Favorite Movie Deleted Scenes

Now know someone's going to think, “Scorpio, deleted scenes are deleted for a reason!” Well, strawman with generic dummy voice, yes they are, often for pacing and time constraints.  In fact, many filmmakers emphatically point out how hard it was for them to cut some scenes.  Though sometimes DVD’s will include some pointless raw footage, deleted scenes are an interesting insight to the making of the film.  I like a good deleted scene, and sometimes it’s frustrating when a really good one is cut out of a movie.  Usually the one thing that will get me to buy a two-disc DVD is deleted scenes.  One note: I am not including scenes included on Extended Edtions of movies that I know of (e.g. Lord of the Rings). 

15. Star Wars Episode III – Mustache Twirl

Overall, this is a pretty stupid scene.  The run-in with General Grievous makes no sense in the context of the beginning of the movie, and the heroes’ amazingly wooden reaction to watching their friend getting murdered right in front of them is unbelievably bad.  I do, however, like the signals that Anakin and Obi-Wan exchange.  It’s funny and it makes sense that these two friends have their own shorthand. 

     Should It Have Been Kept In the Movie?

Well, not the overall scene, but that moment could have been worked in somewhere.  It’s the kind of droll, character-driven humor that the prequels could have used more of. 

14. Army of Darkness - Alternate Ending

Although not nearly as cool as the theatrical ending, it does have some interesting scenery, good humor and it’s classic Sam Raimi. 

     Should It Have Been Kept In the Movie?

Not really.  I like the final version better. Still, any fan of this movie must make sure that they buy the DVD edition that includes this scene.

13. The Emperor’s New Groove - “Snuff Out the Light”

A very solid villain song by Yzma (Eartha Kitt)

     Should It Have Been Kept In the Movie?

No. While this movie could have used a villain song, this was clearly from an early version of the movie which had a different premise.  I like the movie as it is, and the song is available on CDs for any one to listen to.

12. Return of the Jedi – Extended Battle on Endor

It may sound silly to claim that George Lucas hates his fans, but I can’t think of any other reason to keep deleted scenes in a vault for forty years and until finally releasing them on an overpriced Blu-Ray set for those fans lucky enough not to have died in that period of time.  This scene (in case the video inevitably gets taken down) shows the Rebel troops invading the Imperial shield bunker and shooting some stormtroopers, who amusingly fall into a big pile.

      Should It Have Been Kept In the Movie?

Of course!  A legitimate gunfight instead of teddy bears throwing rocks?  The whole ground battle on Endor should have been like this!

11. The Lion King – “Be Prepared” Reprise

After Scar takes over the pride, the hyenas do a pretty good reprise of “Be Prepared”

      Should It Have Been Kept In the Movie?

Not really, the lyrics sound a little too self-incriminating to make sense in the scene, and the line “if now and then we seem drooling/it’s only an ancestor thing” probably took the racial implications of this movie a little too far.

10. Napoleon Dynamite - Napoleon Steals theSuit

This scene reveals that Pedro and Napoleon cannot afford the red suit.  So Napoleon hilariously holds a trashy fantasy novel to the security camera while Pedro deliberately takes the suit down.  It’s partially ruined by the idiotic security staff member who just stares at the screen confused by the fact that someone is clearly blocking the camera intentionally.  The Holy Chips scene also gets an honorable mention.

      Should It Have Been Kept In the Movie?

I think so.  It rivals most of the jokes in the movie.

9. Talledega Nights – Rabbit Car

Cal Naughton, Jr. (John C. Reilly) develops absurd gimmicks for his new “Magic Man” persona while Ricky Bobby (Will Ferrell) tries to calmly explain to him how impractical they are.  For some reason I find the term “magic stuff” hilarious.

      Should It Have Been Kept In the Movie?

I think so.  I’ve never understood why comedies delete these scenes that are so funny when the usual reasons for deleting a scene are moot when you’re making a screwball comedy.

8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 1 – Dursleys’ Goodbye

Though it’s not as well executed as it was in the book, this was an essential scene that I assume most fans really wanted to see on film.  It seemed to be deleted because the director wanted to start the movie with some kind a of montage.  I also liked Aunt Petunia’s line.

7. Mr and Mrs Smith – Extended Mall Fight

It’s a really clever fight that takes advantage of the layout of the location.  We see the protagonists regroup in an elevator between skirmishes, getting more exhausted with each one.

      Should It Have Been Kept In the Movie?

Yes.  It’s not just a good action scene.  It also subverts the “elevator break” cliché that I find annoying.  The movie changed it so the cliché is played depressingly straight.

