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I never actually saw all of Dirty Dancing until just a few years ago. Truth be told, it's only in the final act that the film goes completely off the rails, but the picture is a definitive piece of female-escapist fantasy regardless. Ironically, one of the biggest problems I had with the picture was the lack of dimensionality given to Baby Houseman's mother (Kelly Bishop) and father (Jerry Orbach). Astoundingly, each had a terrific and revealing scene that ended up on the cutting-room floor. In Mrs. Houseman's big third-act moment, Bishop admits that she knows full well what her daughter has been up to. She admits that she had at least one torrid affair in her youth, and it's just something that Baby needs to get out of her system before settling down with a more proper husband. Orbach wrings sympathy in his big second-act scene, where he explains that the reason he has such issues with the lower-class kids like Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze) is that they remind him of the punks who used to beat him up for being Jewish. It's a shame that these two revealing moments didn't make the final cut, as it would have gone a long way into preventing the parental units from coming off as cartoon characters.
The Incredible Hulk (2008) - Banner gets his head examined.
If you had a scene that explained away a massive plot hole, wouldn't you keep it in the final film? Stephen Norrington felt otherwise, leaving this breakthrough Marvel-adaptation with a major storytelling gap. Relatively late in the game, it's revealed that the evil Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff) plans to turn the entire world's human population into vampires. So once the world is turned into vampires, what will vampires eat? Great question. Well, there is actually a deleted scene where Frost shows off a giant room filled with captive humans who are being harvested and slowly bled out. Ironically, Norrington's cut is the Spierg Brothers gain, as their upcoming Daybreakers uses this exact concept as the jumping-off point for its entire story.
Final Destination (2000) - Alternate Ending.
Iron Man (2008) - Stark and Obadiah get a final moment.
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I think the context of the Kobayashi Maru trial should have stayed, because without the true cheat revealed, the trial appears motivated by petty revenge. With the email scene, the trial makes sense. It also would have added to the character of Kirk, because it would have shown how far he had to travel in his development, to become the great man he becomes.
But I really dislike the later scene when Kirk is apologizing to a different Orion female. THAT was so off, I didn't even want it among the deleted scenes!
GEEK ALERT
I was more than a little disappointed when X-Men 3 came out, but I was even more than disappointed when I saw the deleted scenes...I was totally p-o-ed. There was material there that made Phoenix's battle with Prof. X more poignant, made the battle between Wolverine and Juggernaught more thrilling, and made Wolverine's taking on the role of leader more compelling. I blame the director completely. Although, to Brett Ratner's "credit," it would have never been the travesty that it was had Bryan Singer finished the job instead of jumping onto Superman Returns, taking James Marsden with him. I've always had a theory that Fox wanted to punish Marsden for hitching his waggon to Singer, and the impetus for killing Cyclops in the first real (with little-to-no fanfare or emotional consequence) was a corporate revenge decision, thinking they can just give his remaining lines to Wolverine.
END OF GEEK RANT
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Ironically enough, an article about deleted scenes was edited for space. But, if the article were to be even longer, I would have included at least two scenes from X-Men 1 (where Rogue asks Storm if Xavier can cure her and Jean Grey's touching 'thank you' to Xavier) and one in X-Men 3 (the alternate battle speech scene, where Bobby takes charges instead of Logan). I don't hate X-Men: The Last Stand and I don't hate Brett Ratner (I rather like Red Dragon), but choices about what to cut or which takes to include can be blamed squarely on the director, no matter how tight the shooting schedule is or how brutal the execs are about highlighting Wolverine at all costs. But like you, I believe the core flaw of X-Men: The Last Stand is that it's a Wolverine movie instead of a Cyclops movie, where the emotional crux is Logan in pain over a woman that he loves despite having known her for maybe three or four days over a several month period.
I'm no prude, but the swearing in the script completely turned me off to this movie. I have other, more fan-boy complaints, but I usually keep those to myself :)
PS this is a great piece. Very fun! Most of the Christopher Guest movies have great deleted scenes as well.
