7 Famous Movie Flaws That Were Explained in Deleted Scenes

This whole article, a small novel, two abridged textbooks and an epic poem could be written about the sheer volume of deleted scenes from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but there's one particular cut from The Two Towers that seems particularly important. The flashback scene we're referring to shows Boromir and Faramir having a conversation after stomping some Orc ass--a flashback to before anybody knew that a certain hobbit had found a certain ring. Then their father, Denethor, shows up to kill the moment, because he's just generally not a "party type of dude."

Boromir and his father Denethor discuss the Council at Rivendell, and the fact that "Isildur's Bane" is the One Ring (a fact not presented otherwise). Denethor instructs his son to retrieve the Ring for Gondor.

This actually explains Boromir's entire motivation in the first film, and everything he does. His father, his brother, his people are all depending on him to bring back that goddamned ring. He was never going to let them destroy it. It puts the whole first film in a new light and without that scene, Boromir is just "that shifty dude" that kind of hangs out in the back, making all the hobbits uncomfortable for no reason anybody can place. He might as well have been driving a windowless van.

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Are you kind of a nerd? Have you seen Independence Day? What's the problem we're about to point out here? Exactly. Fully half of you reading this have just screamed to the heavens in futile rage about the probability of the famous Apple OS/advanced alien mothership compatibility issue. Even here at Cracked, we've drawn attention to this once or twice in one of our articles (like this one, this one, this one, this one and, well, this one.)

Essentially, Jeff Goldblum is reminded that the word "virus" exists, which is all the motivation and know-how he needs to hack a completely alien spacecraft with a mid-90s PowerBook. We can't even get our damn Xboxes to play pirated copies of Step Up 2 the Streets from our computer, and they were made specifically to interact with one another, yet the dude from Jurassic Park somehow manages to encode a goddamn .GIF of a laughing skull in there when he takes out the mothership with the cutting edge power of MacOS 7.6.

But in the seven minutes of cut scenes included in the extended release Independence Day DVD, Goldblum is actually shown tinkering with his PowerBook inside the recovered craft from the Roswell crash site, mumbling something about how the spaceship was running off the same programming language he was able to decipher before (when he first uncovered their invasion plans and all that).

So, he presumably worked from there and was able to code some disruptive program and translate it into their language or whatever. It's still flimsy as hell, but it at least proves the filmmakers were aware of and willing to address the problem, thus defusing a decade and a half of pent-up nerd-rage.

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In Aliens, Ellen Ripley, sole survivor of the first movie, is finally rescued after floating in outer space for 57 years. When she wakes up and inquires about her old life, she's informed nonchalantly that her daughter has grown up and died while she was in hypersleep. Wait, really? All in the span of 57 years? Apparently, despite mastering cryogenic freezing, the future has suffered some great steps backward in geriatric care.

But that's OK, because upon hearing this devastating news, Ripley essentially gives the camera a "whattayagonnado" shrug and trots off to kick some xenomorphs in whatever they call groins. Typical action movie fare.

But in this deleted scene, we are explicitly shown Ripley's heartbreak at missing out on her daughter's entire life, despite promising she would be home on her 11th birthday.

After seeing the human side of Ripley this early in the film, it makes perfect sense that she rescues and instantly grows so attached to the orphaned girl Newt. It changes the entire dynamic of the film; changing Ripley from a blank-slate Hero character to a grieving mother suffering from emotional transference. Also, it answers all the audience's accusatory screams of "Bitch, leave the girl! You don't even know that girl! They're Aliens! Run, bitch, run!"

Adam Sandler is angry and kind of dumb. This is literally the heart of every one of his films: Punch-Drunk Love, Waterboy, Anger Management, Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore all relied on his unrestrained, over-the-top violence.

