A final scene in Disney‘s classic feel-good film about love and loss and aliens – Lilo & Stich – looked drastically different after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In the 2002 film we all saw (multiple times), a final chase scene to rescue Lilo from the clutches of Captain Gantu involved two alien spaceships. But in the original, Stitch, Jumba, Pleakley, and Nani steal a Boeing 747 and give chase in that instead.
But in the wake of the September 11 attacks, it was deemed far too close to home to include in the film, with animators replacing it with Jumba’s red spaceship.
The scene also included a chase through downtown Honolulu; the buildings were later replaced with skyscraper-like mountains.
Ice-cream dude still loses his ice-cream, though. Some things never change.
According to the Disney Wikia, the scene was revised mostly by replacing the CGI model of the 747 with Jumba’s spaceship, with only a few shots fully reanimated and a couple others cut altogether.
The original ending wasn’t made available until 2009, when Disney released a DVD featuring an audio commentary track with filmmakers explaining the recreation.
Here’s the full deleted, semi-restored scene.
https://youtu.be/sqh-kEPYr5s
And here’s a bang-on side-by-side version courtesy of Vox (just uh, ignore the super sad music).
