People Share 30 Times Filmmakers Absolutely Nailed The Decision To Delete A Scene From Their Movie

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

*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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.