Eternal Sunshine’s deleted scenes could've changed the whole movie

Deleted scenes have long been a staple of DVD and Blu-ray extras, but with viewers increasing relying on streaming platforms for their movie-watching needs they aren’t always as easy to come by anymore. Thankfully, the internet is here to help. Specifically, the YouTube channel WhatCulture rounded up eight deleted scenes that would’ve had a major impact if they were left in. Back To The Future, Jaws, High Fidelity, Aliens, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, The Devil Wears Prada, and Anchorman all had some game-changing sequences that were left out of the final film (almost always for the better). But it’s the deleted scenes of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind that really take the cake.

Michel Gondry’s moving sci-fi romance about two former lovers reuniting after a memory wipe originally featured a whole extra layer of complexity. Though she doesn’t appear in the final cut, Ellen Pompeo filmed a whole bunch of scenes as Naomi, the ex-girlfriend of Joel (Jim Carrey). Back in 2017, Film Radar made a lengthier video on how Naomi’s presence entirely changes the story and tone of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. If Joel is more explicitly caught between Naomi and Clementine (Kate Winslet), his character is cast in a different light, one characterized more by guilt than by awkwardness. As Film Radar explains, context is everything in filmmaking and editing, and Eternal Sunshine would’ve been a much darker film if the Naomi stuff had been left in. Of course, as Film Radar points out, that darkness is still there—it’s just hidden deeper in subtext.

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