penciltests

“Lilo and Stitch” 2002

Deleted Scene

Lilo plays a trick on the tourists.

leidis

IF YOU LIVED HERE YOU’D UNDERSTAND

I desperately need to understand

WHY

WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY

Was this scene cut from the movie??!!

Fucking christ, do you know what this would have done? What this would have meant to SO MANY people??  The truth of this is devastating. And to think it almost found it’s way into a DISNEY film??

The inclusion of this scene alone would have made it the greatest animated feature the company ever produced. Easily. And if you think that’s hyperbolic clearly you don’t understand.

No, really, if anyone knows why this was cut PLEASE let me know. 

snoozlebee

oh man WHY WOULD they cut this, this is so great, holy MOLY

coelasquid

It was clearly something the crew was very reluctant to get rid of if it made it all the way to rough-clean (and in a few scenes clean!), fully inbetweened animation. That is like, thousands and thousands of dollars and weeks (months?!) of labour. Maybe a reluctant producer decided they would alienate their white middle-class American audiences by making them feel “too guilty” and pressed them to drop it? It’s unfortunate, it’s one of the most honest accounts of racism in a Disney movie (which is why it’s believable that someone got uncomfortable and made a case to get it chopped)

Designing entertainment by committee for maximum marketability is probably the most heartbreaking process in Hollywood.

racebentdisney

I’ve been seeing this around my dash and think it deserves some more recognition!

scraps-is-busy

I’m gonna throw out there that it was probably removed for not adding anything to the story. It doesn’t help build any relationships between characters. You don’t see Nani and Lilo talking about it, so it doesn’t build that sisterhood that is so important to the movie. And you don’t see her really interacting with Stitch, so it doesn’t build that relationship either. 

I’m gonna make an example now. 

This is a deleted scene from Treasure Planet. In it, Jim is shown working on his solar surfer. The scene is about him taking a more fatherly mentor role and trying to help others (Showing his compassion) and in showing how resentful he is towards “father figures” since he never really had one. 

This was removed, as the audio commentary from the DVD explains, because it didn’t add anything they weren’t doing better in other scenes. 

What I’m getting at here, is Disney writers and story tellers trim a lot of ‘fat’ out of their stories. Find the best stuff, that makes the best characterization, and focus on that. 

It’s likely that when making Lilo and Stitch, it was decided by the crew that while they may like the scene with Lilo tricking the tourists, and how that added a little to her character, they decided that wasn’t enough, or just wasn’t as strong as some of the other scenes they where placing against it. 

Also, it sticks out like a sore thumb when compared to the rest of them movie, and I don’t know where they might have fit it in. (Maybe it was originally going to replace the scene where Lilo introduces Stitch to her ‘friends.’)