10 Alternate Scenes That Completely Change Famous Movies
2. Sauron Fights - Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King
Despite being the main villain of the trilogy, Sauron doesn't really have that big of an impact on the plot of the Lord of the Rings films. To be fair though, he is a giant eye trapped at the top of a tower so it's not like he can just come down and have a swordfight with someone.
Except, in a deleted scene from Return of the King, that's exactly what he did.
The scene took place in the film's finale. Like in the final film, Aragorn assembles his army after successfully defending Gondor and marches on the Black Gate of Mordor. However, instead of just an army of orcs, Sauron himself appears to fight them in a flash of white light and engages Aragorn in a sword duel.
In probably the world's only case of a scene getting cut for being too epic, Peter Jackson decided to change the scene because it drew too much attention away from Frodo throwing the ring into Mount Doom. The fight was still kept in, but Sauron was edited out and replaced with a CGI troll.
It also avoided answering the question of why Sauron didn't just take care of all this ring business himself two and a bit movies ago.