Corruption in Test Screening

Test screening refers to preview screenings of movies to check both how well viewers will react and its rating system by the Motion Picture Association of America (from family-friendly to mature) to ensure that the film is complete and ready to be viewed. Some movies encountered some problems in test screening and received poor and negative reception (or some other films that were given a lot of positive reception), leading to either re-shoot, editing, re-dubs, or removals of scenes that are received poorly to be edited out and removed until it had to rushed after the movie's release date, or even worse, there are some other uncut scenes that are very rare and hard to find on public releases.

Which later possibly in the 2010s, it used to make a lot of "Director's Cut" or "Extended Cut" versions of movies that would be used to find all of the lost scenes from films old and new that they can be fixed on time, and can make the movie on release from mostly cinemas and even on DVD, VHS (formerly), and/or Blu-Ray that give the idea to give out a big amount of praise from moviegoers and even critics worldwide.

Examples of Corruption

1. In a family film, any scary or gruesome scenes will either be heavily edited or removed entirely.
   • In the animated film Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, footage showed the main antagonist Joker torturing Tim Drake and turning him into "Joker Jr.". Batman is stabbed by Joker with a knife and almost killed, only for Joker Jr. to shoot his "father" through the heart with a spear gun. A dying Joker utters "That's not funny... that's not..." before collapsing in a pool of his own blood. It was removed because of the infamous Columbine High School massacre taking place before its release. They edited the Joker's death so that he accidentally electrocutes himself whilst trying to kill Batman with a mega-dose of Joker Venom. Three years after the massacre, it was released as the "Original Uncut Version", finally showing the true death of the Joker.
   • The Disney animated film The Black Cauldron was going to be 92 minutes long, but it was requested that Jeffrey Katzenberg (a former worker of Disney until he founded DreamWorks) remove 12 minutes' worth of scenes that were deemed to be too graphic and scary for kids. In the scene when the main antagonist, The Horned King, rises from the Cauldron and jumps on his useless henchmen, some gruesome death scenes were found on YouTube.
   • Scooby-Doo: Entire scenes were used on the PG-13 version, but test audiences felt they were too scary for young children. Some other scenes were removed in the final cut and never released on the DVD version.
   • Ralph Bakshi's 1992 animated/live-action film Cool World is a rare example of this, not even be meant for kids in the first place and more to do with executive meddling rather than test audience reactions. It was originally going to be an R-rated horror movie where Jack Deebs (a normal human) and Debbie Dallas (a cartoon woman; she ended up being Holli Would in the final film) have a half-human and half-cartoon daughter who hates herself and considers murdering her father because she feels neglected by him. Unfortunately, the movie's producer Frank Mancuso Jr. (who ironically produced the Friday the 13th films for Paramount) objected to the movie's original premise and secretly rewrote the screenplay into a PG-13 rated Who Framed Roger Rabbit? knock-off, as Paramount was also looking for a way to cash in on that movie's success. To add insult to injury, Kim Basinger, who played Holli Would in the film, also agreed with the producers to make the film more "family-friendly" so she can show the movie to sick children in hospitals. The result led to it having an inconsistent tone, loads of plotholes in the story alone, and the movie that caused Bakshi to retire from making movies and derailed Frank and Kim's careers.
   • In Toy Story, when Pixar bought the rights from Walt Disney Animation Studios, Jeffrey Katzenberg told Pixar to make the story adult and cynical. The main antagonist, Sheriff Woody, is portrayed as a selfish tyrant who bullies the other toys into submission. The result backfired horribly; after a screening for the Disney executives known as "The Black Friday Incident", Roy Disney declared it the worst thing he'd ever seen, while company president Peter Schneider wanted the entire film scrapped. Katzenberg realized that he harmed the film's production after a discussion with Thomas Schumacher, and Pixar was given two weeks to rewrite the film as they saw fit.
   • In Bolt, when Chris Williams & Byron Howard were trying to figure out how can Bolt realize that he was just a normal dog, they thought of the "dog fight" which Bolt fights two bigger and mean-looking dogs. When Bolt fights the dogs it switches between "reality" & "fiction" as in reality - Bolt is getting brutally beaten up by the dogs, while in fiction - Bolt is using his "super powers" from the TV show. Which it ends with a battered Bolt realizing the real world. This scene was changed to the "River Rescue" but despite being changed again, the "River Rescue" wasn't as disturbing compared to the "dog fight".
2. Removing scenes that contain crucial information relevant to the story often results in confusion and plot holes.
   • The original Japanese version of Pokémon: The First Movie opens with "The Origin of Mewtwo", where Mewtwo, after losing his only friends to clone degeneration, kills the scientists who created him in a fit of rage. For its international release, 4Kids Entertainment cut that scene, redubbed, and edited the rest of the movie to play out like an episode from the TV series. Thankfully, the uncut English dub survived in the direct-to-video sequel Mewtwo Returns. The reason why it was cut out was because of executive meddling from Kids WB.
