Why These Actor-Favorite Scenes Were Cut From The Film

If deleted scenes are the only reason you buy DVDs and Blu-rays — aside from the hilarious commentaries, of course — you'll feel a pang of empathy for these actors. Imagine spending months to a year (or more, if you're working with Peter Jackson) making a movie, only to sit down at the premiere and realize that your favorite scene didn't even make the final edit. Or maybe it was there when you read the script, but once you rocked up to the set, it was nowhere to be found on the schedule.

Directors, editors and studios have their own reasons for cutting out different scenes. Sometimes it's for artistic reasons, sometimes it's about finding the right flow, and sometimes your original cut is five hours long, and there's no way anyone is going to sit crammed in a theater seat for that long. In case you'd like to hear them out, here's why these actors' favorite scenes were cut from their movies.

The final cut of "Venom" was accused of being "chaotic" and dull by the kindest critics — so imagine if the filmmakers had included what ended up on the metaphorical cutting room floor. Star Tom Hardy has said that the deleted material was his favorite, but it may have been too weird even for the rest of the movie.

In an interview with ComicsExplained, asked what his favorite "Venom" scenes were, Hardy replied, "They're scenes that aren't in this movie. There are 30-  to 40-minutes' worth of scenes that aren't in this movie." He went on to describe them as, "Mad puppeteering scenes, dark comedy scenes."

Many critics felt that "Venom" lacked the self-referential humor that superhero movies typically rely on to break up the intense action sequences. Maybe Hardy's favorite scenes could've saved the movie from that particular attack. However, Hardy's co-star Riz Ahmed, who was also at the interview, had his own not-entirely-serious theory about why they were cut. He told Hardy, "If they didn't make it into the film ... they weren't any good, bro, I hate to break it to you."

"Repo Men" almost managed to slip into the category of "technically a Christmas movie," alongside the likes of "L.A. Confidential," "Iron Man 3," and "Die Hard" (fight us). But the scene that would've helped it do so was ultimately cut. It also happened to be Jude Law's favorite.

The movie follows two best friends, Jake (Forest Whitaker) and Remy (Law), who repossess mechanical organs from people who can no longer afford to pay for them. Before coming into their grisly line of work, the characters served together in the Army. The scene Law liked the most showed the transition from one career to the next.

As he explained, it was set during Christmas. "It had just snowed in Toronto, and there was this little house that was covered in lovely Santa lights," he told Film Festival Traveler in 2010. The scene showed the aftermath of the duo's first repo: They walk out of the house, covered in blood and laughing, and stroll off down the street. 

In the end, it was likely cut to speed up the movie's pace. Law said that the script was constantly changing, and a lot of the scenes showing the pair's military past were condensed into just a fleeting shot of them in a tank. However, he personally liked the "little bits that just show the bond ... brotherhood." You'll never watch him in "The Holiday" in the same way.

Even being a favorite of one leading man and the director sometimes isn't enough to guarantee a scene's place in the final version of the movie. Quentin Tarantino admits that he cut what he believes was Leonardo DiCaprio's favorite scene in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" — and he says it was his favorite too.

In the scene, DiCaprio's character — Rick Dalton, a washed-up actor — has a moving phone call with a little girl, Trudi Fraser (Julia Butters), who's acting with him on a TV pilot. The jaded performer and the up-and-comer talk about the magic of working in Hollywood. Tarantino has given audiences plenty of eye-watering moments, although usually because someone on-screen is being subjected to violence. But in an interview with CinemaBlend's ReelBlend podcast, he says that this scene made him and Butters tear up from the pathos.

Given all that, it seems odd that Tarantino would cut it, and he seems surprised too. "That was my favorite scene in the script. ... The idea that that wouldn't be in the movie was unfathomable," he said. However, he explained that it felt too much like a bookend to the movie, which made the next part — including the scenes based on the Manson murders — feel like an awkward afterthought instead of a well-rounded Act Three.

Even marketing departments like to weigh in on what gets cut. Brad Pitt told Entertainment Weekly that his favorite scene in the 1994 Western/World War I epic "Legends of the Fall" was cut after a marketing report found that it was the most hated scene among focus groups. 

Pitt says he was surprised, saying, "I understand that it's uncomfortable, but it's a monumental scene." He wouldn't reveal what happened, but given that the finished movie included a scene in which Pitt's character rides into camp wearing the scalps of German soldiers like a necklace (having recently cut out his just-deceased brother's heart), one can only imagine.

Looking at the reports himself, Pitt noted that it was also the second-most-liked scene. "I go, 'Guys, this is exactly why we're here. We want to evoke emotion — not favorable opinion, not agreement.'" Apparently, the studio didn't agree with him, and the scene stayed out.

