Just because a director is willing to push the boundaries of decency in the name of entertainment
doesn't mean they're guaranteed to get away with it.
Sometimes, studios are forced to drop controversial scenes entirely, either to get a better rating,
or because of public outcry.
Here's a look at some offensive movie scenes you never got to see.
It's infamous orgy
Anyone who's seen Andy Muschietti's adaptation of Stephen King classic It knows that it's
plenty disturbing as it is, but if True Detective creator Cary Fukunaga had been left in charge,
things would have been a lot creepier.
According to The Telegraph, Fukunaga, who dropped out of the project in 2015 due to
creative differences, put together a screenplay that "horrified" the parents of prospective
child actors.
The studio responded by completely cutting two of the most offensive scenes in the script.
Neither were as shocking, though, as a scene from the book that was cut from both the 2017
film and 1990 TV mini-series because it featured the children having an orgy as a rite of passage
into adulthood.
No joke.
King responded to questions about the scene with a statement saying "times have changed
since I wrote that scene and there is now more sensitivity to those issues."
Divergent's eyeball stabbing
The first book in Veronica Roth's Divergent trilogy contains a scene in which an unsuspecting
Dauntless newcomer by the name of Edward is gruesomely stabbed in the eye with a butter
knife while sleeping.
A version of this disturbing turn of events was filmed for the first Divergent movie,
but wound up getting axed.
Director Neil Burger came to Lionsgate's defense over the decision to remove this scene, claiming
it was "cut out because it was interrupting the flow of the story."
Gangster Squad's cinema shooting
The original trailer for the 2013 crime thriller Gangster Squad included clips from a scene
where moviegoers are gunned down with machine guns.
Just a few weeks later, James Holmes opened fire at a Colorado cinema during a midnight
screening of The Dark Knight Rises, resulting in 12 fatalities.
The sequence was rewritten and refilmed.
Director Ruben Fleischer explained the reasons at a press conference, saying "The Aurora
shooting was an unspeakable tragedy, and out of respect for the families of the victims,
we felt it necessary to reshoot that sequence, and I'm proud of the fact that we did."
Deadpool's vulgar bar scene
2016's surprise smash hit Deadpool proved once and for all that there's a market for
R-rated superhero films.
Some of the most popular scenes in the film involved Ryan Reynolds and co-star T.J. Miller
trading profane clips at the bar owned by Miller's character, Weasel.
"what, like wear a mask?"
"Yes!
A very thick mask.
All the time.
I am sorry… you are… haunting."
But one scene they wrote together was so over the top that according to ComicBook.com, director
Tim Miller decided they had to just cut the whole thing entirely.
"In particular, there was a bar scene that was too vulgar for even the R-rated Deadpool.
T.J. and Ryan got together and wrote a version of the scene that we just said, 'Oh my God,
this is too far.'
I mean there were so many people offended…
It was just mean and so I said, 'No.
We don't have to do that.'"
Coulson's fate in The Avengers
Hard to believe, but the first cuts of Marvel's 2012 mega-blockbuster The Avengers actually
came back rated R. The problem?
According to Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige, it was because the tragic loss of SHIELD Agent
Phil Coulson was too graphic.
Feige told Movies.com, "We went back and had to make adjustments.
Whenever you impale somebody from their back and the blade comes out their chest, there
are issues."
Murphy's massacre in Robocop
The 1987 sci-fi classic Robocop originally came back with a dreaded X rating - which
in the current rating system is an NC-17, so director Paul Verhoeven made some tactical
cuts to the film to tone down the extreme violence.
Most importantly, he cut two seconds of footage from a scene where Alex Murphy, the policeman
who becomes Robocop, is massacred by criminals.
An elaborate model of star Peter Weller, who played Murphy, was created just for the scene,
but after they cut the shocking footage of his head getting blown up, the dummy only
ended up on screen for less than a second.
Spilling guts in Scream
Legendary horror director Wes Craven had to fight to get an R rating for the 1996 classic
Scream.
Craven told Bloody Disgusting that the ratings board originally wanted drastic changes.
"Initially their reaction to [Scream] was that it was virtually obscene and that almost
the entire third act had to be drastically altered.
You know, the whole scene in the kitchen with the boys stabbing each other to establish
the alibi, all of that."
They also wanted the beginning of the film changed, so Craven met them halfway by toning
down the stabbing scene, and removing one shot of a character's intestines spilling
out.
Yuck!
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