Movies have to be particularly careful when it comes to adding controversial scenes.
Since everything's right there on the screen, there isn't much left to the imagination.
Books, on the other hand, can get away with a lot more, which is why adapting a book to
film can be tricky business.
So which film adaptations left the most controversial scenes on the cutting room floor?
Let's take a look.
It: Chapter One
Easily the most controversial scene in Stephen King's 1986 novel It takes place after the
Losers' Club defeats the evil entity in the sewers.
When they get lost on the way out, the group's only female, Beverly, comes up with a strange
plan to help unite the group: she'll get busy with them all, one by one.
Immediately afterward, one of the boys remembers how to escape the sewer system.
Unsurprisingly, the scene was entirely dropped for both the 2017 film and the 1990 miniseries.
Screenwriter Gary Dauberman told Entertainment Weekly:
"While it's an important scene, it doesn't define the book in any way…
We know what the intent was of that scene and why he put it in there, and we tried to
accomplish what the intent was in a different way."
Me Before You
The romance film Me Before You had the benefit of being adapted for the big screen by the
novel's author herself, Jojo Moyes…which only makes it more interesting that the film
lacks one rather critical plot point.
In the movie, the female protagonist, Louisa "Lou" Clark is quirky and intelligent, which
is why nobody really understands what keeps her from spreading her wings.
In the book, however, we know exactly what Lou's deal is: in high school, she was assaulted—something
she keeps firmly under wraps.
This critical plot point is used to explain pretty much everything about Lou, from her
weird and overtly conservative sense of style to her offbeat personality.
Moyes claimed they tried to put that scene into the movie, but it simply didn't fit,
saying,
"I worked with the director a long time writing this scene and trying different variations
of it.
It achieves a different weight when you do that in pictorial form.
The more we tried, the more we realized it just skewed the tone of the whole thing.
It was changing the mood of the story."
The Road
Cormac McCarthy's 2006 Pulitzer-winning novel The Road and its 2009 film adaptation tell
the story of a father and son's fight for survival in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where
nearly all organic life has perished.
The film has its fair share of heavy moments, but one particularly disturbing scene was
left by the roadside.
In the book, the pair encounters a group of survivors about to eat a baby—a scene which
was filmed but ultimately discarded.
Director John Hillcoat explained:
"It all works in the book because it's in your head.
When you visualize some of this stuff it just becomes too much."
We'd have to agree with him on that.
Paper Towns
Adapted from John Green's young adult novel of the same name, 2015's mystery dramedy Paper
Towns tells a coming-of-age story about an all-night road trip of revenge.
However, one particular scene from the book was intentionally left out of the film.
In the book, the two main characters, Quentin and Margo, break into SeaWorld at the end
of the night.
However, following the release of the documentary Blackfish—which shone a light on on what
happens to whales in captivity—the screenwriters decided to drop the SeaWorld part completely
and have the characters end their night at Orlando's SunTrust building instead.
Producer Wyck Godfrey explained the change, saying,
"Since [John] wrote the book, the documentary [Blackfish] came out.
I think it's a little less playful to go to SeaWorld now."
Divergent
In order to maintain a financially friendly PG-13 rating, the film adaptation of Veronica
Roth's post-apocalyptic YA novel Divergent had to be toned down in a major way.
But one particularly graphic scene from the book was cut for different reasons altogether.
In the scene, the Dauntless initiate played by Ben Lamb wakes up with a knife in his eyeball.
Director Neil Burger explained that he'd shot the scene, but then decided to leave it out
of the theatrical release because it was "interrupting the flow of the story."
He told CinemaBlend:
"...even though it’s a good scene, that’s really the art of trying to figure out where
the movie is working and sometimes what’s slowing it down is one of your favorite scenes,
and you’ve got to cut it out."
Gone with the Wind
You can't talk about the history of American cinema without mentioning Gone with the Wind.
Adapting the racially charged novel for the big screen, however, was no easy feat.
As The Atlantic points out, in the book, the central black characters are "content with
slavery, uninterested in freedom."
Author Margaret Mitchell once describes a character as having "the uncomprehending sadness
of a monkey's face."
Even worse, the book calls the Ku Klux Klan a, quote, "tragic necessity."
Obviously, the producers had a hard time remaining faithful to the original story.
Even for the 1930s, some of those scenes were a little too racist.
American Psycho
Mary Harron's film adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis's 1991 bestseller American Psycho doesn't
shy away from disturbing scenes.
We watch the film's protagonist, Patrick Bateman, brutally dispatch multiple people and fill
up a colleague's apartment with bodies.
Still, the film doesn't even touch some of the scenes from the book, which is so disturbing
that The New York Times said it was "understandable" when Simon & Schuster refused to publish it.
It's some pretty messed up stuff, and Harron probably made the right choice when she decided
to keep most of the brutality off the screen… including one horrible chainsaw scene.
On the plus side, at least we got Christian Bale's moonwalking Huey Lewis monologue.
"He's been compared to Elvis Costello, but I think Huey has a far more bitter, cynical
sense of humor."
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