I had this experience recently after I bought a copy of that Vin Diesel masterpiece, xXx and watched the extras. You see, there was a particular scene that director Rob Cohen decided was slowing down the plot and detracting from the flow of the story, but to me, that same scene improves the entire movie.
The deleted scene, which in the movie would have played out between Xander Cage agreeing to do Augustus Gibbons' (Samuel L. Jackson) bidding and his arrival in Prague, takes place on a commercial jet, with Cage sitting at the very rear of the plane, next to the bathrooms.
A teenage boy sees Xander going over his mission briefing on a laptop and thinks he is playing a video game. Cage goes along with this, and sort of explains his mission in this context, and as exposition goes, it isn't a bad way to go, and while providing information for us the viewers, it also gives Vin Diesel's character a little more heart and depth and showed him dealing with someone who for all intents and purposes, was basically good. And when you look at his other interactions in the movie, it does provide a nice contrast. After all, Xander is the same guy that said: "You know what we do to bad men? We punish 'em."
However, Rob Cohen didn't like the fact that there was actually a scene in his movie which wasn't action oriented or where Xander Cage wasn't a total asshole badass, so he cut it.
And he was wrong. He was so wrong.
Then again, I shouldn't be surprised that I disagree with the artistic vision of the director behind Stealth and The Skulls.
Makes me wonder if there was a deleted scene that you've seen that you think should have been in the movie as it was released?
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2 comments:
Rob Cohen also directed Dragonheart, one of the best screenplays I've ever read and one of the lamest movies I've ever seen. He cut the plot out of the damn movie.
There are lots of movies like that, where one or two more scenes would make all the difference and, for some reason, are completely cut out. I know it, because I've seen them, and yet I can't think of a single one in response. Damn!
A good example of the reverse, though: where taking a scene out would improve everything. A Few Good Men. Spoiler here, I guess. There's no dramatic tension in the entire movie because we see Jack Nicholson order the Code Red in, like, the first half-hour of the movie, and the rest of the film focuses on an attempt to prove he did it. When Jack shouts out "You're goddamn right I did!", the whole audience I saw it with were shocked. Hello, we saw him order it two hours ago...
Yeah, I know of a couple of other movies that could do with such a trim.
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