Edit or Add a Single Scene...

So there was a comment that @pahaK made in the current non-English language countdown thread about clipping one shot from Let the Right One In to make it perfect and got me to thinking of other films that would have benefitted from one scene being cut or a deleted scene being add back in.

The one that instantly always comes to mind for me is The Shawshank Redemption.

This is as close to as good as storytelling in cinema gets, but for mine the film would have been better suited to finish with Red on the bus and delivering his 'I hope...' voice over, the bus turning the corner and exiting view, then roll credits, thereby taking out the beach reunion scene.

Because, what better way for a film about hope to end than with that sentiment, that sense of hope. Not knowing, but hoping that Red made it to meet up with Andy. Because, hope after all, is a powerful thing.

Anyhow, am sure there are plenty of others that would likewise benefit but am kinda half cut at the moment, lol, so yeah.

Any films you would have added or edited a scene, a shot, or re-arranged order etc, from that would have enhanced it?

Discuss.

I can see it both ways for Shawshank. Cutting the last scene would leave the audience with hope, but with the reunion we know that Red made it - so it's an ultra happy ending. It's an added sense of fulfillment.

I'm often left wondering in Sid and Nacy if the first scene where we are introduced to Syd Vicious and John Lydon roaming the streets, kicking in windshields, spray painting the apartments of bondage prostitutes, isn't just about the most embarrassing misguided scene ever recorded, or perfect at establishing how the film is not interested in deifying all the worst instincts of the punk music.



Either way, I still to this day cringe at everything that happens over the course of those five or so minutes, Lydon urging vicious to spray paint a dog, Lydon dribbling baked beans all over his chin warbling 'exterminate', Vicious constantly mumbling the refrain "we don't ****ing care" because he can't remember lyrics. It always makes me hesitate continuing, sure that this time the movie will succeed in making me see right through the entirely ruse of punk music, thus negating a vast majority of my life.


Even with it though, still a perfect movie. So I guess I wouldn't change anything after all.

Many years ago I read John Lydon's autobiography, Rotten, and to say the least he was not best pleased with the whole thing. He says that the actor who portrayed him, Andrew Schofield, contacted him about it before filming, and despite Lydon's advice, proceeded to ignore him entirely, not only about how he portrayed Rotten, but his friendship with Sid and everything else.

Although no doubt once on set the director etc got into Schofield's head and said how he wanted it done, but Schofield was genuinely terrible in the role. I mean, Gary Oldman as Sid doesn't get off much better, but does his best despite the terrible writing and direction.

But that movie is so filled with any number of inaccuracies - but then again any number of biopics that can be said of. Hell, Oldman in Darkest Hour & the whole train scene springs to mind just as much as being complete BS, but it carries the sentiment of the times for that movie.

Those scenes are included by the writer & director in trying to convey, even with in the case of Sid and Nancy, it is completely misguided and total BS, trying to portray punk in general and the Sex Pistols in particular as nothing more than one dimensional nihalistic anarchists, which is complete bollocks.

1) Schofield's performance is probably the worst ever out of any film I actually like. It's beyond dreadful. Understandable why Lydon would hate it. He hates everything.



2) I think Oldman is pretty perfect as Vicious. I think he is weirdly sweet and dangerous and talentless, much like the real deal. I find it a compulsively watchable performance.



3) The film is a nightmare of inaccuracies. But how accurate is it about the actual spirit of punk rock? Saying this as a fan, I think it gets it probably pretty spot on in that it understands both the revolution of the movement, but also the artifice that became tethered to it. Punk rock was somehow simultaneously one of the most important cultural shifts in 20th century art, and a total farce. I think this movie understands that.

When I was watching The French Connection deleted scenes, there is one scene I really felt they should have left in. It's the scene in the diner at 14:32 into this video:



I felt that Doyle giving the young man the illegal knife back was a very interesting side to the character, and felt it was the one they should have left in.

In Terminator 2, the theatrical cut, I also felt that the one short scene Cameron should have left was the scene where the T-1000 figures out the dog, because it really shows how smart the T-1000 is.

