The above is the name of Francis Ford Coppola's 2020 re-edit of The Godfather Part III. After slowly making my way through The Godfather I & II (again) these past few months (and I am among the vast majority who thinks they are great), I finally got around to this final installment last night. After having seen the original Part III at least a couple of times, the question becomes, was this re-edit an improvement?

First, I will confess that I've never been a "hater" of the much-maligned Part III. While it's true that it's no where near the greatness of Part I (rated a 10 by me) and Part II (rated 9), I've given this version of III a 6, the same as I did the original Part III. This third installment, while certainly clunky, is nowhere near terrible, and does have its good moments. And compared to all the bad acting out there, I do think the criticism of Coppola's daughter Sofia's acting in this is more than a little unfair. For an inexperienced actor at the time, she did okay.

So, considering that I gave both the original Part III and this version, Coda, a 6, the short answer to is the newer version better is, in my opinion, "No". Rather, it is about the same. You're probably no better or worse off watching it, if you've already seen the original cut of Part III:

The goofs/bloopers from the original version have not been fixed. The 1979 timeline is still incorrect-- Pope John Paul I-- who according to this movie was influenced by the Mafia --in real life died in 1978. In the movie, there are multiple screenshots of "contemporary" newspapers (one of them the New York Times) with the 1979 date when talking about 1978 events, and even a byline with the date 1990 (!!!)-- and that last one WAS NOT a skip-ahead to when Michael was old and dying in Sicily!

The opening sequences of the film have been shortened, and, sadly, the flashback scene(s) featuring the late John Cazale have been removed. It does appear that a few other flashback scenes from the first Godfather have been added.

Also, in the original Part III, there was a brief scene with Mary (Sofia Coppola) frolicking around with her lover Vincent (played by Andy Garcia) in his bedroom while they were in Italy with Michael (both of them clothed, with some intense kissing); this scene has been cut from "Coda". Which I can understand, as it always seemed weird to me that Sofia's father (!) would direct such a scene. In fact the love affair between Mary and Vincent is in general toned-down, with much screen time relating to this plot point cut from the film altogether.

The few added scenes in "Coda" do not match these various deletions, so that the total runtime for Coda is substantially shorter than the original Part III: 157 minutes versus 170 minutes, respectively.

The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone--

Not much different than the original Part III, the story is essentially unchanged. Not nearly as good as the first two Parts, but not nearly as bad as some make it out to be, either.