid film into a footnote, something director Francis Ford Coppola seeks to correct with this month’s “The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone,” a new version of the 1990 film that’s being released in theaters today and on Blu-ray and VOD on December 8 th.

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