 The film's reputation was on the ascendancy long before Peckinpah's preferred cut of the preview version was finally shown at the University of Southern California in 1986, and its critical stature has continued to increase since—Martin Scorsese, e.g., called it a "masterpiece".Despite the liberties it took with history, scholar and film editor Paul Seydor described "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" as among the finest treatments of the legend in any medium.The psychoanalyst Alfred Adler wrote an analysis in 1951 of the mythic aspects of the legend of Billy the Kid in which he compared the Kid to Oedipus, King Arthur, Robin Hood, and other legendary heroes of the past.