8 Movie Scenes That Should Have Happened Off-Screen
We didn't need to see it.
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00:00 One of the most important rules of filmmaking is show, don't tell, because audiences generally
00:05 prefer to see rather than be told, film being a visual medium after all.
00:10 But at the same time, not everything necessarily lends itself to the visual treatment, and
00:15 as Hollywood has proven time and time again, it really loves to hit viewers over the head
00:20 with its ideas.
00:21 These 10 movies, no matter how great they may have been, couldn't resist the urge
00:26 to show audiences things which, if we're being honest with ourselves, were probably
00:30 better off just being left to our imaginations.
00:33 By not only shooting these scenes, but including them in the final cut, these filmmakers showed
00:38 a lack of faith in viewers to use their imaginations and think for themselves, in turn leaving
00:43 them groaning, eye-rolling, and maybe even close to vomiting at the end result.
00:48 These films would have immediately become more interesting and less objectionable if
00:52 these scenes were left on the cutting room floor, but sadly, what's been seen cannot
00:57 be unseen.
00:58 So with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture and here are 8 Movie Scenes That
01:02 Should Have Happened Offscreen.
01:04 8.
01:05 Zara's Death in Jurassic World
01:07 Jurassic World is far from a great movie, but it at least delivered easily digestible
01:12 blockbuster thrills for the masses, which only made the unnecessarily brutal death of
01:16 Claire's assistant Zara that much more shocking.
01:20 When all hell first breaks loose at the park, Zara is picked up by a pteranodon and then
01:25 dragged, screaming, into the Mosasaurus tank.
01:28 At this point, she's then scooped out of the water by another pteranodon before the
01:32 Mosasaurus finally dives out of the water and gobbles them both.
01:35 It's an oddly sadistic, prolonged death scene for a character who didn't really
01:39 do anything to earn it compared to, say, the douchebag lawyer in the original Jurassic
01:43 Park.
01:44 It's ugly enough to rather upset the movie's otherwise firmly escapist tone, clearly just
01:50 showing her to be dropped in the tank was sufficient enough to get the message across.
01:54 Writer-director Colin Trevorrow did later confirm that Zara was depicted as a bridezilla
01:59 in scenes cut from the film, which might have made her savage death seem more like a justified
02:04 comeuppance than it does in the final film.
02:07 As it stands, it's a weirdly cruel death which does nothing for the story or to further
02:11 audience satisfaction.
02:13 7.
02:14 Fury Loses an Eye in Captain Marvel
02:16 Just as most fans expected, Captain Marvel finally revealed the cause of Nick Fury's
02:22 damaged eye.
02:23 And in typical MCU fashion, it wasn't what anyone expected.
02:27 Ultimately, it turns out that Fury's eye was scratched by the alien flerkin, Goose,
02:31 who takes the form of a cat in the movie.
02:34 Given that Fury previously implied he lost the eye as a result of serious deceit, saying
02:39 "Last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye" in Captain America The Winter Soldier,
02:43 most fans were expecting him to suffer the ocular injury due to Skrull's shapeshifting
02:48 shenanigans.
02:49 Alas, fans got supremely trolled, and a potentially jaw-dropping origin story for Fury was turned
02:54 into a one-note joke where Fury didn't even seem particularly bothered by his life-changing
02:59 injury.
03:00 Lame.
03:01 As with Iron Man 3's Mandarin debacle, this was further proof that subverting expectations
03:06 is itself not enough, and that if this is the best they could come up with, they were
03:09 better off just keeping the event in fans' imaginations instead.
03:13 6.
03:14 The Psychiatrist's Exposition Dump in Psycho
03:17 Alfred Hitchcock's masterful horror film Psycho ends with the mind-melting revelation
03:22 that the murders have been committed by motel owner Norman Bates, who has a split personality
03:28 resembling his own dead mother.
03:29 It's an all-timer as far as plot twists go, yet one undeniably undermined by the follow-up
03:35 scene in which psychiatrist Dr. Richmond prosaically explains the full extent of Norman's illness
03:41 in the most listless, unimaginative, and yes, clinical fashion possible.
03:45 Though there's an argument to be made that audiences were less savvy to the particulars
03:50 of mental illness in 1960, even so, as a piece of writing, the scene is flabbergastingly
03:55 lazy.
03:56 Viewed today, it can't be seen as anything other than an otherwise expertly crafted film
04:01 telling the audience something they already know.
04:04 In an ideal world, this scene would have been left on the cutting room floor, as we transition
04:07 directly into the terrific "she wouldn't harm a fly" ending.
04:12 Number 5.
04:13 Andy and Red's reunion in The Shawshank Redemption
04:15 It's time to get a little controversial now.
04:18 The Shawshank Redemption is unquestionably one of the most crowd-pleasing, heart-warming
04:23 movies of all time, hinged on an extremely cathartic ending in which a paroled Red is
04:28 reunited with escapee Andy on a beach in Zawaterneo, Mexico.
04:33 As wonderful an ending as this is, it does also feel a tad excessive in giving the audience
04:37 too much of a hard resolution to the story.
04:40 Originally, writer-director Frank Darabont ended the movie with Red riding the bus to
04:45 the Mexican border, but the studio insisted that he at least shoot the happier ending,
04:50 despite the filmmaker having final cut privilege.
