10 Deleted Scenes That Would Have Ruined Their Movies

Sometimes a scene is deleted for a very, very good reason...

After most film shooting schedules are wrapped up on the final call of "Cut!" the filmmakers often find themselves with tens of thousands of feet of film (or, in this day and age, countless terabytes of digital data) which they have to take into the editing room to cut down to a managable length. With many first rough cuts weighing in at around the four hour mark, it's inevitable that plenty more footage is going to wind up on the cutting room floor. Sometimes it is a trim here or there to a scene which is ultimately retained, at other times entire performances can be omitted from the final cut we get to see in the cinema (Terrence Malick is one director notorious for removing stars completely from his films). With studios unwilling to release overly long movies, this is the price the filmmaker has to pay if they want to work within the system. For the most part these cuts are minor elements that the film can survive without. Sometimes, however, a movie positively benefits from their exclusion - watching some deleted scenes you can't help but wonder how they got filmed in the first place, so out of place with the rest of the film they seem to be. Here are ten deleted scenes for which we should all be completely thankful were left on the cutting room floor - had the filmmakers decided to leave them in, they may well have completely ruined the film.
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Contributor

Andrew Dilks hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.