   • Thomas and the Magic Railroad suffered very hard from test screenings. As it has been found by the fans on the internet, it was said that the film was originally going to be 110 minutes long. When Britt Allcroft was pushed by the audiences against her wishes, the film was heavily cut and it was one of the many reasons why the film got unfavorably negative reviews from both fans and critics alike. However, the original script and rarely deleted footages of the original cut can be found online. Until many years later, the entire lost scenes are finally restored for the 20th anniversary Blu-ray release.
     1. The main antagonist, P.T. Boomer (portrayed by Doug Lennox), was jealous of Burnett Stone and was the one who wrecked Lady, not Diesel 10 (who, in the original version, was merely Boomer's weapon of destruction). After a test screening, however, Boomer was deemed too scary for younger audiences and was cut out of the film entirely. Found footage of the original chase scene was uploaded on YouTube.
     2. The voice cast was changed after the test. John Bellis, both a fireman and part-time taxi driver at the time, stated that he was originally going to play Thomas, but it was reported online that he sounded too old, so the role was given to Edward Glen. Next was Diesel 10, the character was originally played by an Australian voice actor named Keith Scott (who also played Bullwinkle J. Moose in " The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle" and the Narrator in "George of the Jungle") but like Doug, he was considered too scary and was replaced by Neil Crone doing a Russian accent, but the test audiences thought the accent was too offensive to Russians. Thus, after a long period of test recordings, Diesel 10 was given a New Jersey accent.
   • Heaven's Gate had the biggest problem in a test screening. The edited version was 149 minutes long (it originally ran at 325 minutes, which meant 5 hours and 25 minutes, but director Michael Cimino cut it down to 149 minutes in an attempt to save the movie from negative reviews) and it was called the worst movie in cinemas at the time. Later in 2012, it was re-released with the film being extended to 219 minutes long, making usage of some lost footage from the film. The critics gave positive reviews of the director's cut.
   • Event Horizon was meant to run for 130 minutes, featuring incredibly gruesome scenes that made it NC-17. Paramount Pictures was worried, and 30 minutes were removed to make it a PG-13 rating. One of the producers who worked in the film got the full footage on VHS, but it has never been shown. Shortly after the film's success on DVD, Paul W.S. Anderson was contacted to make a director's cut featuring the cut footage, but it turned out the footage was either lost or destroyed.
   • The 1993 film known as Super Mario Bros. was heavily edited for unknown reasons. Lost scenes are found on the trailers and images; for example, a victim being turned into a green ooze in the Devo Chamber was removed in the final cut, though you can clearly see the green ooze on the floor. Many years later, Super Mario Bros. Archive has found a full uncut workprint of the movie as it was going to be restored and planned to release on Blu-ray as the director's cut.
   • In Maximum Overdrive some scenes were cut. Back then, it had an NC-17 rating. One deleted scene involved a kid's head exploding after being run over by a steamroller.
   • The Thief and the Cobbler was supposed to have been made by a late animator Richard Williams (who also made Who Framed Roger Rabbit). It took 30 years to complete until some of the movie agents rejected the director. After negative reactions from test audiences, it was cut with the help of Miramax to finish the movie as a cash-in to Disney's Aladdin, but it became a critical and commercial failure. Some years later, multiple fans created (with the help of Richard Williams) what is known as the Recobbled Cut, which used all of Williams' footage that made it into the film and some unfinished scenes to bring us all the closest we can get to the original version.
   • In 1982, while Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 was being filmed as Smokey is the Bandit, the premise was originally going to have Jackie Gleason play both Buford T. Justice and the Bandit. However, test audiences found the idea confusing and, as a result of that, Universal had to reshoot half of the film with Jerry Reed as the Bandit while Jackie Gleason was playing Buford.
   • In the computer-animated film based on the Angry Birds video game The Angry Birds Movie the script featured the famous YouTuber named Toby Turner (also known as Tobuscus). He was going to appear as a bird character named "Perry" as a cameo, like Smosh as Hal and Bubbles. After voice recording sessions, Toby's role was removed from the final cut as the test audiences didn't like Toby. Apparently, this happened due to Toby's sexual abuse allegations.
   • The crowdfunded documentary Happy Happy Joy Joy: The Ren & Stimpy Story days after it was finished in March 2018, was been massively remade due to the sexual harassment allegations against Ren & Stimpy's creator, John Kricfalusi on March 29, 2018, resulted in adding one of John's victims, Robyn Byrd and John himself being interviewed in the documentary.
   • Walking with Dinosaurs was originally supposed to be a silent film, with no dialogue or voice-overs where some dinosaurs never talk. But the test audiences, producers included, felt confused as they thought there was an overall lack of plot, and thus voices were dubbed over the finished animation, presumably in an attempt to capture the success of earlier talking dinosaur films like Dinosaur and The Land Before Time.
   • South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut was going to have many gruesome deaths, lots of profanity, more songs, and more stories. When the MPAA got involved, most of the footage was destroyed before the final release. Most notably is Conan O'Brien shooting himself in the head after he betrayed Terrance and Phillip and Liane Cartman with a horse that Trey and Matt want to keep in the final cut but it was heavily rejected by the MPAA.