6. Ice Age – Sylvia

Although I usually don’t find the Amy Rose-type stalker trope automatically funny, this does have some funny lines and I found these scenes far more amusing than any part of the actual movie.

5. Kill Bill 2 - Faceoff

Hilariously cheesy and overacted.  Also note the look of awe towards Bill on Kiddo’s face in this flashback.

      Should It Have Been Kept In the Movie?

Another scene that was better than anything in the movie.

4. Return of the Jedi - Intro

I like the transition from the scenes, and it introduces the more mature and dark Luke with a sense of mystery.  It really does invoke the sense of how the hero has coped with the events of the last movie.

      Should It Have Been Kept In the Movie?

I think so.

3. Aliens - Ripley's Daughter
This really was a pretty crucial scene because it establishes the motivation of the whole movie.  I have mixed feelings about the Special Edition because it also includes a terrible scene that ruins the sense of mystery and tension when they land on LV-426.

2. Star Wars - Biggs

This is a great characterization scene that shows Luke’s life before his adventures.  It’s interesting how Luke is like a beta to Bigg’s alpha (seriously look at his submissive body language).  It shows interesting character development. 

      Should It have Been Kept in the Movie?

As good as this scene is, I’d say no.  It would mess up Luke’s introduction, in which we meet him just as the droids do, since the movie actually is more from their point of view a la Hidden Fortress.  I do think it should have been in the Special Edition.  It would have actually justified its existence as an alternate version of a classic.  It’s funny how Lucas adulterated Star Wars with all this pointless CGI filler, but didn’t put include the deleted moment that adds character in substance to the movie.

1. The Incredibles – Alternate Intro

I just love this intro so much.  It’s humor is great, and it’s really creative how it draws us into this world by showing and not telling.  The second scene is suspenseful too.

      Should They Have Kept It in the Movie?

The movie was originally supposed to have a Bond-like villain, but people responded so much to Syndrome in this scene they decided to revamp the film to make him the main antagonist.  Honestly, I don’t know why they didn’t retain the strengths of this scene without Syndrome, and I would even like to see the original version.  The theatrical intro was ok, but this was just too good a scene to scrap in my opinion. 

A Mess of Biblical Proportions

 

Noah

2014

D: Darren Aronofsky

**********

Pros: Well-executed epilogue, Excellent score by Clint Mansell

Cons: Disregard for source material, Poor attempt at a message, Mostly dull

     2014 seems to be a year for religiously provocative movies.  The controversy surrounding the fact that atheist director Darren Aronofsky has made a Biblical adaptation has been considerable.  A few essays have made the argument that seeing this movie makes one a traitor to the faith.  Yet some Christian sources have endorsed the movie.  The Vatican seems to have given its blessing, but that may have been just to avoid dealing with a Green Eggs and Ham stunt Russell Crowe kept pulling on the Pope.  I really was not expecting any religious or spiritual insight from this film.  I was mostly interested because of my admiration for Aronofsky as a director.  I love Requiem for a Dream and I believe that The Fountain is a criminally underrated masterpiece.  I think his artful and offbeat style of filmmaking would have fit the world of Noah, which takes place in a time that would be almost unrecognizable to modern man.  While the movie does show some interesting scenery, I was disappointed by the execution of this film.  It seems more like a mainstream blockbuster in its style.  Clint Mansell’s score is decent, but some parts of it sound like leftover tracks from The Fountain.  There are some artfully executed montages, but that’s about it.  And then there are the rock monsters.  Everyone has commented on them so I’ll make it brief.  They’re goofy, they look like they’re designed to sell toys and they make me feel like I’m watching “Transformers” every time they’re on screen.  They’re also the least of the movie’s problems. 

     Aronofsky adds a lot of foolishness to the story of Noah.  On one hand, it’s a simply story, and adding dramatic occurrences and conflict is a no-brainer when adapting it.  As a nonbeliever adapting a religious text, he makes a lot of choices that can only be explained as either obliviousness or spite.  In addition to a lot of problems with the movie’s message and story arcs, it also has some bland dialogue and poor pacing.  The fact that it was based on a well-known religious story adapted by a non-religious person meant people were less concerned about spoilers than knowing beforehand how the story was being modified.  Aronofsky stated that he wanted to movie to possibly take place at any time.  The possibility that this is a post-apocalyptic, primitive world full of fantasy creatures and goofy people doing goofy things suggests that he drew more inspiration from Adventure Time than he did from the Bible.

