9 Deleted Movie Sub-Plots That Changed Everything

I imagine that when writing a screenplay, it's difficult to strike the right balance between 'focussing on the storyline and keeping things tight' and 'giving too little surrounding emotion or information, leaving the world feeling barren.'

You want the audience to feel that the universe you've created is real, and part of that includes acknowledging things happening outside of your primary plot-line.

Usually sub-plots help to flesh things out a bit without completely altering the main path of the film. We get to know side-characters, have an additional cause for concern and so on. A good sub-plot is a very useful tool! Done right, a secondary plot focus can change a film's tone for the better or even help drive forward the film's momentum and regulate pacing.

Not all sub-plots are good though, for a variety of reasons - and some even have the potential to derail the whole film. Whether ill-planned, poorly-executed or just weirdly unsuitable, a little ole sub-plot can become a big ole problem.

It's fun to think about what could've been had our favourite movies kept to their initial plans, and of course that includes a range of haywire subplots. For better or for worse, they would've changed absolutely everything.

Nightcrawler’s protagonist Lou is a bad person. He’s not likable, he’s not relatable and - as much as we may try - we don’t really understand why he does the things he does to the extent he does them.

It would have changed the film’s entire tone then if we were to be given some deep Lou-lore. For instance if we were shown sequences from his childhood that explained why he was like this - like that he had developed an obsession with death from a young age after his whole family was murdered in a break-in gone-wrong - we could almost understand.

The initial intention was to paint Lou as a damaged person, a ‘survivor’ archetype who was just trying to get by, day to day; his morals pushed to the wayside by harsh reality. There would be a whole sub-plot revealing Lou’s traumatic past and showing how it relates to his current self, but alas this was not to be.

Director Dan Gilroy decided it would be more effective if he went the opposite way and made Lou unimaginably cold. He said it would detract from the experience if he had to set aside time to spend on Lou’s past or to give him some sympathetic scenes and so all of that was cut from the script, and new Lou was born.