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surfdawg5/youtube1 of 10
Moviemaking is a collaborative process, and sometimes the director of a film doesn't have final say in what goes on the screen and what ends up on the cutting room floor. The advent of high-storage home video formats has seen these deleted scenes restored with increasing frequency, for better or for worse. In this feature, we'll trawl through film history to discover the most important deleted scenes of all time.
Star Wars - Luke And Biggs
The first Star Wars movie changed the face of sci-fi forever, but it could have been a very different story. George Lucas originally wanted to introduce Luke Skywalker at the film's beginning, watching the space battle that opens the movie through a pair of high-powered binoculars. He then had a conversation with Biggs (next seen as an X-wing pilot) about the struggle against the Empire. Lucas cut it because he wanted the first act of the film to be about C-3PO and R2-D2's quest to find Obi-Wan Kenobi and he thought putting Luke in so early would confuse matters.
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Columbia Pictures2 of 10
Dr. Strangelove - Pie Fight
Stanley Kubrick's anti-war masterpiece Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb memorably ends on the total mutual thermonuclear destruction of the Earth. But that wasn't how the iconoclastic director originally wrapped up the comedy - instead, he ended it in classic slapstick fashion with a pie fight. Unfortunately, the flick was set to hit theaters right after the Kennedy assassination, and the line "Our gallant young President has been struck down in his prime," even referring to a pie, was a little much. This footage is lost to history and may never be seen, but set photographs exist.
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Paperinik/youtube3 of 10
Aliens - Ripley Wakes Up From Hypersleep
James Cameron's Aliens is basically a flawless sci-fi action movie, but there's one thing that stands out. When Ellen Ripley wakes up from hypersleep to realize that she's been in suspended animation for 57 years and her daughter is dead, she sort of shrugs it off and goes on to murder a bunch of acid-dripping xenomorph scum. Oddly enough, a minute or so of the flick was cut that actually gives her the appropriate emotional response, but for some reason they decided to leave it out - presumably to make her seem like more of a badass.
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INDYJONESdotIT/youtube4 of 10
Raiders Of The Lost Ark - Swordsman Fight
One of the most iconic moments in the first Raiders Of The Lost Ark movie comes when Indiana Jones is confronted by a hulking Arab swordsman who swings a scimitar around like it weighs less than a feather. Instead of engaging him mano a mano, Indy just pulls his pistol and shoots him dead. That was actually improvised by Harrison Ford on-set and fit the character so well director Steven Spielberg kept it in. But the original scene - a whip-on-sword fight - was actually filmed and recently saw the light of day. It's funny to imagine what could have been.
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WorleyClarence/youtube5 of 10
Natural Born Killers - Denis Leary
Quentin Tarantino's screenplay for Natural Born Killers was virtually unfilmable, but Oliver Stone gave it his best shot. Tons of material was put on film that never made it into the final cut, but one of the most notable features Denis Leary as a prison inmate who delivers an insane rapid-fire monologue about American culture. It's kind of puzzling as to why this got cut, because it sums up the film's attitude towards this sick country perfectly and is hilarious to boot.
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Warner Bros6 of 10
The Goonies - The Octopus Was Really Scary
So if you've watched The Goonies recently, you might have noticed something: at the end of the flick, when the gang is talking to the reporters, Data says "The octopus was really scary!" But in their quest to retrieve One-Eyed Willy's treasure, the Goonies didn't actually encounter any octopuses... or did they? A scene was actually filmed in the movie's third act where a giant cephalopod bubbles up from the deep and attacks. It was probably either cut because it seems incongruous to the rest of the film's tone or because the effects were pretty awful.
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Michael Venzor/youtube7 of 10
Almost Famous - All Of Stairway To Heaven
Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical story of a teenage rock journalist is all about the magical power of popular music, but how to communicate that power? Crowe's original idea was to have the William Miller character play the entirety of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" to his mother. Just as a note, that song is eight minutes long. Yes, Crowe filmed the entire damn thing and wanted to put it on screen, but the cost of licensing the music was too great and it ended up being cut. We're not sure how a single eight-minute scene of people listening to music would have worked in the theater.
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webhead84/youtube8 of 10
Clerks - Dante Dies
Alternate endings are one of the most common variety of deleted scenes - it's often hard for a director to make up his mind as to how the climax should play out, so they film a couple versions and make the choice in the editing bay. Kevin Smith's 1994 indie breakthrough Clerks ended with Dante closing up the Quik Stop, but in additional footage shot by Smith a robber walks in, shoots him dead and leaves. The grim final minutes would have put an end to the newborn View Askewniverse and probably Smith's directorial career as well.
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Flamable1992/youtube9 of 10
Kill Bill - Bill Vs. Michael Jai White
Quentin Tarantino already couldn't make Kill Bill fit into one movie, so it's kind of amazing that he still had to leave things out. The second installment was set to include a balls-out fight sequence between Bill and a character played by Spawn star Michael Jai White. The sequence was filmed, but cut from the flick for pacing reasons. That's too bad, because it's a hilarious and intense bit that pays homage to classic kung fu flicks like Once Upon A Time In China.
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TypicalUsername1/youtube10 of 10Next: Exploding Actresses
Little Shop Of Horrors - Original Ending
One of the most insanely expensive sequences ever left on the cutting room floor, the apocalyptic original ending to the 1986 musical comedy Little Shop Of Horrors cost $5 million to produce and was a staggering 23 minutes long. The downer sequence sees evil plant Audrey Jr. triumphing, eating her human keeper, reproducing and wreaking havoc all over the United States. Amazingly, the whole damn thing was cut and replaced with a happy ending where nebbishy Seymour electrocutes the plant and gets the girl in the end.
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