12 More Deleted Scenes That Explain Confusing Movie Moments

12. Where Did Nero Go For 25 Years? - Star Trek (2009)

The Confusing Moment:

In JJ Abrams' Star Trek reboot, the timeline is irreparably f*cked with when Eric Bana's furious Romulan cleverly manages to accidentally appear right next to the ship on which James T Kirk was born (and his father died). Then, after that initial, devastating skirmish, the villain promptly disappears for 25 years, waiting for Kirk to grow up into a douchebag, presumably.

The way the film paints it, Nero simply waited around, kicking his heels for two and a half decades.

The Deleted Scene:

Except he didn't do that. He was captured by Klingons and imprisoned on Rura Penthe, where he adopted a mysterious image, kept his past quiet (literally, as he had taken a vow of silence after Romulus was destroyed) and injured his ear.

He only escaped (and destroyed lots of Warbirds in the process) when the Klingons worked out what he was planning for Spock and threatened to interrogate him with a Centaurian slug. It was this escape that was the centre of the transmission Uhura heard regarding an attack on a Klingon prison planet, which stayed in the film.