That's why it's so puzzling that, in what would have been the most satisfying possible use of this device, Madison strangely reined it in and let the bad guy get away. Of course we're talking about Happy Gilmore, and the fact that, in the movie, the nanny-beating mustachioed Ben Stiller goes all Buffalo Bill on Happy's grandma and gets no come-uppance. It's the single most despicable character in the movie, and he gets away with everything.

Even Bob Barker got punched in the face in this movie. But they didn't just forget about him, the deleted scene has Happy hurling him out of a window...

So why did it get cut from the theater release? We can only cite the controversial anti-grandma slant of the MPAA.

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In Terminator 2, we learn that the Terminators suffer from a fatal programming flaw: Their love of squeaky voiced teenagers and embarrassing early 90s slang. In the span of a few days, an emotionless killing machine learns "why cry" and the heart-wrenching power of a well-timed thumbs up. If it's that easy to teach a Terminator to love, why isn't the resistance entirely made up of Hugging Squads?

It's an odd, unbelievable, unexplainable reaction by the "cold-hearted" machines in the theater release, but it was actually explained:

In this deleted scene, Arnold is scalped and the inner-workings of his metal skull are tinkered with. We learn that Skynet set his brain to read-only before they sent him off on his Electric Time-nificent Kill Adventure. Not wanting a hulking mechanical guardian with a learning deficiency, John and Sarah Connor crack open his head, and remove the block, allowing him to learn freely outside of his programming.

Although, come to think of it, My Friend the Retarded Robot would have made a rather excellent film in its own right.

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Paranormal Activity was supposed to be the next Blair Witch Project. And unfortunately, it succeeded: It was a low-budget horror flick with a simple, interesting hook, a handful of amateur actors, an emphasis on a kind of subtle horror that didn't rely on makeup, special effects or big breasted sexpots getting "impaled" for their naughty sins. And then, just when you were about to impressed with it, it fucked it all up right at the end.

Take note, because we are about to spoil the shit out of this movie (as if it needs the help): The girlfriend gets possessed by the demon in question, who then throws the dead boyfriend's body at the camera. She approaches the corpse, and comes up really, really close to the screen, and then BOO! Her deformed face jumps out at you. The end. Seriously.

So the whole film was essentially a 10 dollar, hour and a half setup to one of those stupid "screamer" videos your dickhead "funny-guy" friend keeps sending to you. But if you've seen the DVD, you may have noticed it includes like 20 alternate endings, including this one:

This arguably way, way better alternate ending suggests that the "possessed" girl ended up stabbing her boyfriend off camera, and eventually ends up shot down by police when she runs out of the room still holding the knife. This accomplished two things: It made you question what you've really seen - was it, in fact, paranormal activity, or mere psychosis? And it killed all chances at the derivative sequel that they are, of course, filming right now.

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So that raises the question: What the fuck was Nero up to from the moment Kirk was born, all the way until his reappearance 25 years later to fight with adult Kirk? If he was suffering such a vengeance hard-on, Nero could have easily picked off the future captain while he was a stupid, useless baby. Why wait until he's developed combat skills, a stunning James Dean-like countenance, kickin' abs and a Starfleet post? The answer, according to the theater release: Nero's kind of dumb, but really patient.

But this scene shows that Nero wasn't a complete, blithering idiot flying a space-ship by benefit of precisely-timed prat-falls.

If, for some reason, you're reading an article about deleted scenes but not watching said scenes, we'll recap: Nero didn't emerge into Federation space; he was captured and held prisoner on board a Klingon ship, until he escaped 25ish years later. This further explains his confusion, his unstable nature (Klingon jail is probably the outer space equivalent of Turkish prison) and his long absence. While it doesn't explain all the details, this scene at least shows that the filmmakers were both aware and fearful of the many, many nasal-toned diatribes they would no doubt receive for leaving plot-holes where Trekkies could find them.

For more scenes that could've bettered their respective films, check out 5 Superhero Movie Scenes They'll Never Let You See. Or check out some scenes that actually made porn better, in "I Have Brain Cancer": 6 Amazing Non-Sex Scenes from Porn.