Original Movie Lines You'll Never Get To Hear

Whether it's because of mistakes or last-minute changes, pretty much every movie is subjected to post-production alterations. One example of this sort of work is called ADR, automatic dialogue replacement, or simply dubbing, wherein actors re-record lines of dialogue they originally spoke on set inside the more controllable environment of a studio. While most of the time, actors are essentially lip-synching to their own performances, sometimes they're directed to say something entirely different. Sometimes it's even an entirely different actor, providing their own voice for another performer.

What happens to these performances as originally recorded? Well, have you ever heard the expression "left on the cutting room floor"? Such is the fate of countless hours of footage and hard work, some of which you'll never get to hear, and some that only surfaces years later. Take a look at what was really going down on the set during some of your favorite scenes.

Star Wars may well be among the best examples of a movie that was saved by post-production trickery. Being on the shoot itself and watching the filming unfold, it must have looked like it was going to be awful. Obviously, things worked out—for most people, with one exception being the man who played Darth Vader. In what may be the most infamous erased performance ever, David Prowse, the actor who wore Vader's suit on set in all three films, discovered to his horror at the premiere of the first movie that his vocals had been overdubbed. The perceived snub soured him on all the movies, and he's on record as saying "I've only got one favorite memory of filming Star Wars, and that is when my very first check arrived."

But while the performance as a whole was largely dubbed over word-for-word by James Earl Jones, there was one crucial line of dialogue that differed. We all know the big reveal in the Empire Luke and Vader duel comes in the form of the line "No, I am your father," but on set, people heard something remarkably different. In order to preserve the secret, closely guarded plot twist, a decoy line was used, with the real line entrusted by George Lucas and director Irvin Kershner to Mark Hamill alone. Instead of the words we heard, David Prowse followed the script, saying "Obi-Wan killed your father," and that's the line Mark Hamill is reacting to. He's the only actor on the production who knew the line would be changed, and considering how much anguish and pain he put into his performance, one has to wonder if other people on set thought he was selling the reveal a little too hard.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is such a cultural fixture at this point that it's worth recalling how remarkably unlikely his ascendance really was. Despite his awesome charisma, in the early days you'd be forgiven for thinking he'd never make it as a movie star, because more often than not, English speakers could barely understand him. Even as late as 1982's Conan the Barbarian, Schwarzenegger had to work intensely with a dialect coach to penetrate his Austrian accent and approach a proper English inflection. Is it any surprise that the producers of 1970's Hercules in New York threw up their hands at the challenge and didn't even try?

Though now he's at the point where he can speak English without inflection if he feels like it, the dialogue he delivered for his first dramatic role was deemed so hard to understand that it was overdubbed entirely. And it would've likely stayed that way had Schwarzenegger not gone on to become the star he is today, but thanks to his enduring popularity, you can now hear his unaltered performance in new versions of the film. It doesn't even sound that bad, in retrospect. Maybe we just got used to it.

The flying scene from the classic Richard Donner-directed Superman is the centerpiece of the movie, the most memorable part of a quite-good film. Playing right into the marketing angle ("you'll believe a man can fly!"), Superman (Christopher Reeves) takes Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) into the skies above Metropolis, and they soar majestically through the night air. The hokiest element of the scene is Margot Kidder's Shatner-esque spoken-word monologue, reciting some of the lyrics to the song "Can You Read My Mind" as she hovers in Superman's grasp, marveling at the powers of this strange and alien man.

Like the rest of the movie, it's earnest and a little bit corny. But it could've been unbelievably embarrassing. As originally conceived, Lois wasn't just supposed to recite lyrics, a dreamy conceit that works well in the moment. No, according to the DVD commentary, she was supposed to full-on sing, presenting a showstopping number from above the clouds. It's hard to imagine a decade in film when this wouldn't have been terrible. It's telling that though superhero movies are bigger than they've ever been, we've yet to have a big-budget comic book musical number—but hey, there's a first time for everything. Shall we turn the music up? What say you, Justice League?

As we sit on the cusp of a whole new and spectacular Spider-Man series, the Andrew Garfield-starring movies from the mid-aughts are looking more and more like an intriguing pair of misfires. There's the first, released far too close to the Sam Raimi-directed trilogy of the early 2000s to have an impact, and the second, an overstuffed and noisy clunker. There are good moments and performances throughout the films, but as a whole, they're unmemorable, and weirdly light on the webslinging antics, with too much time spent on the fringes of the story. In short, they feel lacking in what makes Spider-Man who he is.

One weird thing you'll never hear throughout the films? The classic line, "With great power comes great responsibility." It's a line on which the whole of the character hinges, defining who he is and why he does it, yet while it was alluded to, it's never spoken. Director Marc Webb cites several moments they considered using it, and the script for the second one had it baked into the ending, but the line ultimately never made it in. It's a weird thing to nitpick over until you remember that the philosophy it represents is as iconic as Spidey's red and blue suit.

No character in the Star Wars universe is more memeable than Admiral Ackbar. The squid-faced military man, who carries an air of gravitas despite looking like a Muppet that was microwaved too long, can be recalled by most viewers for a single line of dialogue, uttered when the tide starts to turn against the Rebel Alliance during their final firefight against the Empire's new Death Star—"It's a trap!" Yes, indeed...and it's also not what he originally said. The original line, "It's a trick!", was changed in post-production, allegedly because it didn't have the oomph that the production wanted for the moment. It's a little difference, yes, but one that speaks volumes, for one reason or another. That famous line is one of the only things Ackbar says throughout the entire saga; if it were one percent different, would we even remember who he was?