6 Movie Adaptations That Wisely Cut Ridiculous Details

Watching his daughter die in front of him drives Leland totally bonkers, and he starts wandering the building "crying like a child" and ruthlessly killing the rest of Gruber's fellow activists, including loads of women. When he comes across a young terrorist in her early 20s with "rosy cheeks", Leland "[shoots] this bitch in the forehead" and continues on his way.

Oh, and remember the scene in the movie where Karl, Hans Gruber's second in command, suddenly reappears after his apparent death and tries to kill John McClane, only to be shot by Al Powell?

20th Century Fox

Well, the same scene happens in the book, but instead of triumphing over his fear of drawing his weapon and shooting Karl to save McClane, Al pulls his boss Dwayne Robinson in front of the gunfire, killing him in the process. After spending most of the movie as a saintly, heroic character, we can understand why the filmmakers decided not to have Al Powell suddenly turn into a goddamned sociopath and yank the asinine-yet-comedic Dwayne T. Robinson into a storm of life-ending bullets.

2003's Cheaper by the Dozen features Steve Martin as a man who refuses to stop fucking his wife. The couple have 12 children, which results in a kaleidoscope of hijinks all related to the struggles of trying to share a house with 13 other human beings, such as "Boy, we sure do have a lot of kids!" and "Holy shit, look at all these children!" There is also a scene wherein the kids stuff Ashton Kutcher's underwear full of meat and try to get their dog to bite his ass off, which we think should've placed it solidly in the running for Best Picture of 2003.

20th Century Fox

But They Cut ...

Because Hollywood ran out of original ideas in the 2000s, Cheaper by the Dozen was actually a loose remake of a movie from 1950, and an even looser adaption of an autobiography written by two of the children in 1948. In the Cheaper by the Dozen book, Steve Martin's character was an industrial efficiency expert who believed that his methodology for factory management could be applied to everyday life, specifically raising his kids. This notably, and creepily, included having four of his children's tonsils removed in a makeshift assembly line in their own home. He then dies suddenly of a heart attack at age 55, which admittedly is the more realistic outcome of a middle-aged man trying to raise 12 goddamned children.

Thomas Y. Crowell Co.

Since having Steve Martin leave a widow with 12 kids would have kind of torpedoed the wacky tone of the movie, the ending was changed to Martin deciding to change jobs to spend more time with his kids. This also would've dramatically changed the tone of Cheaper by the Dozen 2 from "continuation of lighthearted family antics" to "unofficial sequel to Ghost Dad."

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Bernard Malamud was apparently in a super bad mood when he wrote his novel, The Natural. Either that or someone named Roy Hobbs had dinged his Altima. First of all, in Malamud's story, Hobbs actually accepts the bribe. It isn't until he finds out, in the middle of the game, that he's going to be a father that he changes his mind and tries to win. Now possessed with the singular desire to be an honorable man and do right by his family, Hobbs strikes the hell out, and his team loses.

Not only that, but a journalist eventually discovers that he was paid to throw the game, which means that on top of everything else, Hobbs is going to be banned from the game and have all his records wiped out.

Dell Publishing

Malamud's original novel was written as a King Arthur allegory, where a noble hero is eventually undone by his own misdeeds. However, the movie came out in the early 1980s, a decade in which nobody was interested in feeling bad about themselves, so they changed the ending to pretty much the exact opposite of what Malamud had written. After seeing the movie, the author supposedly said, "At last, I'm an American writer." Considering that his later novels touched on such cheery subjects like the hard lives of American immigrants and anti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia, we're going to say that comment probably wasn't a compliment.

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The movie was based on an investigative novel of the same name by Cameron Crowe, who at age 22 posed as a high school student (seriously) to get a closer look at the lives of teenagers and find out what they are really like. His shocking conclusion: Teenagers are assholes.

That's perfectly encapsulated by one scene that didn't make it into the movie: The father and sister of a student named Louis Crowley are killed in a car accident. That's tragic and upsetting enough, but then the dopey, loveable Jeff Spicoli bursts into Crowley's journalism class with a newspaper featuring coverage of the accident. "Look at these bitchin' photos of the crash," Spicoli shouts, before following it up with: "You can see the people inside and everything."

Universal Studios

The class is understandably horrified, and Crowley begins to cry. After this incident, nobody speaks to Spicoli for a month, although honestly he probably didn't notice, what with being stoned literally all of the time.

From acclaimed director Son of the Guy Who Made Ghostbusters, Up in the Air tells the story of frequent-flyer businessman Ryan Bingham, who leads a hollow and lonely life because he doesn't realize that he looks like George Clooney.

Paramount Pictures

By the end of the movie, Ryan is still alone, but he realizes that there's more to life than work, and decides to start his life anew.

But They Cut ...

In Walter Kirn's original novel, Bingham has actually submitted a letter of resignation to his company and is on a quest to earn as many frequent-flier miles as he can before his boss discovers his resignation and cancels his company credit card. Then we discover at the end of the story that Bingham is terminally ill, and he plans to donate all of his miles to children's hospitals. Having successfully Shyamalaned the hell out of us, Kirn ends his novel by having Bingham get on a plane bound for the Mayo Clinic for treatment.

Paramount Pictures

Director Jason Reitman did reference the book slightly when Clooney's character mishears a flight attendant asking another passenger "Would you like the can, sir?" as "Would you like the cancer?" However, other than that, Reitman claims he never even considered going with the twist ending, possibly because the recent release of The Happening had just provoked legislation to make adding a twist ending to your film a capital offense.

But They Cut ...

In Vacation '58, the original short story by John Hughes that inspired the movie, the Griswolds actually visit Disneyland (Disney didn't want their theme park to be featured in the film adaptation because, among other things, Disneyland is open 365 days a year). When they arrive to find Disneyland closed, Clark forces his way inside with an actual revolver, and proceeds to shoot Walt Disney in the thigh.

Warner Bros. Pictures

The story ends with Clark Griswold getting arrested for "attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, illegal use of a firearm, and two violations of the Beverly Hills noise code." The rest of the family abandons him to prison and heads back home on a plane. Luckily, the movie changed all of that so we didn't have to see a version of Christmas Vacation where Clark cooks up toilet eggnog while listening to a Lindsay Buckingham song.

J.M. McNab co-hosts the pop-culture nostalgia podcast Rewatchability, which can also be found on iTunes. Follow him on Twitter @Rewatchability.

For more missing scenes, check out 6 Deleted Scenes That Totally Change Classic Movies and 6 Crucial Movie Scenes That Never Made It Out of the Script.

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