We're all suckers for deleted scenes. Sometimes they give a new insight into the events of a movie, or add a freaky new twist to the plot.
And sometimes we get down on our knees and thank the gods of cinema that some clever editor decided to dump them on the cutting room floor where they belong.
1. Terminator 2
A creeping dread that the horrible future will never be averted is key to the tone of the Terminator series. So what the hell is going on in this deleted coda where Sarah Connor explains in a noncommittal voiceover that everything turned out fine? You put Linda Hamilton in awful old lady makeup for this?
Not to mention that John Connor shouldn't really exist in a world with a happy future. It's a paradox, innit? Silver lining: at least Terminator Genisys never happened in this alternate reality.
2. Alien
Much of the creepy genius of Alien is the lengths Ridley Scott went to in order to make the xenomorph feel weird and inhuman. Lurking in the shadows and creeping down spaceship corridors, the creature is truly alien.
Except when it's crab-walking across the floor like a tall, skinny guy in a rubber suit. No wonder Veronica Cartwright was so freaked out.
3. Back to the Future
Marty McFly looks a whole lot less charming when worrying if time travel is going to 'turn him gay'.
4. The Devil Wears Prada
We can see what they were trying to do with this badly judged scene. Hey, let's make Meryl Streep's Miranda Priestly seem more human by revealing that even she has someone who torments her!
No, no, no. It totally defangs Miranda, who is only supposed to (maybe) show a hint of her human side right at the end of the movie. Fans reacted to the mouthed "thank you" as the terrible betrayal of the character that it was.
5. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
So Terminator 3 probably isn't a shining beacon in the series, but this deleted scene is so terrible that it would have poisoned not only the movie but the rest of the franchise, future and past.
The 'revelation' of why the Terminator looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger is a comedy interlude that is completely at odds with the tone of every other moment in the series, and raises far too many questions about why Skynet would have kept the robot design created by the squishy meat sacks at Cyber Research Systems.
6. In Bruges
Ralph Fiennes's Harry may be totally over-the-top, but he manages to make it work.
Doctor Who's Matt Smith does his best 'crazy Ralph Fiennes' impression in this deleted flashback, but the scenario where he walks into a police station and decapitates a copper ("Now don't get mad but I think I just beheaded your detective") is too stupid to live. And are we supposed to believe he didn't spend the rest of his life in prison?
7. Clerks
How better to end a loveable indie comedy than with a gaze into the abyss? So asks the deleted ending from Kevin Smith's 1994, in which Dante (Brian O'Halloran) is gunned down in cold blood by a robber (and he wasn't even supposed to be there today).
Who cares about cute/scatological anecdotes and witty banter when we are all doomed to die pointless deaths, eh?