   • Rock & Rule, a 1983 adult-animated musical film is the most notable victim of removing/changing scenes, replacing voice roles like Greg Salata, who was replaced by Paul Le Mat due to constant complaints from MGM/UA Entertainment Company test audiences for being too "adult-themed", which sadly lead to it becoming a box-office bomb. Thankfully, they got the uncut workprint of the movie, and released it on YouTube as it was earned a massive cult following.
3. If a movie concludes with a sad or depressing note, it is often rewritten to provide a happy ending. For instance, if a main or significant character dies, the ending might be altered so that they survive.
   • The remake of Little Shop of Horrors was originally going to end with Audrey II eating the two protagonists Audrey and Seymour, and subsequently "ruling" the world by destroying and eating all that remains of human civilization. The theatrical version instead ends with the main hero destroying the plant. The original ending was made available on Blu-ray versions of the movie.
   • The 1999 horror movie Deep Blue Sea is a notable example that was originally intended to have a happy ending instead of a downer ending instead of other examples in here. The original ending was that the heroine finally destroyed the man-eating shark, but the audience despised the ending and told the director "Kill this bitch!", so the ending was changed to the shark killing the main heroine and the male deuteragonist finishing the job.
   • The 2007 movie I Am Legend was originally going to end like the 1954 novel, with Neville realizing that he is "the monster" to the Darkseekers (which was the point of the novel) and tries to make peace with them. Apparently, the test audience didn't like this ending and wanted a different ending. It was instead changed to an ending that removes all reason for the movie to be called "I Am Legend", where Neville blows up the lab with the Darkseekers and himself. Eventually, the movie's original ending was made available on its special DVD version under the "Controversial Original Ending" option.
   • Not much of the bad ending from Jaws: The Revenge was left in the theatrical release when Ellen rams the Neptune's Folly into the shark, which heavily bleeds and eventually sinks into the ocean. Later on, both the theatrical and DVD releases of the shark death were changed when Ellen rams it and caused the shark to explode into pieces (which you can clearly see at freeze-frame, showing poorly created special effects) due to how much test audiences hated the original shark death.
   • In 2007, independently found footage of supernatural horror Paranormal Activity had about two original endings and one alternate. The first was that the police arrived and shot Katie and the second was that possessed Katie to slit her throat with a kitchen knife, committing suicide. When Paramount Pictures executives acquired the film, they were shocked after seeing it and asked the director to change the ending. Micah is thrown out and then the possessed Katie destroys the camera, kickstarting the sequel.
   • Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story originally ended with Globo-Gym winning instead of the Average Joes. The final ending alludes to this, with the main antagonist whining about test audiences being unable to accept anything other than a happy ending.
   • The original ending for National Lampoon's Vacation had the Griswolds not getting into Wally World.
   • Terminator: Salvation originally had a very different ending, in which John Connor was quickly overpowered and graphically killed by a T-800, with the members of the resistance recovering his body, cutting off his skin and placing it on the body of the Human-Terminator hybrid Marcus Wright so that the resistance wouldn't lose hope (some reports also suggest that this ending had Skynet take control of Marcus and then murder Kate Brewster). After this was leaked by test audience members and caused a backlash from fans, the producers reshot the ending so that John was only wounded by the T-800, and then Marcus sacrificed his life to save John by being the donor for a heart transplant. Though the change was divisive at the time, many fans now agree (in the wake of Terminator Genisys turning John into a Terminator and then Terminator: Dark Fate outright killing him at the start of the movie) that the producers actually did make the right call in changing the ending, even if the execution could have been better.
   • Fatal Attraction originally ended with Alex committing suicide and making it look like Dan murdered her. American test audiences thought this wasn't a good enough punishment, so the ending was changed to Dan killing Alex by drowning her in the tub, but Alex doesn't stay dead — at least until Dan's wife shoots her. The original suicide ending has been shown in Japan.
   • The silent film of The Phantom of the Opera originally had an ending more in line with the original novel (where Christine kisses Erik the Phantom on the forehead and he dies in peace). Test audiences weren't pleased. In the replacement ending, he's chased down by an angry mob and drowned.
   • Final Destination originally featured a somewhat happy ending. The hero sleeps with his love interest, gets her pregnant, then dies. The movie closes on the two survivors standing by his grave a year later. Test audiences hated it and said they wanted more Rube Goldberg deathtraps.
   • First Blood originally ended like the novel with Col. Trautman ending Rambo's rampage by killing him. Test audiences hated it, finding it too depressing, so it was changed to have him survive.

The Overall Reason Why Executive Meddling Sucks

1. This significantly affects the film's quality, resulting in a product that may be overly diluted or lacking essential information.

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