Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, it's Jan here.
In this video I want to talk about A Quiet Place and some intriguing deleted scenes and
rejected concepts, plus how the creature design changed over the course of production.
If you're finding me for the first time, I do lots of movie deleted scenes and breakdowns,
so do subscribe if you enjoy this.
Obviously, spoilers ahead for the movie, so take care if you haven't seen it yet.
The movie's producers revealed that the original script included flashbacks.
Though the producers weren't specific in their Hollywood Reporter interview,In fact,initially,
the loss of the family's youngest son was going to be "handled in a flashback".
However, when director and star John Krasinski did his rewrite of Bryan Woods and Scott Beck's
script, he wanted to make that shocking moment feel more urgent, so he cut the flashback,
brought the scene into the present and moved it right up to the front of the movie.
Losing that flashback and shifting the scene to the start of the film was a great call
by Krasinski as it made the terrifying reality of the family's situation totally clear from
the get-go; basically, the unthinkable becomes all-too-imaginable for both the family and
the audience.
Other flashbacks which featured the characters talking were also given the chop by Krasinski.
Though the producers weren't specific in their Hollywood Reporter interview, I think the
deleted dialogue may well have filled in some of the Abbott's backstory and as well as background
about the invasion of the creatures.
Speaking of backstory, in the trailers, there's a scene which was deleted from the film, which
shows Emily Blunt's character Evelyn watching what looks like news footage on various monitors
and there are also voiceovers from different news reports.
[FEEDBACK SOUND] "... a massive invasion ..."
"... around the world ..." "... an attack ..."
"... total devastation ..." [FEEDBACK SOUND]
This looks like it was probably part of some early exposition about the alien invasion
which ended up being cut from the movie.
What's also interesting in this deleted scene is that this version of the father's white
board wasn't in the actual film.
According to this board, there were three creatures to start and that increased to five.
But in the final film, the white board clearly shows that there are only three confirmed
creatures in the area; and at the end of the movie, Evelyn kills one of those and we see
two others on the monitors as they approach the house.
I imagine the filmmakers reduced the number of monsters in the area as they wanted to
leave the ending more realistically hopeful for the family, and if they'd had four creatures
left to kill at once, their odds would have been significantly slimmer.
While including more background about the Abbotts and the invasion in the film could
have been interesting, personally, I liked the way we were dropped into the family's
daily life in the middle of this apocalyptic situation without getting oodles of expositionary
dialogue about the characters' or creatures' backgrounds.
While you could never accuse John Krasinski's film of being overly wordy, the draft screenplay
for A Quiet Place only had three words of dialogue in it.
In that early script, the characters communicated via gestures and hand motions, but it wasn't
until Krasinski came on board to direct, star, and rewrite, that the idea of using American
Sign Language was included in the film and Krasinski also added the cochlear implant
being the key to the creatures' defeat.
These changes made a huge impact on the final movie, especially since Krasinski pushed to
cast deaf actress Millicent Simmonds as his on-screen teen daughter, Regan.
Simmonds injected her real-life experience of deafness into the film, teaching the cast
sign language on set and advising Krasinski on several key moments for their characters.
For instance, she told Metro that the scene where Krasinski's character Lee argues with
Regan after he stops her going into the basement was initially going to play out rather differently,
with Regan backing down to her father's authority.
However, during filming, Simmonds suggested her character would actually be rebellious
in that moment, and Krasinski embraced that idea wholeheartedly.
Also, originally, before Lee's sacrifice at the end, he was only going to sign "I love
you" to his children.
However, Simmonds proposed a subtle, but very effective change, which was for Lee to also
sign "I have always loved you".
As Regan's brother told his father earlier in the film, Regan felt her dad blamed her
for the death of her little brother and no longer loved her, though that wasn't the case.
So, thanks to the additional signing, Lee's final moments see him act on his son's earlier
suggestion to tell Regan what he feels for her, and that really heightened the emotional
impact of Lee's fate while mending his strained relationship with his daughter.
