In a recent Reddit post on r/Movies, user Freeman528491 sparked an intriguing discussion. Their post invited fellow cinephiles to share their thoughts on deleted scenes that, in their opinion, would have spelled disaster had they made it to the final cut.

From iconic blockbusters to indie gems, Redditors didn’t hold back in expressing their views, and the thread provided plenty of insights into the editing process and the anatomy of a story.

As the talks continue to unfold, it’s clear that these deleted scenes serve as a testament to the meticulous decision-making of filmmakers and the fine line between a compelling and underwhelming cinematic experience.

#1

In Groundhog’s Day the reason Phil Connors gets stuck repeating the same day over and over again was originally because his spurned ex-girlfriend did a voodoo curse on him. Thankfully they cut it out and the movie is perfect without an explanation of why it’s happening to him.

Image credits: Robobvious

#2

*The Shawshank Redemption* has a couple that were wisely left on the cutting room floor. After Andy’s escape from his cell is discovered, there was supposed to be a scene where a young prison guard is made to crawl through the hole Andy made in the wall to see where it led. It of course led to the filthy sewer pipe Andy crawled through, so the guard whines and then vomits loud enough for the whole cell block to hear, and Red thinks it’s just hilarious. It’s a funny scene, but absolutely wrong for that moment in the movie.

There is also an extended version of Red out on parole and not being able to handle life outside. In particular, Red has been in prison since the 1920s and gets out in 1967, so hippies freak him out, girls going around braless and in short skirts freak him out, and the busy pace of life outside freaks him out, so he has a panic attack in the bathroom at work. It’s all unnecessary; showing the tragic fate of Brooks Hatlen earlier got the notion of “institutionalized” across. A few lines of narration by Red to show he is going through the same thing ended up far more effective than actually showing it.

Image credits: oneAUaway

#3

The kid in Love Actually was a trained gymnast, so they filmed an alternate airport sequence where he was flipping over the obstacles instead of just running. Massively over the top.

Image credits: Locksley_1989

#4

Forrest Gump- the deleted scene where Forrest saves MLK JR from being attacked by police dogs.

Image credits: doyoulikemynewcar

#5

Titanic. When Rose throws the Heart of the Ocean overboard, there was supposed to be this weird a*s scene where the researcher tries to stop her and she gives this long winded speech before dropping it into the water. It was terrible, and would’ve damaged the movie so bad.

Image credits: AngryTrooper09

#6

Back to the Future

There’s a very strange deleted scene where Marty is nervous that he might mess up the future and turn out gay. Also, Doc makes a playful joke about how Marty can beat his mom if she doesn’t go along with their plan at the dance. For an 80s movie that holds up pretty well, I’m glad they left this stupid scene on the cutting room floor. It would’ve weighed it down.

Image credits: MovieBuff90

#7

There’s a deleted scene from the original Star Wars: A New Hope that happens right as the initial space battle is taking place. They would’ve cut to Luke on Tatooine gazing up at the distant battle and wishing he was a part of it. Then they’d have followed his home life.

It was a brilliant decision to cut this and to let the droids introduce us to Luke about 20 minutes into the movie.

Image credits: arajaraj

#8

In Home Alone, there’s a scene in the beginning where Uncle Frank pants Kevin when they’re upstairs. It’s really weird and definitely out of place.

Image credits: vcabalda

#9

Aragorn vs. Sauron in the end of Return of the King. Sauron was supposed to be this ominous evil, not just a bad guy to have a swordfight with.

Image credits: Dysthymike

#10

Thor had a massively annoying deleted scene where Thor, once he’s become a better person, returns to the cafe where he smashed the coffee cup and apologizes and replaces it. We want our heroes to grow and change, but not that much. When he smashes the coffee cup and says “Another!” that’s his most likable moment in the movie! Wisely deleted.

Image credits: SecretsOfStory

#11

Leon The Professional. There’s a very unpleasant scene that tries to make their relationship sexual. Do not watch the extended or director’s cut.

Image credits: qpgmr

#12

In Cold Mountain, they decided to cut the scene of Civil War widow Natalie Portman offing herself with a shotgun after her baby died. Thank god. It was already a depressing movie.

In Cruel Intentions, they cut out the scene where Sebastien tries to rape Kathryn after she declines to have sex with him despite him winning the bet. Very, very good call.

Image credits: methodwriter85

#13

In Ferris Burler’s Day Off, there’s a scene where Ferris explains that he pays for all his hyjinks by stealing his father’s credit cards.
Leaving that scene in would have turned the movie from “madcap teen adventure” to “further criminal sh**baggery” in my opinion.