There's that great scene, in Le Corniaud (The Sucker, by Gérard Oury, in 1985), where the gangster Saroyan comes into an italian garage with a damaged cadillac, and, without knowing the language, has to quickly explain to the repairman what to do. Saroyan being played by De Funès, the result is this :



I'm always frustrated by the last shot. The repairman turning to his son and doing the "wasn't he screwy" gesture is redundant and deflates everything (compared to, say, a shot of stunned perplexity). It's like "wasn't our scene silly or what lol". Yes, it was but that was kinda the joke, thanks for pointing it out.

Generally speaking, I like reaction shots to be very subdued. When directors underline how the public should feel, pointing the finger and laughing, or cheering and applauding (the ending of Titanic, the submarine scene in Lost Ark, the helicopter tv reporter narration in so many movies, americans seem to love that trope), I... dunno, I feel the film includes its own public and we're not needed or something. It's like a canned laughter track in a movie. So yeah, I'm harsh, but these two extra seconds there often prevent me to post and share this youtube clip.

Catharsis is sometimes preferred to hope. The characters had been dumped on so much that I think audiences wanted an explicit happy ending. Sometimes the emotional needs of the audience overtake the formal rules of "good" story-telling. This is played for a gag in The Pirate Movie when Kristy McNichol stops the film and demands a "happy ending." We also see this defiance in Run Lola Run when Lola finally says "STOP!" The inversion of this is Funny Games' intervention into the plot to break the rules of reality to say "f--- you" to the audience.

I think it may be a better film in terms of satisfaction for having that scene. You could probably cut that scene out for a second or third viewing as the viewer would need it as much.

Today, filmmakers split the difference with end credits scenes, I guess.

I would've given Kirk Douglas more dialogue at the end of Paths of Glory.

Posting the scene here, because I had to google it :



It's an interesting scene. I find it enjoyable because it shows the T-1000 realising he was duped (take that, T-1000) and because of that amusingly weird room scanning scene (right after the exposition about physical contact). But I don't think it really makes it look smarter, the implications suffice.

The official edit is already one of my favorite scenes of that move. Really love that casual "tchok" during the phone call. The hand change, the shoulder framing and the zoom out are delightful.

Yeah those are all good points. I just really love how the T-1000 realizes he was duped. I never say the scene that followed it though, before that you mentioned where the T-1000 looks around the room. That part should have still been cut though I think.

Yes, he was perfect. Too lazy to look up her name, but “Nancy” was so perfect too.

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Chloe Webb. Yes, she's even better than Oldman. And she didn't get to have the career he did.

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Minari

Raiders of the Lost Ark - reinsert scene showing how Indy managed the sub ride at the end.

Back to the Future - Add scene of Marty banging his mom. They wouldn't have "got it" back then, but today's kids will love it.

Blade Runner - Have Deckard go to 1187 Hunterwasser first. That's his only hint at where he might be after Holden's murder.

Star Trek 5 - Delete scene where the movie happened.

Dr. Sleep - Delete some of the sappy lines and bad child acting. Delete regurgitated image of "river of blood."

2001 - delete the "Dawn of Man" sequence. Start with Dr. Floyd.

Return of the King - Delete at least five of the 36 endings.

Ghostbusters - Delete the BJ gag.

Any David Lynch film - Insert scene explaining half of what the f--- happened.

Ok, ectophobe.

She was good in Belly of an Architect.

That's an interesting alteration for Shawshank, which I remember being a good movie, but a bit too audience-coddling at times, and there are a couple of other changes I'd be interested in seeing with it as well. For one, I'd like to see a version of it without any of Freeman's narration (or at least, a version that used it more strategically, with less of it on the whole), because there's no need for him to cut in during the opera music scene to explain to us how inspiring hearing that was to every man in the prison, because we can literally just watch that for ourselves...



...but a more significant change, one that I originally heard from a poster on another (now dead) forum, would be that...

Can't think like that about a film.

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