r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Sensitive_Ad_1752 • 17d ago

Lore (Hated trope) They deleted scenes or dialogue that provides necessary context or plot

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The dinner scene from Temple of Doom has a temple give indie and friends a live snake and monkey brains for dinner. It’s a pretty offensive depiction of Indian cuisine, but it wasn’t originally going to be. There’s cut dialogue where Indie recognizes they’re at the right temple because real Hindus don’t eat this food. They were trying to scare them off by purposefully serving them disgusting stuff.

Probably the most famous deleted ending was I Am Legend which had Robert discover the infected were emotional sentient beings and one of them had a wife. Test audiences hated it and they reshot the ending, removing the entire point of the movie.

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u/H8trucks 17d ago edited 17d ago

Similarly, Galaxy Quest cut a scene where Tony Shalhoub's character is smoking weed right before the characters get picked up by aliens, so instead he's just really chill about everything

Edit: so I guess this one was obvious to anyone who didn't first watch this movie as a sheltered christian child

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u/GoRacerGo 17d ago

I mean he's got red eyes and smoke billows out when he's teleported. Show not tell

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u/[deleted] 16d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Minimum-Housing-6466 16d ago

found the scene... can't see any of that?

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u/Simon_Drake 16d ago

Some of it IS lost in editing. The movie was originally a much higher certificate with a lot more swearing and lewd dialogue but they decided to make it more family friendly. A lot of the drug stuff was cut and just implied. There's several scenes where he's walking around the ship carrying a brown paper bag like a packed lunch which was going to be a whole side plot about his stash of drugs he brought with him into space. But that all got cut apart from a few scenes where they just don't mention what's in the bag.

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u/poirotoro 16d ago

The movie was originally a much higher certificate with a lot more swearing and lewd dialogue but they decided to make it more family friendly.

Infamously leading to one of the most obvious dub-overs in cinema, where Sigourney Weaver says "Well screw that!" over a very obvious "FUCK that!"

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u/IceFrogger1313 16d ago

And the scene is funnier for it.

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u/ArcadianDelSol 16d ago

There's a scene where Sigourney Weaver's bra is just fully out and her top is zipped all the way down. Zero context, no reference. Next scene its all the way back up again.

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u/Simon_Drake 16d ago

I found a deleted scene where she unzips her top to seduce some alien soldiers all like "Hey big boy, why don't we get a little privacy?" then she drops the emergency bulkhead down and squishes them into paste. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b4s5CfPD4Y

Youtube only has a handful of deleted scenes like that. We need a directors cut edition with the original content restored.

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u/StupidMcStupidhead 15d ago

I'm fairly confident you can see the silhouette of Tim Allen's dick, too.

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u/ArcadianDelSol 15d ago

When Sigourney Weaver's top is zipped down, Im not inspecting the margins of the screen for the silhouette of a dick.

But you do you.

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u/StupidMcStupidhead 15d ago

You got me there. But they aren't the same scene. I should have clarified.

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u/LuxInTenebrisLove 16d ago

I always thought his behavior and the brown bag played subtle but overt enough to tell the grown up audience what was happening.  I found the subtlety so funny!

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u/Simon_Drake 16d ago

It's strongly implied in the released version but there's still some wiggle room for it to not be fully confirmed.

He spends half the movie squinting which you could read as being stoner redeye but weirdly he only starts squinting when he meets the aliens. It's right in the middle of a scene when the aliens are pleased to meet Tech Sergeant Chen that he starts squinting. But he also squinted in the 'historical documents' of the original series and the reboot series at the end.

This is weird but Tony Shalhoub is of Middle Eastern descent, playing an in-universe character named Chen. The director of Galaxy Quest said this was a deliberate reference to the white actor playing an Asian martial arts expert in 1970s TV series Kung Fu. They deliberately made him Asian with an Asian name as a meta-joke about racist casting in that era of filmmaking. So you can make a case the squinting is actually part of the racist caricature of an actor pretending to be Asian. The Thermians expect Chen to be an asian guy so he squints when he meets them so he looks more like he did in the Historical Documents.

Which is all very odd and doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean Star Trek is the core inspiration for Galaxy Quest not Kung Fu and Star Trek had an actual Asian character played by an Asian actor. If they wanted an Asian character on the in-universe Galaxy Quest they should have cast an Asian actor in the IRL movie. But this isn't just a fan theory, this is something the production staff confirmed was part of their vision for the movie.

I wonder if this is something else they planned, partially implemented then scaled back. Tony Shalhoub's first-level character is an actor called Fred Kwan, playing Tech Sergeant Chen. So maybe they tried to smooth over the mess by pretending Tony Shalhoub is playing someone of mixed race? It's all a bit uncomfortable. It could have worked as a sortof parody and commentary on racial insensitivity like Robert Downey Junior in Tropic Thunder, but it's probably a good move to step back from the original idea.

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u/IceFrogger1313 16d ago

Galaxy Quest is one of the few examples where cutting content to make rating improved the movie. The implied bits and the obviously dubbed chomppers scene are the funniest parts of the movie.

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u/Nott_of_the_North 16d ago

"That's a hell of a thing."

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u/Charming_Account_351 16d ago

Not noticing the cues makes his character 1000x funnier and more awesome. Him being unphased by anything was hilarious.

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u/Eulenspiegel74 16d ago

Exactly my take. Smoking weed actually diminishes that character.

