Deleted Scenes So Dumb That You Won't Believe They Actually Exist
One of the best parts about getting a movie on DVD or Blu-ray is getting a chance to check out all the special features. Movie geeks can find some enlightening treasures buried in commentaries, blooper reels, and most of all, deleted scenes. Generally, these excised moments are pretty much what you expect — either something that is totally boring and superfluous, or something that is genuinely interesting, but would have made the movie too long.
But every once in a while, you find a real gem: a completely inexplicable monument to poor judgment. These truly outlandish "what the heck were they thinking" sort of deleted scenes would have completely changed the film they were in, had they been included... and probably not for the better.
If you're a fan of "good-bad" movies as much as we are, do we have a treat for you. We've scoured DVD menus, message boards, and all the seediest dumpsters in the back alleys of the internet to bring you this curated selection of some of the most deliciously terrible scenes to ever be rejected by the filmmakers who shot them.
They say that one man's trash is another man's treasure. We truly treasure every one of these delightfully dumb deleted scenes, and we hope you do too.
More machine than man
The Star Wars prequels are pretty much the definition of a mixed bag. On one hand, the visuals are often stunning, they have no shortage of bold ideas, and the Darth Maul lightsaber duel is one of the best fight scenes in film history. On the other hand... Jar Jar. But this truly baffling deleted scene from Revenge of the Sith is a terrifying reminder that, as bad as the prequels could be at times, they could have been so much worse.
The scene takes place after Anakin and Obi Wan board General Grievous' ship to rescue the kidnapped Chancellor Palpatine. The two Jedi are unsure of which way to go, so they contact everyone's favorite droid, R2D2, for directions. They are then stumped, because their communicator can't translate his beeps and boops into actual words. While trying to figure out what R2 is saying, Anakin — with no explanation — perfectly repeats a string of the completely unpronounceable "droid language" out loud. It goes without saying that this is the only time we've ever seen a human do that in Star Wars.
The moment is played for laughs and it's sort of weirdly charming, but it also makes absolutely zero sense and completely breaks the reality of the film. Even though we're glad that this clip was unearthed and put on the internet so that we can all marvel at how gloriously dumb it is, we're equally glad that it didn't actually make it into Star Wars canon.
Back to the editing room
Back to the Future has gone down in history as a classic movie for good reason. Not only does it succeed at being a thrilling sci-fi adventure story and a hilarious comedy at the same time, it also has a genuinely good heart.
There are, however, certain elements of the film that haven't aged well, and that somewhat undermine how sweet the rest of it is. As is the case with many '80s comedies, Back to the Future is not great in terms of its portrayal of gender and sexuality. It's one thing for Biff to be a sexual predator — that's obviously terrible, but he is also clearly a villain. It's quite another that the theoretically adorkable young George McFly's horrifying hobby of spying on undressing women is largely played for laughs.
As if that wasn't enough, the film had an additional cringe-worthy deleted scene that might have ruined the characters of Doc Brown and Marty McFly for future generations if the filmmakers had left it in. In this scene, as Doc Brown attempts to get Marty ready for his fake date with his mother, not only does Doc imply that "taking a few liberties" with a woman is not really all that bad, but Marty confesses to Doc that the thing he is most worried about is that what they are doing might turn him gay. Yikes. Let's all be glad we ended up in the timeline where this horrible scene was erased from existence.
An unexpected musical number
In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Bilbo and his dwarvish companions encounter a series of difficult trials on their journey to slay the dragon Smaug. But one of the most difficult spots in which the heroes find themselves is getting captured by a bunch of goblins in the mountains. As dire as things are for them in the version of the film that hit theaters, there was a deleted scene from this section in which the king of the goblins forced the dwarves to endure a form of torture that was deemed too cruel and unusual to show on screen to mainstream audiences: a goblin musical number.
The song is called "Down in Goblin Town," and there's no way to sugarcoat this: it's terrible. On the one hand, it's supposed to be bad. It's based on an intentionally atonal song from the original book, and it does a good job of characterizing the goblins as weird little monsters and their king as a self-important diva who doesn't care for the well-being of his "captive audience." On the other hand, it is bad. It's also two full minutes long, and nothing happens during those two minutes that's relevant to the plot. In a movie that's already almost three hours long, this scene is almost insultingly superfluous.
