10 Deleted Scenes That Made Movies Way Darker

Perhaps the most underappreciated aspect of making a movie is editing, which is generally responsible for clarifying the story, sharpening character dynamics, conveying tone, and so on.

As such, even the most assured filmmakers typically end up leaving scenes on the cutting room floor, after discovering in post-production that, for one reason or another, they don't quite work.

The reasons for this can be myriad, of course, and while pacing issues are perhaps the most-cited rationale, often scenes will get cleaved away because they're just too damn dark.

These 10 movie scenes all ended up being removed from the final cut because they upended the overall mood of the film in a major way, altering the audience's perception of the plot or specific characters, and would've certainly had an impact on how it was received overall.

Though many of these scenes are actually fantastic in their own right, it's easy to appreciate why the directors made the tough decisions to kill their darlings in order to allow the movie overall to play smoother with general audiences.

Thankfully for the most part, the scenes in question were made available on home video releases for fans to pore over forever more...

Despite the inherently disturbing nature of its premise, The Truman Show is a perfectly calibrated movie from a tonal perspective, offering up just enough levity to combat the horrors of a man's entire life being controlled by a corporation that was able to legally adopt him.

The balance might've been tipped a little too far in the way of grimness, though, had this deleted scene made the final cut.

The scene involves Truman Show creator Christof (Ed Harris) meeting with the show's principal cast members, where he explains that actress Hannah (Laura Linney), who plays Truman's (Jim Carrey) wife Meryl, has opted to leave the show.

However, Christof then announces that TV's first on-air conception will still take place, with a new actress, Claudia (Heidi Schanz), being brought in to play a new love interest for Truman, Vivien.

Christof's plan is to have Vivien seduce Truman away from Meryl, with the subsequent liaison leading to the "next generation" of the Truman Show, as the network switches to a two-channel format to document the life of Truman's son alongside his own.

The ethical implications of the scene are of course completely horrifying, that Christof wanted to expand the enterprise beyond Truman, while a woman was willing give birth to a child only for them to immediately become a TV network's property.

The scene also further elucidates the motivations of Truman's "friend" Marlon (Noah Emmerich), who seems genuinely disturbed by the revelation and asks, "So when Truman dies, we go back to a single-channel format, right?"

The scene ends with Christof dodging the question, perhaps implying that his ideal plan was for the two-channel expansion to be a permanent fixture for Truman's entire family line. Terrifying.

It's an excellent scene, but one can also understand why it was cut.