     While religious people have reason to be offended by this film, one common erroneous criticism is that there’s no God in it.  Actually, the movie constantly refers to “The Creator.”  He communicates to Noah through visions.  We see physically impossible miracles.  We see freakin’ angels turned into rock monsters and back again.  It seems to me this movie has God in it.  It’s like complaining that a story has someone say a character is “gone” instead of “dead” as if it’s not the exact same thing.  In fact, if Aronofsky had chosen to depict this event in a secular way without divine intervention, it might have been an interesting viewpoint to watch and far less insulting than what we got. 

     The movie begins with a young Noah and his father Lamech (Marton Csokas) gathering food when a gang from Cain’s tribe murders the latter.  Cut to an adult Noah (Russell Crowe) gathering with his son Ham.  Ham tries to pick a single flower, and the movie wastes no time in making FernGully look exemplary in its moderation and subtlety.  Noah corrects him for picking a flower, saying they should only take what they need.  The radicalism gets worse when a wounded scaly dog-thing enters pursued by some of Cain’s tribe.  After Noah fights them, a defeated enemy asks him what he wants and he replies while holding a weapon, “Justice.”  Wait, did Noah just murder a guy in cold blood just for hunting for food?  Well, I realize he probably had to leave no survivors to notify their allies, but that’s still pretty messed up.  While cremating the dog-thing, Ham asks Noah what those people were doing, and when told that they were planning to eat the dog, he innocently asks why.  Noah self-righteously replies, “Because they think it makes them stronger.”

     Okay, I know that Darren Aronofsky is apparently a vegan and wanted to express that in his work.  He has every right to.  But rewriting Ancient History and human biology in the name of that message is buffoonery.  I understand the belief that harming animals is wrong and should be minimalized in light of modern advances in nutritional science.  I understand that the meat-and-fat-based diet we have evolved to crave is not as compatible with our current sedentary lifestyle as we’d like.   However, vegan diets are mostly feasible nowadays thanks to modern science.  Vegetarianism, let alone veganism, was difficult in ancient times.  Perhaps some farming could help address this problem, but Noah and his family show no evidence that they are nothing more than just gatherers.  It’s a wonder how Noah’s children survived infancy considering this.  Aronofsky gives us a message, but makes no effort to justify it in a setting that is inconvenient for his opinion to say the least.  You have to work within the limits of the setting you have chosen.  Show your characters at least limiting their exploitation of animals.  At least try to acknowledge that digging around and finding f---in’ berries off the ground is not a complete and balanced diet for Antediluvian Man.  To make things even sillier, this is from a story in the Old Testament, in which animal sacrifice is consistently shown to be part of Hebrew worship at the time.  A fact which I can’t help but observe The Lion of Judah acknowledges.  And can you guess why casting the descendants of Cain as the evil animal-killers makes no sense?   

     

     Well, back to the story.  Noah returns to his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), who asks him how Ham dealt with the experience, and he tells her he was “a little too interested.”  What does he mean by that?  “Why” is more than a fair question.  This foreshadows Ham’s being the closest to being corrupted by Cain’s tribe, so I guess the lesson is “don’t be curious or open-minded.”  Noah receives a vague vision about the world being destroyed by a flood and decides to hike to the mountain home of his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) for guidance.  Along the way they come across a group of dead bodies and find one survivor, Ila.  They are chased by Cain-tribesmen and rescued by the Watchers (the rock monsters voiced by Frank Langella, Mark Margolis and Kevin Durand).  They reach Methuselah’s home and have tea with him, and we find out he is an eccentric wise man archetype.   Who doesn’t get enough berries.  Noah then has a second vision which implies that he should build an ark and put animals on it.  He uses a seed from the first forest that Methuselah gives him (a clever touch), and the seed grows into a new forest for building an ark.  Animals gather to the ark automatically (though watching this happen would have been more entertaining).  Noah’s family devises a knockout gas for them (as opposed to knocking them out with a slingshot), but I’m not sure how they administer it without knocking themselves out.  The movie fast forwards to when Noah’s son Shem (Douglas Booth) and Ila (Emma Watson) are grown and in love.  Ila is barren from old injuries, but someone must have had sex with her to find that out.  I don’t think you could just tell that by seeing a scar on one’s waist.

     All this activity attracts the attention of Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone) and his tribe.  Whereas most movies would give us a chance to know the villain beforehand, Noah immediately tells us that Tubal-Cain was the man who killed Noah's father.  Winstone is good in the role, but his character ends up being too much of a strawman to be a compelling villain.  It may sound like a knee-jerk to say that this movie is anti-human, but when the movie can’t go half an hour without saying something to the effect of “everything was fine until stupid humans came along with their technology and civilization,” it’s actually a pretty accurate description. 