Pitt learned from the experience, however. He later used his growing star power to make sure certain scenes made it from script to screen. When he signed the contract to make "Se7en," Pitt had two very specific (and very spoilerific) demands. As he explained to EW, he insisted the studio "put in the contract that the head stays in the box" and that his character had "to shoot the killer in the end." Predictably, the studio tried to renege — but we know how that turned out.

Anyone who sat through over two hours of Joaquin Phoenix's and Todd Phillips' supervillain origin story "Joker" and left wanting more will be excited to hear that there is, indeed, a lot more footage that didn't make the final cut. They'll then be disappointed to hear that Phillips has no intention of going the Justice League Snyder Cut route and releasing extra material.

With remarkable self-confidence, Phillips told Collider, "The movie that exists is exactly the movie I want it to be." However, there was one scene even Phoenix couldn't believe he cut, which the actor later described as "one of the best."

According to Collider, the scene showed an additional interaction between Arthur Fleck (Phoenix) and his Ha Ha's colleague/firearms supplier Randall (Glenn Fleshler) in the stairwell of the Ha Ha's office. It was a precursor to Arthur walking down the stairwell and pausing to cross out the words "forget to" on a sign, so that it now reads "don't smile."

Although Phoenix was surprised to lose the scene, he understood that Phillips cut it for the sake of the movie as a whole. As Phoenix put it to Collider, "You can have a great scene ... but the movie is the collection of all of these scenes, and they have to work together to tell the story." Once Phoenix saw the final cut, he realized that it worked much better without the extra stairwell moment.

Literature fans love to complain that the movie is never as good as the book — even when they're one of the actors starring in the project.

By the time Evanna Lynch was cast as Luna Lovegood, she was already obsessed with the "Harry Potter" novels. The self-confessed Potter nerd was even writing her own fan fiction to supplement them. Understandably, Lynch had strong opinions about the process of transitioning the magic from book to screen. And she was devastated when some moments from the novels were cut from the movies.

For example, the original script for "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" included Luna's quidditch commentary. Luna supplements her lack of knowledge — and interest — in quidditch with random musings and vague descriptions. "I loved the color she brought to it," Lynch says. However, it was ultimately cut, presumably for time.

Lynch went to bat for another very important book scene, to no avail. In an interview for the podcast "Normal Not Normal" with James and Oliver Phelps — aka Fred and George Weasley — she said that she was disappointed that Dumbledore didn't get the funeral described in the book, with "mermaids ... centaurs ... the whole Wizarding community." When Lynch appealed to producer David Heyman, he told her it was too expensive. Lynch offered to give up some of her paycheck if it meant they could shoot the scene, but he told her it wouldn't cover the cost.

When you know what made it into the hidden camera prank movie "Bad Trip" — a prison break, the Chinese finger trap incident, the gorilla incident — it's hard to imagine that there are yet more outrageous scenes that were left out. But there were, including one that stars Eric André and Lil Rel Howery described as their favorite.

The scene came in a sequence that showed Chris (André) and Bud (Howery) staying in what turns out to be a haunted motel. Chris falls ill, and Bud finds a nurse to help. But after the room starts exhibiting some spooky symptoms of its own, Bud tracks down a priest to help with an exorcism.

The priest was real, but the supernatural effects and André's parasitic spirit thankfully were not. That we know of. The team went all out on making the possession seem as authentic as possible, complete with a device that made André appear to levitate, an "Exorcist"-style voice changer, and bleeding walls. And the scene was captured twice. In addition to the hidden cameras, the video-savvy priest quickly asked Chris to record his victory over the demon. He also admonished him — mid-exorcism — for swearing. "The guy really thought he was doing it," Howery told 34th Street.

Even though André and Howery loved the scene, Andre told The Film Stage, "It just didn't fit into the body of the movie." However, it's since been released on YouTube as a deleted scene.

The three "Lord of the Rings" movies shown in theaters ran for a combined total of nine hours and three minutes. Add in the extended versions, and the total runtime rises to 11 hours and 36 minutes. Yet director Peter Jackson has revealed that there's even more unseen footage, currently locked up in a vault in Arizona.

One person who wants to see it is Viggo Mortensen, aka Aragorn/Elessar/Strider/Thorongil/etc. There's one scene, in particular, he'd like released.

Speaking to NME, Mortensen said that he remembered shooting a scene with Liv Tyler, who played Aragorn's love interest, Arwen. It was a flashback to their younger days, although that's a relative term. Aragorn is 87 when his Fellowship adventure gets going. The short explanation is that he's one of a race of humans that lives three times longer than regular humans. So he's looking pretty good already, but for this scene, "I was clean-shaven and prettied up. They'd tried to make me look as young as possible," he says. 

Nothing much happened in the scene. The young(er) lovers walk through a meadow. That probably explains why it was cut, although it would have been nice to see more of Aragorn and Arwen's love story. She does give up eternal life for him, after all. Mortensen acknowledges, "It was a beautiful sequence, but obviously, it wasn't needed for the movie." However, he'd still like to see it, Mr. Jackson.

