A number of big, exciting 2010s movies were ruined by reshoots that were supposed to be fixing their apparent problems. Thanks to the likes of World War Z and Rogue One, the blockbuster scene of the last decade was marked by a barrage of movies whose productions were heavily impacted by the presence of extensive reshoots. Reshoots are a process whereby movies go back after principal photography is finished to either redo already-filmed scenes or capture footage for brand-new sequences. Though they’ve only become a topic of immense interest in the last six or seven years, they’re are far from a brand new concept when it comes to filmmaking.
Reshoots have always been a part of the production process for many feature films, dating all the way back to the days of the 1925 take on The Phantom of the Opera. In many cases, reshoots have made movies better. However, that’s the best scenario. In the past decade, the worst-case scenario for reshoots has frequently emerged, particularly in regards to a number of blockbuster titles, although partly because reshoots are only noticed when they go wrong. This is usually less down to the actual quality of the film, but to align the title better with the vision of studio executives and marketing personnel.
When this happens, creative collisions tend to transpire that heavily hinder the overall quality of the movie. Once ambitious filmmaking endeavors become cluttered messes. This most tragic outcome for movies employing reshoots has happened plenty of times in the past but some instances of it are more memorable than others.
Fantastic Four
The 2015 take on Marvel’s first family was supposed to be a bold new interpretation of this quartet of superheroes. Specifically, director Josh Trank was tasked with making a movie that was gritty and realistic. 20th Century Fox executives clearly wanted Trank to try and replicate the success of his inaugural film, Chronicle. Friction soon emerged between Trank and executives that culminated in Trank’s now-infamous opening night tweet disparaging the final cut of Fantastic Four. That was the result of extensive reshoots that drastically changed the movie’s aesthetic away from the original creative vision of Trank. Judging by what appeared in the original cut of Fantastic Four, Trank’s approach to the project was to apply a darker than usual tone to the Fantastic Four while keeping large swathes of their dense comic book mythos intact.
Trank’s original climax of the film, for instance, would have paid off an early reference from an adolescent Reed Richards by having the team use the famous Fantasticar in their final battle against Doctor Doom. Meanwhile, Tim Blake Nelson’s character was originally supposed to be Harvey Elder, aka iconic Fantastic Four adversary The Mole Man. Trank even wanted to utilize the robot character H.E.R.B.I.E. before that got vetoed in pre-production by Fox executives. Such alterations already show a high level of disparity between Trank’s vision and these reshoots, however, the way Fantastic Four was reshaped during went far beyond references to comic book lore.
Instances of body horror in Fantastic Four were also heavily reduced in the process of reshoots. An element intended to be related to the titular heroes discovering their new superpowers was once talked up as an indispensable part of Fantastic Four. But once the extensive reshoots were completed, body horror only made a small appearance in the runtime. Another once-critical detail undercut by the reshoots was the character of Ben Grimm. Entire scenes, including one glimpsed in the initial teaser trailer depicting the character on a baseball team, dedicated to exploring Ben as a person before he transformed into a rock monster were excised. As a result, The Thing and his human alter-ego had a minuscule amount of screentime in the final cut of Fantastic Four.
Cutting out screentime dedicated to Ben Grimm and body horror were just two of the ways the reshoots trimmed Fantastic Four down significantly, to the point that it resulted in a notably short movie whose credits begin before the 100-minute mark. The derivative nature of the reshoots becomes apparent in Fantastic Four’s ending, which involves a blue beam of light blasting into the sky that could have come from any superhero movie in the last ten years. It’ll permanently remain a mystery if Trank’s tone would have lined up properly with his simultaneous fidelity to the source material. What is more certain is that Fox’s reshoots created something far more generic than Trank’s creative vision.
Suicide Squad
Starting with its first grim San Diego Comic-Con teaser, Suicide Squad was greeted with a high level of anticipation and that excitement was maintained through its second trailer in January 2016. That latter trailer, though, contained a more lighthearted tone than the version of the actual Suicide Squad movie that existed at the time. However, the positive reception garnered by that second trailer apparently inspired the direction Warner Bros. now wanted to take the whole movie in. Word proceeded to break that the studio was about to engage in costly Suicide Squad reshoots to lighten up the tone.
This was a bold move that also appeared to coincide with negative feedback over fellow DC Comics 2016 blockbuster Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Such a poor response generated from a widespread sentiment that the title, as well as 2013 DC Comics feature Man of Steel, had engaged in an overly dark tone. With WB/DC beginning to develop a reputation for gratuitously grim superhero fare, injecting levity into Suicide Squad was seen as a way by WB brass of combatting the potentially damaging perception that DC films were all scowls all the time.
However, tone was far from the only aspect of Suicide Squad that got switched around once reshoots were complete. Most noticeably, Jared Leto’s heavily-promoted take on The Joker had his screentime heavily reduced in the process. As revealed by Suicide Squad director David Ayer, Joker originally had an entire subplot aligning him with the film’s main villain, The Enchantress. Such a turn of events would have eventually allowed Harley Quinn the chance to advocate for her own independence from the abusive Clown Prince of Crime. This aspect of the plot ended up getting eliminated in the process of reshooting the project. Ayer also stated that Harley Quinn’s entire storyline got significantly simplified in the process of reshoots.
