Last week we covered movie mistakes, when something goes wrong but is missed and makes it into the movie despite the efforts (or lack thereof) of all those involved. But sometimes those mistakes are caught on film and added at a later date… and also not mistakes. I mean in some cases you could argue that a deleted scene was so good that cutting it was the mistake, but that is a matter or opinion/for the comment section, in the meantime lets talk about deleted scenes.
Every movie that is made has deleted scenes (I assume, maybe some lower budget B-movie stuff does not) Stuff that hits the cutting room floor for a myriad of reasons,which is not limited to being cut on the basis that it is bad, or unnecessary in fact a significant portion of time footage is cut despite intrinsic value. Anything from just cutting to hit a lower runtime to “lets film this now and add it to the special edition DVD so nerds will buy both” (looking at you LOTR), in the best cases deleted scenes can flesh out the story of a movie, or maybe add depth to character(s) or on the flip side you get like 7 different cuts of the same movie. I like Blade Runner, but do we really need a Director’s Cut and a Final Cut? Or there could be a case like Star Wars where a scene was filmed but cut because it did not work at the time, but was added later due to the ability to add things with newer technology (I am not endorsing this for the record, just observing).
At the end of the day, the reason something was deleted from initial release(s) is really unimportant, what is more important is what does it add to the movie. And the question really is: What movie/deleted scenes are your favourite? There is a lot to consider here but at the end of the day I think my favourite deleted scene comes from The Avengers. It has Captain America viewing old propaganda war films, wandering New York and does a great job capturing the loneliness/out of time feeling (plus a Stan Lee cameo). It eventually leads to a boxing gym which is where I presume we would pick up with him in the regular film release. It hits all of my sweet spots: a movie I really loved, sad, adds depth to a character/story, relevant to what I have already seen and has a Stan Lee cameo.