Even James Cameron, Martin Scorsese, and Peter Jackson might've raised their respective eyebrows at the runtime of the first cut of "Dances With Wolves." Kevin Costner's historical epic, about a white Union soldier who forges an alliance with a Sioux community, was originally over five hours long.

Obviously a lot of material needed to go in order to entice theatergoers to put their soon-to-be-numb butts in the seats. That ultimately included a scene that film editor Neil Travis described as the one he and star/director/producer Costner most wanted to save.

Nicknamed "the Broken Forest scene" by the duo, it was a long sequence showing Kicking Bird (Graham Greene) and Costner's character, John Dunbar, riding to a sacred meadow, backdropped by Wyoming's Teton mountain range. However, they're devastated to discover that the center of the meadow has been destroyed and trashed by white trappers. This is not a scene for animal lovers.

Those painful editing decisions paid off. "Dances With Wolves" was nominated for 12 Oscars and won seven, including Best Director for debut filmmaker Costner and Best Film Editing for Travis. Even more significantly, Sioux leaders honored Costner for his sensitive portrayal of their culture, and in 2007, the movie was added to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry. The Broken Forest scene eventually saw the light of day too, thanks to a four-hour extended cut released in 1991.

Mark Dacascos found out he had a major role in "John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum" just a few hours before he had to get on a plane and report to set. Dacascos played Zero, Wick's most fearsome opponent (in this installment, at least.) It was a thrill for the actor and martial artist, but later, he was disappointed not to see some of his favorite scenes on the big screen.

In particular, he told Showbiz Cheat Sheet that he missed, "a very cool scene with the Adjudicator [played by Asia Kate Dillon]. ... There was a lot of history that hopefully we'll find out about in the next movie."

This isn't just wishful thinking. Whereas some scenes are cut because they don't fit in with the rest of the movie, "John Wick" director Chad Stahelski unexpectedly found himself factoring in not just the rest of "John Wick 3" but an upcoming previously unplanned fourth movie. 

Shooting the third installment inspired Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves to make another one. So Stahelski looked at what he'd shot for "John Wick 3" and cut it down to what he called "the bare essentials," knowing he could recycle whatever he deleted for the next movie. He didn't specifically mention Dacascos or Dillon, but told The Hollywood Reporter, "I'd like to think that 90% of what I pulled, there's a place in 'John Wick 4' that I can definitely reinsert them."

Although she's now the face of a lovable supervillain, it was while playing a real-life ice skater that Margot Robbie got into the most authentic fight of her acting career. And while this particular sequence of "I, Tonya" was her favorite to film, it's probably for the best it didn't make it into the movie.

As "I, Tonya" shows, Tonya Harding (Robbie) had a volatile relationship with her husband, Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan). Harding and Gillooly's accounts differ as to exactly what happened between them. As Vulture reports, screenwriter Steven Rogers said that the movie is based on Harding's account but that Gillooly claimed he'd never hit her. The film addresses these disparities head-on, literally, when Tonya talks to the camera during a violent montage.

Although Robbie, a producer as well as the star, had mixed feelings about how the domestic violence scenes would look to audiences, she got deeply emotionally involved while filming them. In one, she and Stan, as she put it, "got into a brawl." Robbie said that Stan slammed her hand in a door, and she whacked him around the head and stormed off to hospital — forgetting they were on a set. 

The fight was so brutal that the scene was ultimately cut. But Robbie said, "That ended up being my favorite scene because I forgot that I was acting, and nothing makes me more exhilarated [than] when I genuinely forget where I am."

The 2017 romantic comedy drama "The Big Sick" derives much of its comedic energy from situations that are usually far from funny. There's the medically induced coma, for one thing, and racist heckling during a stand-up gig for another — not to mention a 9/11 joke so dry it needs an IV drip. Good thing it happens in a hospital.

There's also the awkwardness of meeting your ex-girlfriend's parents while she's in the aforementioned medically induced coma. And the first conversation between Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani) and his would-be father-in-law, Terry (Ray Romano), was nearly even more awkward because it happened in a place where conversation is unofficially prohibited: the urinal.

In a Reddit AMA, Nanjiani — who co-wrote the movie with his now-wife, Emily (played in the film by Zoe Kazan), about their relationship and her illness — was asked if there was a scene he had to cut that he wished he could've kept. He answered that there was "plenty of stuff" but called particular attention to this scene. He said it takes place shortly after Kumail and Terry meet, when Kumail is in the stall and Terry is trying to pee at the urinal but can't because "he's pee shy," as Nanjiani put it.

"Super funny scene," Nanjiani wrote. "But we had to cut it cuz the movie worked better without it." However, it's on the Blu-ray, for those who haven't hit awkward/sad overload.