Unless you’re a director like, say, Terrence Malick, you’ve got to be pretty judicious with what does and does not end up in your movie to get it down to a reasonable runtime. Even at a relatively formidable 135 minutes, not everything was going to make it into Black Panther.
Speaking to The Wrap, editor Michael Shawver (a frequent collaborator of director Ryan Coogler‘s) detailed two of the more “painful” scenes that were left on the cutting room floor in the effort of ensuring that the movie didn’t require an intermission.
Shawver said that “hands down” the most painful scene to cut was one towards the end between Okoye and W’Kabi, played by Danai Gurira and Daniel Kaluuya, respectively:
Toward the end, after things go bad and Killmonger is in control and all that, we’re talking about, what are they going to do? What is Wakanda going to become?
Those are two powerhouse actors and it was an incredible scene with so many layers to it — boyfriend and girlfriend, it was general and her advisor, all those things. That was painful.
Shawver said that the other was a big scene with T’Challa and Zuri:
There’s a scene between [Chadwick Boseman] and [Forest Whitaker]’s characters which sets up their relationship. It sort of lets you attach yourself to their father-son dynamic so that later on in the film … you really feel more.
They’re not gone forever, thankfully, with Shawver confirming that they would be making it into the DVD release of the film. Bonus features forever.
