In an r/AskReddit thread, user u/suestrong315 asked, " What scene was left out of a movie adaptation of a book that made you say 'WTF, why!?'" Here are some of the most-upvoted responses:
1. "The scene in The Martian where a man on Earth is wondering what the astronaut stuck on Mars must be thinking out there all alone, and it cuts to the astronaut's log where he's like, 'How can Aquaman control whales? They're mammals.'"
2. "Every time they make a The Jungle Book movie, they do Kaa so fucking dirty. Every time."
3. "In the Lord of the Rings book, Denethor had a palantir and had been using it to essentially play mental tug of war with Sauron for years trying to get intelligence, which eventually led to his madness."
4. "My biggest Lord of the Rings complaint is leaving out the part where Faramir says that if he had found the ring on the road, he wouldn’t take it, and when he found out Frodo had it, he would have taken his previous words as a vow. He’s a great contrast to Boromir in the books. Faramir is strength to Boromir’s weakness like Aragorn is strength to Isildur’s weakness."
5. "The Percy Jackson movie revealed that Luke was a traitor via a fight scene. In the book, however, Luke and Percy went to a place with a beautiful lake view and shared some soda before Luke revealed his identity and paralysed Percy. That entire moment in the book was awesome — nobody really expected him to be the traitor."
6. "As much as I love the film version of To Kill A Mockingbird (and trust me, it is one of my favourite films of all time), I really wish they had kept in the section about Jem getting to know the angry old lady from down the road that complained at the kids every day. Jem spending the summer reading to her was a nice part of the book, and I wish it was shown on screen."
7. "Studio Ghibli's Howl's Moving Castle is great, but it does a fairly poor job explaining why the main character, cursed to turn into a 90-year-old lady, keeps turning into her original age and back."
8. "In the Jurassic Park book, you find out exactly what's making the triceratops sick, whereas you don't know in the movie."
9. "The most cinematic moment of the Jurassic Park book was when Dr. Sattler was trapped on the roof with monsters coming and used math to calculate that she could leap into the pool. Not in the movie."
10. "The Neverending Story. Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve read it, but the movie only shows the first half of the book."
11. "The movie version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest had to cut out a lot, but I think the one that hurt the film the most was less of a scene and more of an explanation."
12. "The Harry Potter movies messed up the characters' journey to get the Philosopher's Stone. They completely take out one of the tasks that Hermione helps Harry figure out in the books!"
13. "It's worse than just that. In the Harry Potter movies, they still say multiple times that Snape helped protect the stone as a defense against the idea he might be trying to steal it. But, as they removed his puzzle in the movies, it doesn't make sense if you haven't read the books that he actually helped protect the stone..."
14. "For me, the thing that p*sses me off the most (there were plenty of things) is that at the end of the Order of the Phoenix book, Harry goes ape and starts smashing things in Dumbledore's office. He literally starts screaming at the most powerful wizard in the world after a really shitty year and losing his last real relative who cared for him."
15. "In the Artemis Fowl books, a MAJOR theme and conflict in the book is Holly being the first female LEPrecon officer and having to be better than the males because any screw-up by her is magnified since she's a test case. But they made her superior, Commander Root, a female (played by Judi Dench)."
16. "In the movie version of Catching Fire, I wish they had kept the scene where Plutarch gives Katniss a hint on how the Quarter Quell will operate. He just ended up on their side out of nowhere at the end of the movie."
17. "The Hunger Games movies really got me a few times. The way Thresh kills Clove was a serious injustice for the first movie, but when they left out Haymitch's Quarter Quell video with his interviews and then how he won, I was extremely disappointed. They glazed over his character development like he was a burden to be there."
18. "Oh God, most of the Eragon movie? I guess namely how Arya was supposed to be an elf and not some 'damsel in distress' human, how a good portion of the Varden were supposed to be dwarves, and literally the entire final battle at the end."
19. And finally, from me: I wish they'd kept the bit about Pi exploring his beliefs across various religions and in various churches and temples in the Life of Pi movie.
Shout out to r/AskReddit and u/suestrong315 for having this discussion.
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.