04:53 Darabont humoured them, and after a test screening of the studio ending was rapturously received,
04:58 he agreed to include it.
04:59 Even so, there's such a thing as giving audiences too much of what they want.
05:04 Red art is often born from the anguish of restraint, and having Shawshank roll credits
05:08 as Red takes a hopeful ride to Mexico, with that poetic monologue about the Pacific Ocean's
05:13 blue sea, would have been a flawless heart-stopper of an ending.
05:17 Instead, it overstepped on the crowd-pleasing front by a measure, even if it's still tough
05:21 to rail against the ending too much, given the arduous journey these two men have been
05:25 on.
05:26 End the movie a minute earlier, though, and it's practically perfect.
05:30 4.
05:31 Lincoln's Death in Lincoln
05:33 Steven Spielberg's terrific Abraham Lincoln biopic reaches its natural conclusion about
05:38 four minutes before the end credits actually roll, when Lincoln prepares to head to Ford's
05:43 Theatre where he meets his untimely end.
05:46 The shot of Lincoln walking down the hallway of his home to leave for the theatre would
05:49 have been a beautiful note on which to close things out, but Spielberg indulges himself
05:54 by actually taking us to Lincoln's deathbed as he expires.
05:57 Though the subsequent flashback to Lincoln delivering his second inaugural address makes
06:02 for a stirring ending, showing Lincoln's actual death just feels totally unnecessary
06:07 given how inevitable it is, though Spielberg at least stops short of showing the fatal
06:12 gunshot itself.
06:13 Nothing is gained from seeing Lincoln expire on screen, when fading from the hallway of
06:17 Lincoln's home to his iconic speech would have made for a far more dignified ending.
06:22 3.
06:23 Midichlorians in Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace
06:26 Though some fans will argue that large swathes of the Star Wars prequels should have never
06:30 been committed to film, most will agree that one of the prequel trilogy's major mistakes
06:35 was in straining itself to explain the Force.
06:38 In The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon Jinn explains to a young Anakin that the building blocks
06:42 of life and therefore the Force are midichlorians, a sort of space bacteria naturally occurring
06:48 in the universe.
06:49 It was a blatant attempt to hand-wave the inconsistencies in the Force from the original
06:53 trilogy, yet beyond being rather silly, only made things even more unnecessarily complex.
06:59 Plus, there was much charm and intrigue in the mystery of how the Force worked, and lifting
07:04 the veil on that was a major mistake.
07:06 Granted, numerous references are made to the midichlorians throughout the prequel trilogy,
07:11 but it's Qui-Gon's straight-up explanation which proves the most egregious.
07:15 At least if midichlorians as a concept weren't something so clearly defined, by removing
07:20 this scene from The Phantom Menace, fans would have one less thing to complain about.
07:25 2.
07:26 The Epilogue in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
07:30 Harry Potter mostly wrapped up in style with the thrilling two-hour finale that was the
07:35 Deathly Hallows Part 2, except for that widely ridiculed epilogue sequence.
07:40 The scene in question takes place 19 years after Voldemort's defeat, with Harry, Hermione
07:45 and Ron watching their own kids leaving for Hogwarts at King's Cross Station.
07:49 It's a cute idea, and certainly gave JK Rowling's books an incredibly satisfying
07:54 ending, but as with any big screen adaptation, it's all about the execution.
07:58 Ultimately, the inexplicably ropey makeup effects to try and make the principal actors
08:03 look almost double their ages renders the scene unintentionally hilarious, more akin
08:09 to a thrown-together SNL skit than the final scene in a $250 million blockbuster.
08:14 If the effects weren't up to snuff, David Yates probably should have just nixed the
08:18 scene and left it to the audience's imagination, but inevitably, Yates would have been raked
08:22 over the coals by fans for excluding it, so he was certainly damned either way.
08:27 1.
08:28 Bruce Lives in The Dark Knight Rises
08:31 The ending of The Dark Knight Rises has been tirelessly dissected and debated by fans,
08:36 especially the revelation that Bruce Wayne didn't die in Banes' fusion reactor explosion,
08:41 but rather rejected himself to safety and started a new life in Florence with Selina
08:45 Kyle.
08:46 Many fans were miffed, quite understandably, that Christopher Nolan went as far as to show
08:50 Bruce living it up in a Florence cafe when he's spotted by Alfred.
08:55 This obviously paid off an earlier scene in the film where Alfred expressed hope he might
08:59 one day see such a sight, but given that we all knew what Alfred was going to look up
09:03 and see, did we really need to actually see it?
09:06 The visual of Bruce at the cafe just highlighted how absurd it would be for him to go anywhere
09:10 without being recognised, while at least if Alfred simply nodded happily to another table,
09:15 we'd know that Bruce lived without being invited to consider how daft it all was.
09:19 You can argue that Nolan had earned such an indulgence after three largely terrific movies,
09:24 but even so, an absence of Bruce would have been the more artistically watertight way
09:28 to go.
09:29 And that concludes our list.
09:31 If you can think of any other examples, then do let us know in the comments below.
09:34 And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification
09:38 bell.
09:39 Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias
09:43 just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
09:45 I've been Ellie with WhatCulture, I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see ya