MovieChat Forums > Forsaken (2016) Discussion > Original Editor's Cut was over 3 hours

Original Editor's Cut was over 3 hours


Surprised nobody has mentioned this on these boards. More than half the original movie was left on the cutting room floor. How often has that happened for a feature film?

The original editor's cut of the film was over 3 hours and 15 minutes. The original script had a B storyline with a young couple played by Landon Liboiron and Siobhan Williams. Their relationship paralleled that of John Henry Clayton and his lost love Mary Alice Watson. Liboiron played a young gunslinger who ran with the bad guys and glorified the life of a gunslinger, when the protagonist was doing the opposite. The producers decided to just reduce the film to all the scenes that involved the father-son relationship and started adding back all the other scenes that supported that relationship, and left everything else on the floor. An opening action scene that showed John Henry and the gunfight that changed his life was also cut: the only shots that remained are the three haunting images that open the film.

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That's interesting, I noticed Landon Liboiron and kept waiting for his character to do something but it never happened.

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interesting, though think it was for the best. given the pace of the movie, any more would have made it too slow/drawn out. hard to not make a brooding, small scope western like this not feel overdrawn and boring, though think they did a good job here

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I'd be interested in seeing a cut like that. This feels like it was missing a lot of material.

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