A dark lord wiped out by CGI.
A heavyweight star saved from death in the ring.
A martial arts icon replaced by a cardboard cutout.
These are the fight scenes that didn't go as planned… for better or for worse.
Technically speaking, Game of Death was Bruce Lee's final film.
Released posthumously, it tells the story of martial arts star Billy Lo, who must fake
his own death to find out who's trying to kill him.
Around 40 minutes of footage were shot before Lee passed away in 1973, but when the movie
was finally released in '78, only 11 of those minutes actually made it into the film.
Sadly, this means that most of the fight scenes featured throughout the movie didn't involve
Lee at all.
Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse was the man brought in to finish the movie after
Lee's death, and he spent most of his time finding inventive ways to not show Lee's character.
Several doubles filled in for the fight scenes, including martial artist Yuen Biao, who had
previously doubled for Lee in Enter the Dragon.
As for the rest of the movie, most of the time Lee's character is wearing disguises,
hiding in the shadows, or has his face obscured.
One scene infamously includes a cardboard cutout of Lee's face pasted on a mirror.
Most importantly, nearly every fight scene features a different actor pretending to be
Lee, and it's painfully obvious, too.
Nobody can move quite like Lee, and it's clearly impossible to replace a bona fide martial
arts legend.
One of the most frequently-discussed scenes in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in
Hollywood is the fight between Bruce Lee and Cliff Booth.
The two square off in a two-out-of-three falls fight.
Lee picks up the first knockdown, Booth picks up the second, but they're interrupted before
they can finish their match.
However, this wasn't the fight scene planned in the script.
In fact, the scene played out this way because all parties involved held Lee in too high
of a regard.
The third fight was originally going to be much longer and more competitive, with Cliff
picking up victory via a "cheap shot."
The goal wasn't to show Lee as weak, though; It was to show how Booth operated and make
him more credible as a fighter for the audience.
It is, after all, the first time we see Booth throw down in the movie, and it's arguably
his only fight against someone trained for one.
However, Brad Pitt and stunt coordinator Robert Alonzo had reservations about Lee losing,
given his hallowed place in entertainment history.
Alonzo had Pitt and Mike Moh train for months on the scene, trying to find a way for Lee
to lose without tarnishing his image.
Tarantino eventually decided to have them interrupted with no winner declared.
The climax of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King finds Aragorn facing off against
a giant cave troll during the big battle outside the Black Gates.
It's a pretty great fight, but it's hardly the main attraction.
That's probably because this scene wasn't in the source material, wasn't originally
shot that way, and most importantly, wasn't supposed to happen at all.
When wrapping up the trilogy, the creative team behind The Lord of the Rings had two
thoughts.
First, Sauron needed to appear in some physical form besides the Great Eye.
Second, Aragorn needed to fight Sauron in some way in order to fulfill his personal
journey.
That's why an entire sequence was scripted, storyboarded, and shot in which Sauron shows
up before the Army of the West.
A blinding white light appears, and Sauron appears as Annatar, the angelic form he took
when he tricked the elves into making the Rings of Power — before taking his true
form and fighting Aragorn.
But, the filmmakers soon realized this scene just wasn't working.
It detracted from Sam and Frodo's struggle in Mordor and undermined Aragorn's role as
a self-sacrificing military leader.
It also looked like a clunkier fight than they originally wanted.
"And we thought, 'what's a worthy foe for Aragorn if it's not gonna be Sauron?'
And we thought 'well, a troll, a big, mean, armored troll.'"
They later repurposed the footage so that Aragorn would go toe-to-toe with the massive
troll, resulting in an epic battle of fantastical proportions.
In a movie full of striking battle scenes, one of the most striking of all in Avengers:
Endgame was the fight between Hawkeye and Black Widow, in which the two come to blows
over who will sacrifice themselves in order to acquire the Soul Stone.
Basically, this scene brought the superhero concept of self-sacrifice to its literal and
logical endpoint.
It was also never in the script, and only came about in reshoots when the original version
was already in the can.
The scene as originally shot had Thanos' army show up at Vormir, leading to a small battle
between them and the two Avengers.
During this showdown, Natasha runs for the cliff while Clint tries to stop her and fight
off the attack at the same time.
The scene tested well with audiences, but new ideas began to form by the time reshoots
started.
As such, the filmmakers reshot the scene to make it more intimate, helping to better serve
Natasha's character.
It's hard to talk about Dark Phoenix without discussing the movie's endless reshoots and
the controversy that followed.
Big chunks of the second and third act were changed during production, including no fewer
than two fight scenes being wholesale reworked.
One of these scenes was changed because it was too similar to another superhero movie.
One of the most hyped moments in Dark Phoenix was a climactic attack on the United Nations
building in New York.
Local media in Montreal shared pictures of the set, and reports implied that Jessica
Chastain's character was a Skrull who would be part of the assault.
By the time Dark Phoenix hit theaters, however, the attack was nowhere to be found.
The scene was replaced by a much smaller scale fight on a train, likely shot on a soundstage.
The United Nations attack was also supposed to feature a space battle, culminating in
a full-blown alien invasion of Earth.