#14

Lilo and Stitch changed a scene. Instead of hijacking a plane and flying it through a city, they had a spaceship fly through mountains. The movie came out not long after 9/11 and would have been extremely tonedeaf at best had they kept the original scene

#15

Han Solo walking over jabbas tail. Pretty much every single change made to the original trilogy. While not original footage but still so completely out of place

Image credits: kungfoojesus

#16

Haven’t seen Zootopia mentioned anywhere. It’s a really good animated film with a compelling message. However early versions of the script were about an entirely different story. Some of that story was either in animatic stage or in early previz. That movie was focused on shock collars. Basically every predator had a collar that would electrocute them if they got too excited. The protagonist of that movie was Nick and he created a theme park for predators where they could take their collar off and let their emotions go. The resulting movie was incredibly dark, as you can imagine. [Here](https://youtu.be/2DoJoNt_EGA) is one of the scenes from that movie. It really is tonally very different from what we got.

#17

In Bird Box, they cut out a scene showing the invisible monsters.
Totally the right move – no matter what you show, it could never live up to horror of the unseen threat.

Image credits: gameshot911

#18

The original cut of “First Blood” was over 3 hours long and full of cheesy dialogue. Stallone feared the movie would destroy his career. He even tried to buy the film negatives in order to burn them. He eventually told the producers to cut most of his lines. That decision turned a turd into a goldmine

Image credits: Cosmic_Surgery

#19

In Moanna they had a scene where she was getting out her frustrations after an argument with her Dad by hitting coconuts with a stick like Baseball into the sea. The Islander advisory group said that wasnt a good representaion of their culture because they would never waste food like that and coconuts are important to them for its many uses. So Disney cut it. Thats why when the ship full of crazy coconut pirates showed up, she jumped on their ship and got a smirk on her face and said, coconuts…. and held the oar up
like a baseball bat. Because she was confident she was skilled in hitting them. They kept that part in.

Image credits: AbbreviationsGlad833

#20

American Beauty originally ended with a murder trial and the neighbor boy was convicted.

Image credits: i_GoTtA_gOoD_bRaIn

#21

Pretty woman’s original ending was Richard Gere leaves and Julia Roberts turns into a junkie. They shot the fairytale ending after test audiences hated it.

Image credits: wickedevil

#22

Tony Stark meeting an older version of his daughter after the snap in endgame

Would have lessened the impact of the hologram scene that comes shortly after

Image credits: krispykesk

#23

‘Anchorman’ had so many deleted scenes and alternate subplots that a DTV ‘sequel’ called ‘Wake Up, Ron Burgundy!’ was thrown together.

An entire movie made of things that didn’t really work.

Image credits: AndyKaufmanSentMe

#24

I’m pretty happy they left the Joker interview scene out of The Batman.

Image credits: HiramUlysses

#25

Jeepers creepers. The creeper f*****g talking. Ruined the whole movie.

Image credits: Lolkimbo

#26

The scene in Almighty Bruce, where he messes with Evan Baxter (his rival) on live television.

They cut the last bit of the scene because even though Bruce acts like a major A-hole for the whole movie, here he actually set Evan’s head on fire. If you include that scene, Bruce graduates to psychopath.

#27

Everything cut from Avengers Endgame was a bullet dodged

Especially the kneeling scene, good lord

Image credits: HotHamBoy

#28

Independence Day has an alternate ending where drunk Randy Quaid flies his old crop duster into the alien ship. It’s [laughably bad] and also why in the theatrical cut his fighter jet flies so slowly at the end.

Image credits: cantonic

#29

The alternate ending of Clerks.

It’s just a downer and goes against the tone of the whole movie

For anyone who doesn’t know: Dante gets robbed, shot, and dies on the floor of the store.

#30

There’s a scene in the devil wears Prada where Miranda’s husband is causing a scene at a dinner so Andy comes over to fix the situation and as she’s walking away Miranda thanks her. Felt completely out of character and definitely wouldn’t have fit in the movie.

Image credits: jak_d_ripr

#31

They added in a song called “Human Again” to Beauty and the Beast, which was cut during it’s original production. Imo was better off without it, or it could have been 30 seconds long.

#32

The skeletons in the basement of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. It played as unsubtle, cheap-ish horror and what was left for imagination was far more terrifying.