All of which was a great addition to the final film.
The original design for the creatures was very different to what we see in the film.
According to visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar, initially the monsters looked much
less imposing and had rhinoceros-style horns on their faces.
They were actually well into post-production when Farrar and John Krasinski realised that
the creatures needed a complete redesign as they just weren't frightening enough.
In fact, when they placed them in the movie, they looked a little silly.
Farrar suggested taking the VFX in a totally different direction, going for something that
looked, as he told Vanity Fair, much more 'gross...
really medical and raw'.
Of course, silence and sound were always at the heart of the film, so getting the right
look for the creature's ears was crucial and that was also altered a number of times during
production, with the monster's hearing canals being moved around the body from the chest,
to the head, elsewhere, and back again.
For the final design of the aliens though, the filmmakers looked to real life for inspiration,
including a sea creature with very poor eyesight called the nautilus, bats, snakes, prehistoric
fish, and even bog bodies, which are human corpses mummified in peat.
Reading through your comments on my Ending and Creatures Explained video, I noticed some
of you had issues with details in the movie that you felt created plot holes, one of which
was to do with the family's electricity supply.
Now, it's interesting you brought that up because in an interview with Slash Film, screenwriters
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have said that, as they were writing, they did think through
the logic of many different aspects of the film's premise and have answers to a good
number of those questions.
Their draft script explained lots of those details such as how the Abbotts got their
electricity through generators placed underground so they didn't make any noise above ground.
I think such details were dropped from the final film as director and co-writer John
Krasinski felt they weren't crucial to the overall movie and wanted to concentrate on
creating interesting character moments and interactions while ratcheting up the tension
throughout and still keep the run-time to a tight 90 minutes.
I'm sure you can think of more than a few movies you've seen yourself with scenes that
are bogged down in exposition and over-explaining themselves.
But co-writer Bryan Woods said that they really wanted to 'slowly paint in the world these
characters are living in' by showing us a newspaper headline' here and there or an 'awkward
interaction at the [family] dinner table'.
As Woods has also said, 'I think you can make [assumptions] and give the finished film the
benefit of the doubt.'
Before the movie was released, there was a theory doing the rounds online for a while
that A Quiet Place was going to be part of the Cloverfield universe.
And when the writers Beck and Woods pitched the movie to the studio, they did initially
fear that Paramount, which also distributes the Cloverfield movies, might try and make
the film fit into that franchise.
I can see the mysterious alien monsters in the movie could potentially have been incorporated
into the Cloverfield mythology, however, I'm glad Paramount shared the writers' view that
A Quiet Place was strong enough to stand on its own two feet.
And if there are Quiet Place sequels or anthology films, the producers don’t intend for there
to be any crossover with Cloverfield in the future either.
Speaking to Cinemablend, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller said, "That's not our world.
[…] That's J.J.'s world and he's carefully curating that.
[…] I think John [Krasinski] has created this amazing world with these characters and
I think A Quiet Place definitely lives on its own."
Although the movie does, of course, lean into horror tropes, I think it managed to create
something that felt fresh and was riveting to watch.
The writers have said they already have a number of ideas and set-pieces they didn't
end up using in the film, so it'd be interesting to see what they come up with for a follow-up.
Meanwhile, in another interview with MovieWeb, the writer further teased his sequel plans,
saying: "We even have some of the set-pieces already
written for it.
In a sense, that's what you have to base it around.
You have to figure out, what is the worst possible situation to put your characters
in and go from there."
On whether we can expect to see the same characters again, he said:
"I think you could continue down one path that's very obvious, or you could spin off
into a completely unexpected direction.
Which is certainly always interesting for us.
The uncharted territory of filmmaking is always where you find the best inspiration."
Now, what do you think about the changes and cut scenes in A Quiet Place?
What were your favourite moments in the movie and what would you like to see happen in a
sequel?
Let me know below and you can also tweet me @Jan_Gilbert or @FlicksCity.
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Thanks for watching and see you next time.
Yippee ki-yay movie lovers!