The proliferation of media resources that are focused on covering the comings and goings of Hollywood have exposed all the previously “internal” filming processes. Now, anyone with an internet connection can check on how progress is going on a movie they’re looking forward to. So, whenever we hear the news that a movie is being re-shot, we perk up and try to figure out why.
We know the reason for these movies. Here are 9 movies that were reshot to please the viewers! (The Last Jedi is not on this list because it shouldn’t be. Fight me!)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
This movie is constantly listed amongst the best movies of all time, and it’s consistently at the top of IMDb’s “best movies” list. What you might not know, though, is that the final scene of the movie was reshot in response to the negative reactions of its first test audience.
You see, the director originally wanted the movie to end in a less “clear” way. He wanted to end the movie right without showing Red and Andy meeting, to create the question of whether Red was able to assimilate to life outside of jail after all the years he spent behind bars. Needless to say, the answer was probably “no”, and the test audiences didn’t like it. So, Frank Darabont added a scene of Red meeting Andy after so many years apart.
The Little Mermaid
You know the song “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid? It was supposed to be cut from the movie!
During the original test screenings, the CEO of Disney, Jeffrey Katzenberg, didn’t like that most kids in the audience were getting restless during that scene. So, the composers and animators of The Little Mermaid added a few new shots to that scene to make it more exciting, and the song stayed in the movie. Now it’s a favorite amongst many people who grew up watching Golden Age Disney cartoons.
Back to the Future
Due to a conflict in scheduling, Michael Fox wasn’t the original Marty McFly! Originally, Eric Stoltz was cast, but the director and test audience didn’t respond well to that. The production team and director decided to reshoot most of the movie with Michael Fox as Marty McFly, and now we have the Back to the Future movie that we all know!
Titanic (1997)
The first cut of Titanic was 5 hours long. I mean, I love Leo and Kate, but I don’t picture myself ever being able to sit through a 5-hour movie. After the movie was screened to the first test audiences, James Cameron agreed to cut 45 minutes from the movie. Plus, he changed the ending.
The original ending was actually quite silly. Rose was supposed to fight a treasure hunter for the diamond. Instead, James Cameron reshot the final scene to make it more dramatic, and that’s how we got the Titanic that we all know and love.
The New Mutants (2020)
News about a New Mutants movie surfaced back in 2016. The trailer was released in 2017 and gave viewers whiplash over how different it is from what they expected. The movie looked like a horror movie! Audiences were shocked, and now the movie is going through a re-shooting process with a release date that’s been pushed back to 2020.
Suicide Squad (2016)
Suicide Squad was a disaster of a movie. It looks like the entire movie was edited by a marketing team who only had experience in editing trailers (fun fact: that’s actually exactly what happened). So, the “darker” movie that Suicide Squad was supposed to be was re-shot and re-eddited to give us the mess that we have today.
Deadpool 2 (2018)
The first viewers of Deadpool 2 complained that Cable and Domino didn’t have enough screen time. To please the audience, the directors and screenwriters decided to shoot several more scenes with just these two characters in them. It’s unclear which scenes these were exactly, but all I know is that I really enjoyed the entire movie and I was really glad that it wasn’t 100% dedicated to Deadpool and we got some background information on Cable and Domino.
Justice League (2017)
Justice League was supposed to be a sequel to Batman vs Superman. However, the movie was a box office mess, so the production team behind Justice League decided to redo about 20% of the movie, taking what they’ve learned from their previous failure into account.
Almost all the scenes that involved Superman were reshot, the coffin opening scene was added, and additional information about Wonder Woman’s past were added into the film. That’s what we know for sure.
Starship Troopers (1997)
This is a sci-fi satire classic. It makes fun of the genre and was actually, originally, supposed to be a romantic film. Carmen and Johnny were supposed to break up and after that Carmen was to have a romance with commander Zander. That made the test audiences furious! They wanted it to be super sci-fi with no romantic undertones whatsoever. They hated Zander so much that they wanted him killed! And so the screenwriters went back and made Starship Troopers into the “real action film” that it is today.