These extensive reshoots aimed at revamping the tone and overhauling key character elements of Suicide Squad were far from the only issues the project faced in its journey to the big screen. Difficulties had been faced early on in production due to a minimal amount of pre-production time as well as having to remove original villain Steppenwolf to accommodate the plot of Justice League. But the expansive reshoots only magnified those behind-the-scenes creative issues, resulting in a final product that Ayer admitted was not his ideal vision. In attempting to give audiences just what they wanted, the Suicide Squad reshoots ended up delivering a movie that couldn’t resonate with anybody, least of all its own director.
Justice League
The entire production of Justice League was marked by some level of chaos from the get-go. Starting filming just a few weeks after Zack Snyder’s last superhero tentpole, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice debuted to a primarily negative response, Justice League was already starting on an uphill climb. From here, though, the story takes a tragic turn as Warner Bros. and Zack Snyder parted ways on the project due to a personal family tragedy involving Snyder’s daughter taking her own life. From here, Joss Whedon was hired to helm reshoots on Justice League, ones that would significantly alter the movie from its original creative trajectory.
Hiring Whedon, a person known for their projects heavy on comedic dialogue, indicated WB wanted the reshoots to take Justice League in a more light-hearted direction. However, these reshoots went far beyond just altering the tone of the project. Previously pivotal characters got pushed to the sidelines, particularly Cyborg. Cyborg’s original role in Justice League was originally intended to be the heart of the movie and have numerous sequences exploring his origin story. Those ended up getting left on the cutting room floor. Like Cyborg’s storyline, deeper connections to DC Comics lore were also removed during reshoots, including an on-screen appearance by Darkseid. That character showing up would have made the his connections to Justice League villain Steppenwolf more explicit.
Justice League’s entire climax was also overhauled during the process of reshoots, with a brighter color palette being one of the biggest changes incorporated into the finale. The changes enacted by Suicide Squad’s reshoots were just tweaks compared to the comprehensive revamp Justice League got. On top of all these heavy-duty alterations, a two-hour runtime for Justice League was mandated by WB executives. The end result of all those reshoots was that Justice League ended up being a far shorter and less divisive movie than Batman v. Superman, but its lackluster box office meant it came up far short of delivering the sort of results WB would have wanted.
This was because the reshot version of Justice League suffered from a clear lack of ambition that ensured it couldn’t drum up strong feelings on either end of the critical spectrum. Meanwhile, unlike many movies that garnered such lengthy reshoots, there appears to be a pre-reshoots version of Justice League in existence. Snyder’s famous original cut of Justice League has garnered widespread interest across the internet in the form of fundraisers and prolific billboards, all designed to help urge WB brass to release the Snyder Cut of Justice League. While ongoing campaigns pursue that goal, the original reshot version of Justice League becomes more and more of a distant memory. Despite all the extensive reshoots meant to turn Justice League into a supposed crowdpleaser, all they did was ensure that movie versions of Superman would be forever associated with Henry Cavill’s upper lip.
The Predator
Shane Black’s take on the Predator series was an underwhelming messy creation that clearly showed signs of behind-the-scenes turmoil. The Predator was drastically altered between when it started filming and when it finally hit the big screen. Among these changes were the removal of key extra-terrestrials that would have seen The Predator upend the traditional exclusively adversarial relationship between humans and Predators. Originally, The Predator would have featured friendly Predators. These creatures would have extensively helped the human protagonists on their goal of taking down the Ultimate Predator. These radical new takes on the Predator aliens would have factored heavily into perhaps the most significant reshoots-enacted change for The Predator, the third-act.
Originally, The Predator’s finale would have seen the human and Predator protagonists duke it out with their adversaries in the daytime. Meanwhile, certain human supporting players played by Olivia Munn and Jacob Tremblay would have had a more active role in the proceedings, particularly Tremblay whose character would have made use of his ability to quickly understand languages to help save the day. Such character and setting details run in sharp contrast to the climax of the final cut, which only sees humans facing off against the Ultimate Predator against the backdrop of night and (briefly) sunrise, with Munn and Tremblay’s characters having very little to do during all the commotion.
Other changes incorporated into the reshoots could be found throughout the entire runtime of The Predator rather than in just the final half-hour. The addition of Easter eggs tying The Predator into the continuities of prior Predator and Alien vs. Predator titles were added into reshoots. Meanwhile, a number of elements related to personalities of the main characters (most notably the dynamic between characters played by Thomas Jane and Keegan Michael-Key) were heavily revamped during the reshoots, resulting in a number of clumsily-executed character arcs in the final cut. The Predator ended up being so heavily changed during reshoots that a supporting figure from the original cut played by Edward James Olmos was eventually entirely eliminated.
These extensive reshoots helped to shape The Predator into an exceedingly messy movie. Among its many flaws, the reshot version of The Predator lacked the confident creative spirit found in Shane Black’s prior three directorial efforts. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3, and The Nice Guys are all prior Black directorial efforts whose personalities and creative ambitions are as clear as day. It’s hard for The Predator to conjure up that level of confidence in itself when it’s entire DNA was constantly being drastically altered during the process of heavy-duty reshoots. The chance for a fresh take on the Predator mythos that enjoyably echoed past Shane Black movies was upended thanks to the presence of such substantial reshoots that were more concerned with references to prior Predator titles than making a brand-new quality feature.
Next: Justice League: All Reshoot Changes Explained
