9 Legendary Deleted Film Scenes (You'll Never Get To See)
Playing in the Bonus Features of your imagination.
There's a perceived piece of wisdom that a film gets made three times. The first time is when the script is written, the next is during filming where it evolves and changes and the final, most crucial stage, is editing.
Here is where it sinks or swims. A scene that fell flat while filming can suddenly come to life with some creative edits, or a subplot that felt unnecessary can become essential. It's also at this point that scenes will get trimmed or removed completely, regardless of quality. It could be a great scene on its own, but in the final product it just slows the story down. Maybe the scene repeats information gained elsewhere, or maybe the acting sucks. Whatever the reason, this happens on every film.
But deleted scenes always hold a strange kind of appeal. They can provide a fascinating glimpse into an earlier version of the film, revealing dropped characters or storylines. In the time before the internet, film fans used to scour magazines or trailers for glimpses of key scenes that were later removed. Then DVD special editions came along and the floodgates opened. Be it Harrison Fords cameo in E.T., the "Cocooned Burke" scene from Aliens or the fabled Richard Donner version of Superman II, it was a good time to be a nerd.
But often the anticipation of seeing these lost moments just leads to disappointment, as is the case with the quite poor Alien's scene. It was cut with good reason. But even letdowns like that do little to dampen the appetite for lost footage, and the scenes featured on this list rate amongst the most sought after. Which is a shame, as the odds of them seeing the light of day are bleak. Here are nine of the most legendary - and rarely seen - deleted scenes from classic movies.