10 Strange Changes Test Audiences Forced Movies To Make

8. Stanley Tucci's Death Isn't Violent Enough - The Lovely Bones

Palm Springs
Paramount Pictures

You've likely heard of countless occasions when a test audiences' reaction to a character's death has been met with an overwhelmingly negative response. However, this is usually due to the fact those in attendance would rather see said deceased personality live to fight another day.

Yet, that most definitely was not the case when it came to the demise of Stanley Tucci's George Harvey in Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones. Quite the opposite, in fact.

When it came time to screen the original cut of the film to folks in early screenings, Jackson was "shocked and surprised" by the amount of complaints he received when it came to the villain's conclusion. Audiences had grown to despise the character who rapes and murders a 14-year-old girl so much that they wanted to see him suffer much more during his death scene.

So, unable to re-shoot the sequence, Jackson had to digitally tinker with the moment Tucci's Harvey falls off a cliff, making it so his body slammed against the cliff face, bones broke on trees, and skull cracked on a rock, whilst still keeping the violence within the PG-13 parameters that Jackson wanted for the film eventually released.

In this post: 
Palm Springs
 
First Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Lifts rubber and metal. Watches people flip in spandex and pretends to be other individuals from time to time...