10 Deleted Sci-Fi Movie Scenes You Need To See

Legendary genre writer Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend languished in development hell for years before becoming a Will Smith-starring action horror in 2007, with the movie disappointing due to flat, unconvincing CGI monsters and a sanitized PG-13 rating which limited the impact of its intended terror.

The defanged horror flick followed lone monster hunter Smith through an abandoned New York as he avoided hordes of bloodthirsty vampires (in all but name) who only lived in darkness, eventually experimenting on one of the mindless creatures that he manages to capture.

This prompts said monster’s mate to go in search of her, eventually tracking down Smith and confronting him in shocking scene where we learn that these supposedly thoughtless savages are a thinking, feeling species terrified by Smith and his amoral slaughter of their kind.

Amongst their ranks, he’s a monster, a cold-blooded killer, and there’s a clear and uncompromising allegory for America’s war on terror in this unmasking of a faceless threat as an ultimately harmless civilian population cowering in fear from a monstrous strongman who assumes he knows best and has a right to kill with impunity.

Wait sorry, that’s the deleted original ending—in the cut we got, Smith blows himself and the monsters up with a grenade before they can communicate with him, proving that excessive force is the only measure capable of winning a war. Inspiring.