For good or for ill, the scene was later re-inserted into the film as part of the extended version.
Clonebusters?
Given that most of the cast of the original Ghostbusters were established comedians who were veterans of Saturday Night Live, it's no surprise that a decent portion of the script was improvised and iterated on over the course of filming. But knowing exactly how absurd the comedy should be was something that director Ivan Reitman clearly wasn't exactly sure of during the film's production. Included among the failed comedic experiments that he was toying around with was a particular subplot that was clearly, in retrospect, gloriously ill-conceived.
In the book Making Ghostbusters, Reitman explains that he planned to have Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd playing dual roles, not only as the Ghostbusters Peter Venkman and Ray Stantz, but also a pair of homeless men named Bojay and Coombs that were supposed to serve as a sort of mundane counterpoint to the potentially world-ending action of the rest of the movie. Rather than grounding the movie, Reitman immediately knew upon watching Murray and Aykroyd on film that having a pair of over-the-top comedy side characters played by the lead actors with no explanation would have the completely opposite effect, totally breaking the already strained reality of the film.
These characters were, however, still present in the novelization of the film, probably because book characters aren't similarly subject to confusing casting choices.
In space, no one can hear you crab walk
Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien is generally beloved for not only being a work of thought-provoking science fiction, but also a tremendously spooky horror film. Along with Jaws, Alien is famous for solidifying the conventional wisdom among horror movie aficionados that the less of the monster you see, the better. There was, however, a deleted scene from the middle of Alien that violated this sacred tenet of filmmaking, and proved just how quickly scary can become silly if a movie shows too much monster too soon.
In this scene, while trying to escape the ship, the character of Lambert stumbles upon the alien sitting on the ground. She stares at it for a moment, paralyzed with fear, before it slowly ambles over to her, without getting up, in an awkward crab walk. Then, it gradually rises up from the ground until it is staring her down, preparing to kill her. It's probably supposed to be tense, but from the way that it's framed and paced, it's just plain ridiculous, and not even remotely threatening.
As cool as we remember the effects being in Alien, this is a reminder that spooky creatures look way better in quick glimpses, so that your mind can fill in the details. When you have the chance to see the alien's entire body for a long period of time in a well-lit room, it quickly transforms from a terrible monster to just a guy in a suit. Also, if we're being honest, the crab walking didn't help.
A gag that is complete hogwash
The setting of Who Framed Roger Rabbit sounds absurd at first, and that's because it is: a film noir version of Los Angeles in which real people live alongside cartoons as two separate social classes. Despite this strange premise, the worldbuilding ends up being remarkably consistent and easy to get your head around once the story gets going.
That might have all been different if this one sanity-shattering scene had made it through the final edit. In it, after being captured by the villains, protagonist Eddie Valiant finds that his head has been trapped inside a cartoon pig head that seems to be at least partially alive. Then, after freaking out for a minute, Eddie manages to escape from cranial cartoon confinement by shampooing with turpentine.
Relative to all the other weird gags in this movie, this one is much harder to understand, largely because it doesn't seem to be based on anything from pre-existing cartoon conventions. Was the pig head once a part of larger organism that was beheaded? Alternatively, did the bad guys somehow create a sentient severed pig head from nothing? Did Eddie kill the creature when he washed it down the drain? There's no way to answer these questions without getting into some really strange existential territory.
Perhaps the wildest thing about this scene is that, even with hindsight, director Robert Zemeckis doesn't seem to think it was all that weird. He just cut it because it slowed down the movie's pace, but he still really likes it!
Hancock cuts a "super" dirty joke
Coming out the same summer as Iron Man, Hancock is a bit of a forgotten oddity from a time before the MCU redefined superhero movies. It stars Will Smith and Charlize Theron giving a pair of dynamite performances, and it has a script co-written by Vince Gilligan, who later went on to create Breaking Bad. Although the film only got mixed reviews when it came out, no one could fault it for lacking ambition. It was a bold deconstruction of superhero conventions, with no costumes, codenames, or explosions, aiming to be more of a comedy/drama than a nonstop action movie. Nevertheless, there was one deleted scene that did feature an explosion... of sorts.