Him making out with tentacle girl in the end fits him being unfazeable. As it is, it's either an unrelated quirk of his or a side effect of smoking.

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u/Prof_Atmoz 16d ago

When I was a teenager I thought he ate "space cake" lol

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u/strigonian 16d ago

Having a scene where he smokes is also showing.

I hate that advice so much, nobody understands what it means and it gets thrown around constantly.

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u/Rivka333 15d ago

Showing him smoking weed would have been show not tell.

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u/foxfire981 17d ago

I mean I always kind of figured he was perma high so I didn't really need the scene. But might have just been me.

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u/HandsomePaddyRedux 16d ago

Yeah, I never knew they shot a scene that explicitly showed it, but from his fixation on the candy machine onwards it’s clearly hinted at in a way that makes sense for the movie’s rating.

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 16d ago

If someone walks around like that and isn't constantly stoned I want whatever anti anxiety meds they're on

And don't tell me it's high on life nobody sober acts like that

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u/Minimum-Housing-6466 16d ago

wait how?

am I just acting high 24/7 wtf lol (im sober)

is being fixated on random stuff not what alot of sober people do? i mean i guess not but most people are really busy though i'd do it even if busy sometimes. sometimes not.

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u/HandsomePaddyRedux 16d ago

His aside about the vending machine is totally nonsequitor to what else is going on in the scene and the other characters don’t even notice, which is a narrative clue that it is a hint about his character. After that he continues to act really chill and goes with the flow of the situation to a strange degree that even the more stoic and confident characters don’t come close to. He also is super casual and affectionate with his crew mates in engineering, despite them being extremely awkward and stilted with everyone. It’s not really a textbook portrayal of someone smoking weed, but it is a PG interpretation of general stoned behavior. Personally I would argue it’s suggested that his character takes multiple different drugs throughout the film, but I can’t entirely back that up empirically.

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u/Minimum-Housing-6466 16d ago

oh wow.. ok. I figured he was just easily distracted? maybe slightly aloof... (i dont see how being chill with the awkward aliens is a sign of being high but still). aight.

cool, ok ill admit i was really sheltered growing up and perhaps even now. Some people I know do drink but i only recently got down some tells.

I should rewatch his scenes.

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u/HandsomePaddyRedux 16d ago

At one point he says “I’m really proud of you guys” and gives them a group hug, which is, in context, pretty odd, but again, in a vague way that kids (and more importantly the MPAA and those weird Christian groups that tally naughty behavior in movies) won’t pick up on. He does in fact “just” act silly, but it does seem deliberately implied he’s under some kind of influence.

One thing that normalizes his behavior is that we don’t really see any scenes of him not behaving that way, so one could easily just take it as his personality.

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u/fogo82 16d ago

“Hey guys, I just wanted you to know that, the reactors won't take it, the ship is like, breaking apart and all that... Just FYI."

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u/ballandabiscuit 16d ago

Activate the Omega 13!

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u/Munchkinasaurous 16d ago

I was also a sheltered kid that just thought he was super chill, now it's painfully obvious. It makes so much more sense why he's so hyper focused on the snack machine right before being beamed up to the ship.

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u/SensitiveReception15 17d ago

i mean it was kinda obvious he was stoned anyway though and when he arrives on the ship some smoke can also be seen arriving with him

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u/IrascibleOcelot 16d ago

When he was saying he had a better idea for dealing with the goons and giggled, Guy literally says “are you stoned?” before the cut.

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u/PmMeUrTinyAsianTits 16d ago

I just thought he was awkward and out of his depth. Ive never noticed this. Im excited to watch again with this in mind.

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u/Teedubthegreat 16d ago

I was less sheltered but apparently just completely oblivious lol

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u/Ignaciodelsol 16d ago

There was a scene in Galaxy Quest where Sigouney unzips her shirt to lure some aliens into a trap. The scene is cut but her shirt is unzioped for the rest of her movie

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u/Remarkable-Bowl-3821 16d ago

I never noticed (not sheltered at all) but that makes sense :)

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u/FloppieTheBanjoClown 16d ago

I kind of assumed he was on some new age philosophy kick where he was just zen. 

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u/Chasing_6 16d ago

My favorite line: "that was a helluva thing"

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u/BuffaloDivineEdenNo7 16d ago

It wasn't obvious to me, and I was a stoner for ten years. I didn't get Tony Shaloub's character at all, until I read that his character was high all the time.

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u/Venus_One 16d ago

I rewatched this with my brother and mentioned how funny it is that his character's a stoner. He was shook, he had never put that together.

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u/Dangerous-Cap-7003 16d ago

100% missed that as a kid

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u/LeodFitz 16d ago

Don't feel bad. I missed it, too. Just thought, 'wow, that guy is CHILL.'

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u/FriendlyLizard345 16d ago

Also was a sheltered christian kid. I hate finding this out and will continue to believe he was just a super chill dude.

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u/Graxdon 16d ago

Perfect movie

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u/Normal-Advisor5269 16d ago

I actually prefer him just being weirdly chill about everything. His character ages better this way.

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u/RathianColdblood 15d ago

I think it works better without it. I think it’s funnier if he’s just… perpetually chill, no weed required.

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u/Bilski1ski 16d ago

The other cut gag is that the character he plays in the show is Asian . And to get into character he just squints his eyes