"Well, there is actually a deleted scene where Frost shows off a giant room filled with captive humans who are being harvested and slowly bled out. Ironically, Norrington's cut is the Spierg Brothers gain, as their upcoming Daybreakers uses this exact concept as the jumping-off point for its entire story. "
Considering they used this as the plot in later movies, I think they may have been looking ahead at sequels and didn't want to ruin a possible future plot.
In the original Godfather, there's a scene at Woltz's house showing the young starlet that he ceremoniously gives the pony to being held against her will. Tom sees her at the top of the stairs looking drugged and desperate as he's being ordered from the mansion after diner.
It made it to the trilogy, (which kinda sucked) but was left from the original.
While it was still stilted and uneven, the deleted scene from 'Star Trek: Nemesis' in which Picard and Data discuss the concepts of mortality and legacy shouldn't have been left on the cutting-room floor. It would have resulted in a much deeper impact later in the film, at a certain moment.
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I'm sure you know this, but the original cut of Star Trek Nemesis was about 2.5 hours. Unfortunately, most of what was cut was character-driven material, leaving much of the final film as a relatively hollow action spectacle. The scene you mentioned is a good one, and one that others have mentioned to me.
Aye. So sad. It wasn't remotely the film I'd been expecting based on early interviews with the director.
$1 says Rick Berman was to blame.
In its incessant desire for our cash, perhaps the studio will one day release the version that was actually filmed. I would like to see it.
Although I wasn't a huge fan of the movie, TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES had a deleted scene that was better than most of the film itself. I believe it's called "The Sgt. Candy Scene" on the DVD.
It shows a promotional video for the new artificial soldier program and interviews Arnold as Sgt. Candy, the model for the series. So that explains why all of the Terminators look like him. What's funny is the ridiculous hillbilly accent he as for the scene. When a general complains that "that voice's gotta go," a Suit answers in Arnold's thick accent, "Dat can bee aw-ranged.
'Modern Family' is the best new show of the year, but '30 Rock' is still the funniest show on television - no contest.
I'm actually partial to the deleted scene from "Aliens" that shows us Ripley's daughter who had grown old and passed away. That one little moment explained so much of her over the top behavior in the movie.
I don't want to dis Aliens too much. Ripley was our first major female action hero and I love Cameron for that.
Love Ridley for it more... ;)
Speaking of Ridley, how about the deleted scene from Alien where she finds Dallas all cocooned up? Brutal.
Not to diss M Caine, but Haley J should've won the Oscar, period, deleted scene or not.
Night calls this this best performance ever by a child actor, and I agree. The range of emotion, the depth of understanding -- amazing.
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Agreed. The Sixth Sense really was the best film of the year. Osment and Toni Collette darn-well should have won in their respective categories.
Agreed! Amazing movie. Everyone in it was great.
Sometimes it's a runtime thing. Sometimes it's a story flow thing.
Thanks for this great post, Scott! Galaxy Quest is HIGHLY underrated! The birth of the rebellion scenes SHOULD have stayed in RotS, they were some of the best acted scenes and told an important story. Leave it to Lucas to not even realize that. I've always missed that scene from Hulk (much of it was used in the trailers,) but you need to correct the date. Incredible Hulk was released in 2008, not 2005.
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Whoops... thanks. Noted and corrected.
The only deleted scene I've run across on a DVD that struck me as being truly excellent (though it was easy to see and understand that the scene had to be cut, for pacing reasons) was a five-minute bit on the FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS DVD, a scene in which Benicio Del Toro and Johnny Depp are hanging out in the hotel bar, pretending at length to be cops attending the cop convention, putting on a cop (or two of them?) who happen to sit down with them for a minute... a very, very funny scene, and of course the bit they do about blood-drinking satanists is referred to many times throughout the remainder of the tightly constructed picture.
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