Deleted scenes
It's impossible to imagine certain movies being any different from how they are. Once a film beco🌠mes beloved enough, iconic enough, its form and essence get locked-in in the minds of the audience. The idea of an alternative ve🅠rsion feels like a fantasy from a parallel universe at best, or else pure heresy.
But really, it's all circumstantial. Film-making is a trial-and-error-process of writing, re-writing, shooting, improvising, cutting, and cutting again. As such, cinema history is filled with nearly-weres and could-have-beens, elements, endings, scenes, and sometimes whole versions of movies that never saw the light of day. Some are big, some are small, but all shed well-known classics in a new light, to one degree or another. Here are 50 of the most significant revisions that would've transformeꦓd the movies we know ܫand love.
Batman Forever (1995)
What Was Cut: Alien designer H.R. Giger's distinctly biomechanical version of the Batmobile. T▨aking the Batmobile in a completely different direction, Giger's version is a tubey oddity that looks more like a pair of pincers than a car, with more than a dash of Alien's crashed extraterrestrial ship thrown in for good measure.
If It Had Stayed In: Though the design is pretty amazing in its own right, it's not something that looks like it belongs in the Batman mythoꦉs, so would have probably felt distin♕ctly out of place. Even in Joel Schumacher's increasingly outlandish version of Gotham.
Oz: The Great & Powerful (2013)
What Was Cut: If studioADI had landed the gig of designing Oz: The Grea൩t And Powerful, we could have ended up with a much creepier movie than the one we saw.
StudioADI created their own des𝓀i🐷gns and models in a pitch for the job, with a vibe somewhere between '80s Jim Henson and the more disturbing elements of Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings. Ultimately they lost out to KNB, which may not necessarily have been a good thing…
If It Had Stayed In: The Great and Powerful could have been a legitimate follow-up to Return to Oz, in the nightmare-fueꦑl stakes.
Twilight (2008)
What Was Cut: Jennifer Law✃rence, who auditioned to place Bella Swan in the fang-erific book adaptation. As we all know, in the end Kristen Stewart got the role.
"I think everything happens for a reason,"𓆏 commented a pragmatic Lawrence.
If It Had Stayed In: We'd have been denied Stewart's rampant lip-biting, plus Lawrence might have struggled to build a career quite so impressive as the one she has now in the shadow of Twilight. Some missed opp꧟ortunitieꦫs are actually dodged bullets.
Lucifer Rising (1972)
What Was Cut: Twenty-three minutes' worth of stunning music by Jimmy Page, intended to🌟 be used a🐻s the score for Kenneth Anger's film. Alas, Anger and Page had a massive falling out, and Page's compositions were turned down and hidden away until 1981.
If It Had Stayed In: It would have given the film an even more unsettling, neဣrvy vibe. Page's music is all Middle Eastern-esque chanting, with some gorgeous guitar thrumming.