     The movie doesn’t really stop with these messages, and it gets worse with Tubal-Cain’s constant speeches about the primacy of humanity, which I sometimes can’t help but sympathize with.  The movie takes this message to the point of being antiscientific.  Perhaps Aronofsky purposely made the movie so scientifically illiterate in order to make some smug statement on religion, but that might be giving the script too much credit.  Noah and his family haven’t progressed beyond being hunter/gatherers, and are framed as the ideal.  Cain’s tribe is depicted as wasteful and cruel, but they at least believe in some type of technological progress.  The type of progress that you, you know, can’t make Vitamin B12 supplements or $125,000,000 movies without.  I’m not saying that Aronofsky is some sort of Luddite, but he clearly was not thinking when he wrote this movie.  In fact, the only scene which extolls science is a visually beautiful scene in which Noah retells the seven days of Creation while the picture shows a time-elapsed formation of earth and evolution of man.  The “seven days’” not literally being seven days is not a new idea, however. 

      While building the ark, he scouts Tubal-Cain’s settlement and witnesses just how violent these people are.  This, combined with his radically misanthropic worldview, convinces him that humanity should die off with this family.  He treats this as the will of God even though God gave him no such order.  You can’t really say this is a logical deduction from the fact that you can’t promulgate a species from one nuclear family because the animals would have the same problem.  As a result, this decision seems rather capricious.  Ham (Logan Lerman), who does not have a girlfriend like Shem’s to love, is understandably nonplussed by this.  He ventures into Tubal-Cain’s camp, finds Na’el (Madison Davenport) and takes her with him.  At this point, the rain has started to come down, and Shem and Ila look for Ham.  Ila finds Methuselah looking for berries (it’s a running joke) and he blesses her relationship with Shem, causing her to become fertile.  This makes Ila very horny and she immediately runs to Shem and bangs him.  Hilariously, they look embarrassed when they return empty-handed to Noah, who decides to find Ham himself.  Ham and Na’el are fleeing from the mob that is ready to raid the ark, when Na’el gets her leg caught in a trap.  Noah returns and, because Tubal-Cain’s mob is upon them, takes Ham, leaving Na’el to get violently trampled to death.  Noah and ham reach the ark, and the rock monsters fend off the mob until the flood happens, but Tubal-Cain manages to sneak onto the vessel.  Methuselah dies in the deluge immediately after finally enjoying a berry.  Like a cartoon character.

     Ham encounters Tubal-Cain in the ark and, forgetting that Tubal-Cain is arguably more responsible for Na’el’s death than Noah) promises to help him while the latter helps himself to some now-extinct animal meat.  Meanwhile, Noah finds out that Ila is pregnant and vows to murder the infant if it is a girl (surprise! It turns out to be two girls!).  He clashes with his family, and Jennifer Connelly gives a great performance as Naameh tells Noah she will not love him if he goes through with the killing.  This clearly is not conflict enough, which is why we need Tubal-Cain to be hanging out on the ark stuffing his face and probably masturbating until he can get in a short fight with Noah that we know he’s going to lose.  During this fight, Ham decides to redeem himself by saving Noah while rejecting him emotionally.  Noah then tries to kill his grandchildren, but decides he cannot go through with it.

     Aronofsky had understandable motivation for all this nonsense.  First, he wanted to add some complexity to the protagonist.  This does not work because Noah’s motivations for infanticide are neither logical nor identifiable. 

Also, I can't look at this screencap and picture anything other than a belch or sand person noises coming out of his mouth.

Secondly, he wanted to establish tension between Noah and Ham which would explain the former’s rejection of the latter’s bloodline (Gen 9:21-25).  Noah’s unforgiveable offense against Ham was not having time to save Na’el’s life.  Funny, I’d say Shem and Ila have far more reason to hold a grudge considering Noah tried to murder their children.  I guess it all depends on how well things happened to turn out for whom.

      This leads up to what I must admit is a very well-executed last five minutes of the film.  Upon finding land, Noah secludes himself and attempts to drown his sorrow and guilt, as per the aforementioned Bible verses.  When Shem and Japeth (Leo McHugh) cover his nakedness, Ham only looks on disapprovingly while Noah breaks down in tears (in the Bible, these roles are reversed).  Ham then ventures off by himself to find his own fate, suggesting that there are other survivors out there.  Noah eventually blesses the continuation of man and is met with God’s rainbow.  It’s actually a really good ending that deserves a better movie preceding it.

      Noah was visually well-done.  The acting was solid, even from Russell Crowe and his Russell Croweness.  Turning it into a tract was a bad idea, but even without the potential offensiveness, the product was not much more exciting than 2010’s Robin Hood, and a big disappointment from the director.  And, yes, I do think it is fair to say that this movie is at least a bit insulting to us believers.