In it, the depressed alcoholic superhero Hancock, played by Smith, is having a casual fling with a woman he doesn't really know, fooling around with her on the couch in his mobile home. Before things go further, however, he tries to warn her about some of the potential danger that is inherent in having sex with him, especially when he "gets to the moment," but she is far too eager to get started to heed his warnings. In the end, he has to fling her across the trailer at the last minute to get her out of the danger zone before his superpowered climax punches a series of holes in his ceiling.
Because the scene ended up being just a very long set up to a very silly sex joke, we can understand why it was cut.
William Candy gets terminated
Although the Terminator films are generally pretty grim, they also aren't afraid of getting a little goofy every once in while. There was, however, one scene deleted from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines that might have taken things a little too far.
In it, we are shown a promotional video for "Cyber Research Systems," the company that developed the original Terminators. In case you don't remember, Terminators are killer robots from the future, many of whom are designed to look and sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. This video introduces us to the human whose likeness was used as the base for these robots, Chief Master Sergeant William Candy. He is a cheerful gentleman played by Schwarzenegger, but voiced by, of all people, Samuel L. Jackson doing a cartoonishly jovial southern accent.
The true icing on the cake comes, however, when one of the politicians watching the video complains about Candy's accent. A CRS representative assures him, "We can fix it," with a thick Austrian accent. This man's voice dubbed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, giving the scene the added bonus of an answer to the question "Why do Terminators have Austrian accents?"
The whole affair is completely unnecessary, thoroughly dumb, and also utterly delightful, like something straight out of a Paul Verhoeven film. Even though it was cut, many Terminator fans have accepted this wonderfully weird scene as canon. Despite only appearing in this one deleted scene, William Candy even has an entry on the Terminator Wiki.
A song that would have Scarred a generation
Disney films are famous for having great villains, and there may be none greater than the outlandishly evil Scar from The Lion King. But making sure that a villain in a kids' movie always sticks to the fun sort of evil is a tricky balancing act. An early version of The Lion King featured a scene which implied that Scar had within him the capacity for a kind of evil that got a little too close to real life.
In it, Scar is trying to figure out why his newly conquered people don't love him, and eventually decides that it's because he doesn't have a queen. He decides to solve this problem by marrying Nala, whether she likes it or not. He presents his plans to her in a song, the melody of which is a reprise of Scar's earlier song, "Be Prepared."
After she rebuffs him, Scar responds with the chilling line, "You really have no choice. One way or another, I always get what I want." The underlying threat that Scar is making is clear, and it's far from family-friendly.
Even though this scene was cut for being WAY too adult for Disney, the basic idea was later reworked into a new song for the Broadway musical called "The Madness of King Scar." Also, animator Eduardo Quintana took the audio from "The Madness of King Scar" and unofficially animated a new short film to fit that song, drawn in the style of the original movie.
Cameron's pun gets a chilly reception
Between lines like "God himself could not sink this ship" and "Picasso, he won't amount to a thing," James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster hit film Titanic is no stranger to the concept of dramatic irony. How could it be, when it's clear from the beginning that the audience knows exactly how it's going to end?
Dramatic irony is a literary device in which the audience has more knowledge of the events surrounding a situation than the characters in that situation do, and so those character's words can have an additional layer of meaning that they themselves do not understand. When writing a historical fiction epic like Titanic — which retells the true story of the sinking of the RMS Titanic through the eyes of a pair of ill-fated fictional lovers — we can imagine that the temptation to write nothing but jokey lines like this that wink at the audience must be overwhelming. Although generally, Cameron does a good job of being responsible with how and when he deploys dramatic irony, Titanic does have one deleted scene where he went a little too far.
The scene features Kathy Bates' character of Molly Brown at the ship's bar, calling out to a server, "Hey, Sonny, how 'bout a little ice?" right as we see history's most famous iceberg passing by outside the window. Needless to say, Cameron eventually decided that this, the most dramatic moment of the film, was not the right time for a really terrible Dad joke.