8 Movies Where The US Version DELETED The Best Scenes
For numerous reasons, these movies were changed for the worse over in the US.
It's not uncommon to hear of an American movie being altered slightly to make it a bit more commercially friendly for international audiences. From American flags being switched out for globes in Toy Story 2, to Taco Bell being swapped out for Pizza Hut in Demolition Man, international audiences have often been treated to a slightly different version of the feature that initially arrives on American cinema screens.
But that isn't always the case. In fact, sometimes it's those watching within the U.S. of A who find themselves experiencing a feature that has been majorly reshaped in comparison to what was released elsewhere. And this chopping and changing can even lead to arguably the movie in question's best moment being left out completely.
Thankfully, we do now live in an age where it's never been easier to get hold of an alternate cut of a feature should the version we witness in our home country differ to another. Yet, that still doesn't change the fact that either due to negative test audience responses or studios meddling with a finished creation, these films lost some of their best scenes by the time they were shown in the U.S.
8. Highlander - Connor And Rachel's Origin Story
No one is going to sit here and argue that Highlander is a film that boasts some of the finest acting performances ever committed to the big screen. But the feature generally comes with a boatload of charm, a trait that ultimately ensured its cult hit status.
What you may not be aware of, however, is the fact that this Sean Connery and Christopher Lambert-starring epic actually had two very different cuts dished out upon its 1986 release. The U.S. version of the film had a whole eight minutes trimmed from the runtime, with a lot of what was seen as "European comedy" cut. Yet, one cut director Russel Mulcahy simply couldn't understand was the decision to delete one of the film's most engaging moments.
Those watching in the U.S. version were deprived of the scene depicting the first meet between Connor MacLeod and Rachel Ellenstein, a scene which saw the immortal man save his eventual-adopted daughter from a Nazi solider in WWII.
Sure, the line "it's a king of magic" is something else, but the scene definitely helps inform the pair's relationship and who doesn't like watching Nazis get gunned down by immortal Scots?