This was scrapped because, according to James McAvoy, there was too much overlap with a
certain other superhero movie.
Considering the nature of the scene and the timing of the movie, it seems likely that
the movie in question was Captain Marvel.
That's why the scene was replaced with the battle on the train, a smaller-scale sequence
that didn't exactly do the film any favors.
The Terminator series has always been renowned for its special effects, winning a ton of
awards and acting as the launching pad for a new generation of SFX artists.
Terminator Genisys took this to the extreme by featuring a fight scene created entirely
with two CGI T-800s.
"I've been waiting for you."
The battle at Griffith Observatory between the two T-800s was featured prominently in
the movie's trailers.
However, the filmmakers weren't crazy about the scene after they'd already finished filming.
The production company wanted the battle to be "more brutal" than originally shot, but
instead of flying in Arnold Schwarzenegger and the rest of the crew in for an expensive
reshoot, they added to the fight scene using two completely digital Governators.
The added scenes were far more violent, and they certainly would have been difficult to
pull off with human actors.
The production team also used molds from the original 1984 Terminator movie to make doubly
sure the younger T-800 was accurate.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ends with Darth Vader single-handedly slaughtering a hallway
full of Rebel soldiers before the plans for the Death Star narrowly escape his grasp.
It's a brutal, one-sided fight scene, especially by Star Wars standards.
It also wasn't in the movie's original script.
Rogue One attracted a lot of attention for its reshoots, even though they're relatively
common in Hollywood blockbusters.
In fact, reshoots are often built into a movie's production schedule.
Nevertheless, those utilized on Rogue One were extensive even by industry standards.
The original plan here was to have the Death Star data get to Leia via a handoff process
with Vader following in pursuit.
Of course, the filmmakers decided at the last minute to add a little kick to it, and they
added the scene in which Vader actually boards the ship.
The result?
Nothing less than pure terror.
Rocky V finds the titular hero retired from boxing due to brain damage and out of money
due to financial mismanagement.
He takes young fighter Tommy Gunn under his wing, but the whippersnapper slowly becomes
resentful of his mentor.
The film ends with Gunn and Balboa having a street fight in which Rocky is roughed up,
but ultimately wins.
This victory wasn't supposed to happen, though, and the original ending was much darker.
For most of the production, the planned ending was for Rocky to die in the street fight.
He would take a great beating from Gunn and then die on the way to the hospital in Adrian's
lap.
She would then hold a press conference, telling the crowd that the spirit of Rocky lives on
in people who believe in themselves.
Director John G. Avildsen thought it was a perfect ending, and Stallone himself felt
sick writing it.
A few weeks into shooting, however, the studio called Avildsen and forced him to change it.
Their reasoning: heroes don't die.
As such, the fight scene was changed.
Avildsen thought that the new ending hurt the movie, though, telling 94WIP that:
"Rocky didn't die, but the movie died because that was the point of the movie."
Raiders of the Lost Ark is widely considered one of the greatest adventure films of all
time.
Part of its success is attributed to Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones, who established himself
as the ultimate swashbuckling adventure hero — and one who isn't afraid to play dirty.
Indeed, one of his most iconic fight scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark was also one
of the most simplistic.
As a swordsman spins his weapons around in an impressive and terrifying display, Jones
takes the easy way out and does this:
This hilarious battle is fondly remembered by fans of the film, but it wasn't how the
scene was originally intended to play out.
In a Reddit AMA, Ford revealed the reason for the change, saying:
"I was suffering from dysentery, really, [and] found it inconvenient to be out of my trailer
for more than 10 minutes at a time.
We'd done a brief rehearsal of the scene the night before we were meant to shoot it, and
both Steve and I realized it would take 2 or 3 days to shoot this."
Since he wasn't feeling well and he had already done a major scene against several villains
before that, Ford proposed to Spielberg that he just shoot the swordsman.
Spielberg agreed, and movie history was made.
Ah, Justice League: the Internet's biggest talking point ever since comic book movies
became the next big thing.
The many stories of Warner Bros.'s interference in the production are legendary, with director
Zack Snyder stepping away due to personal tragedy and the studio drafting Joss Whedon
to practically remake the whole movie in his stead.
While mustache-gate dominated most of the headlines, there was one particularly iffy
action scene, shot by Whedon, that didn't feature in Snyder's original cut.
Right at the start of the film, Batman uses a thief as bait to draw out a Parademon.
The scene became known as something of a joke due to Batman openly saying Alfred's name,
possibly exposing his secret identity.
"What was that?"
"A scout."
"From space?
Like an alien army?"
"Alfred, are you seeing this?"
Funnily enough, the original scene was even more Whedonesque.
Holt McCallany, who played the thief, told Men's Journal:
"My scene with Batman was originally conceived as a comedic scene.
That's how Joss wrote it, and that's how we shot it.
I thought it came out great, but the studio felt it would be a mistake to open the film
with a completely comedic scene, so it was re-edited a little bit."
According to McCallany, Whedon sent him a bottle of champagne and a note as an apology
for the studio's changes.
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