One of the best things movie fans like to do after watching a movie is seeing it again on Blu-ray to see the parts of the film that were edited out. Deleted scenes are some of the popular extras attached to video releases. However, it sounds like we won't be getting much of that when Star Trek Beyond hits DVD down the road. According to director Justin Lin, they won't be releasing any deleted scenes when the movie comes out for home viewing for one simple reason. There aren't any.
These days, including deleted scenes with your DVD release is almost required. The only real question is do you put them back into the film itself and release a "director's cut" or do you include them as separate extras? Apparently, neither is an option for Star Trek Beyond. Director Justin Lin tells Empire, the movie was on such a tight filming schedule that they simply didn't have the luxury to film anything that they weren't sure was going to make the final cut. He explained:
We were very surgical. It was a really tight schedule. The challenge became our friend at the end of the day. There were a couple of moments with Spock and Bones that I ended up taking out, but it's very slight. Everything you see in the film is pretty much what we shot.
It's true that Star Trek Beyond went from start to finish much faster than your average blockbuster. Principal photography only began in June of 2015, which means it was essentially 13 months from the beginning of shooting to the premiere. To put that in perspective, Star Wars: Episode VIII just wrapped filming this month and isn't schedule for release for nearly a year and a half, giving them plenty of time to do all the digital effects and other necessary post-production work. Beyond had to hustle through filming in order to give the post-production team the necessary time to do their work, meaning that they didn't give themselves the time to film much of anything that wasn't absolutely necessary.
It sounds like some of the time that Spock and McCoy spent together on the planet was cut. This is certainly footage we would love to eventually see. The interaction between those two characters has been some of the best that Star Trek has had to offer ever since The Original Series. We do know that there was at least one other scene that was cut out. Our own Sean O'Connell sat down with Jason Matthew Smith, who played Cupcake in the original Star Trek reboot film. The actor told us that he filmed death scenes in both Star Trek into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond, but in both cases, they were edited from the film. At this point, we don't really want to see those scenes. As long as we never see them, Cupcake is still alive.
If you've seen Star Trek Beyond, is there any additional material you wish they had filmed? Anything that you think could have used more explanation? Let us know in the comments.