#33

The Truman Show when *checks notes* “A scene in the original script depicts a staged rape scene witnessed by Truman, who doesn’t go to help the actress about to be violated and just moves on. When he’s gone, the actors and actress return to normal and express wonder at how he didn’t try to help, or even do anything about it.”

WOW.

#34

Donnie Darko, they cut the scene where you see the aftermath of the plane engine meeting Donnie. Completely ruins the tone and overall ending of the movie.

#35

James Cameron removed an entire sequence where that bodyguard hunts for Jack and Rose in the flooding dining hall in Titanic. It’s a well made scene, seeing the water pool over the room was really cool but it all ends in a fist fight. Cameron figured it was completely out of character for the bodyguard to suddenly hunt for the diamond in a sinking ship and so the sequence had to go.

#36

Ooooh. I’ll say Major League. The original script had Rachel Phelps, the ex-showgirl wife of Donald Phelps, revealing toward the end that she really liked the team but felt she needed to play the role as the bad guy to motivate the team. Apparently audiences HATED this twist so they kept her as the bad guy throughout the movie. Imo, this was absolutely the right call. The movie needed a consistent foe to make the whole thing work.

Edit: [here’s one of the articles on the alternate ending.](https://screenrant.com/major-league-original-ending-twist-explained/)

#37

The deleted opening of Aliens that shows the colonists kills off a lot of the tension for me. I wish there was a hybrid cut that is just the theatrical cut but with the sentry guns added back in.

#38

The only thing I hate from the extended editions of LOTR is the mountain king coming out and telling Aragorn they’ll come to the battle.

It serves no purpose other than to diminish the joy of seeing them flood out of the boats.

#39

That thing you do’s director’s cut is 39 minutes longer than the theatrical cut.

Most of that time is spent fleshing out Charlize Theron’s character’s relationship with her dentist.

I get it but it made me respect the theatrical release less.

#40

On my UHF dvd, weird Al introduces the deleted scenes, pointing out that if they were any good, they’d be in the movie.

#41

The iron giant scene with all the giants on planets killing everything. It was added in another version though.

It takes away a lot from the movie IMO by showing too much and too early. The giants memory got lost and he might have brief glimpses these memories but we shouldn’t see it.

At the end when he goes ballistic and turns into the gun is the first time we should see his ultimate power. Seeing it halfway into the movie takes away from that powerful scene and the giants character IMO

#42

Empire Strikes Back. There was a scene before the infamous kiss between Luke and Leia where they were alone and having a legitimate romantic moment where they both leaned in for a kiss, before being interrupted by the droids. Like a real kiss, not the surprise one Leia gave him in the final movie.

I think at this point George Lucas wasn’t sure if he wanted them to be brother and sister yet, but even if he decided they weren’t, it’d make the final romance between Han and Leia a bit more unbelievable because you’d know she has feelings for Luke.

#43

Die Hard 3 has an alt ending (on YouTube) where McLean plays Russian roulette against Jeremy Irons with an RPG that is pretty stupid.

#44

In Bad Santa’s unrated cut, there’s a sequence where he pretends to be a valet, steals a car, goes to the car owner’s fancy mansion and robs their safe. The sequence doesn’t fit because he’s a sloppy pathetic drunk the rest of the time, but here he’s super competent and seems totally cool and sober. It’s also not funny and stops the film dead.

#45

Shortly after Robin Williams’ passing (rest in peace), someone uploaded a couple deleted scenes from the film Mrs. Doubtfire. Both scenes, one of which takes place after the big restaurant sequence, basically focus on Daniel and Miranda arguing and causing huge turmoil for their children.

The scenes made sense, but I’m glad they were cut as I feel they would’ve totally changed the tone of the ending.

#46

Didn’t they film the ending in Clerks, where they shoot and kill Dante?

That.

#47

There’s a deleted scene in Ghostbusters where Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd played a pair of hobos. Despite fake accents, it was too obvious who they were, and test audiences wondered why Venkman and Stanz were suddenly homeless bums.

Image credits: FlashpointJ24

#48

Dotty and Jimmy kissing in A League of Their Own. It would have killed the movie.

#49

There’s an alternative ending to Boiler Room where instead of them getting raided by the FBI, a customer who they financially ruined turns up to their set up with a gun minutes before the FBI arrive. It’s one of my favourite movies but I don’t think I’d like it if they’d have stuck with that ending, there’s no real justice in that.

#50

The alternate ending for the butterfly effect where he hangs himself in the womb
Source: boredpanda.com