And Spielberg has re-edited the movie so many damn times, I don’t even know what his preferred cut is anymore.
Well, in fairness to him, he really only re-edited it once, which is his preferred “director’s cut”.
Since the theatrical version had to be rushed into theaters to save Columbia from Bankruptcy, Spielberg didn’t have time to shoot everything and so he requested extra money the next year to finish his cut.As for the third “special edition” cut with the footage from inside the ship, Spielberg was 100% against it from the beginning, but the studio would not give him money for his cut unless he agreed to do it.
You’ve got it a little backwards. The special edition was second, and the director’s cut was third. All three have gotten proper home video releases of course, showing it’s actually not that hard to include multiple versions of a film in one set (there is however a TV cut I believe that’s basically the theatrical and SE put together that’s never gotten a true release).
I’m personally hoping it’s the director’s cut that goes in theaters as it’s sort of the best of both worlds in terms of theatrical vs. SE (though I’ve still never seen the SE - Spielberg said the Mothership’s interior wasn’t meant to be seen and that sounded about right to me).