The REAL Reason One Of The Biggest Villains In Film Just Disappeared

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It's been so long since I've seen a non-extended version I didn't realize that scene was one of the extensions.

I am one of those people who didn't see the films in the theater and ONLY saw the extended cuts at home. I had no idea that a ton of people hadn't seen the death of Saruman until years later and I was shocked to discover that. It feels like one of the most important scenes in that whole film.

As someone who grew with the extended cuts I agree with Lee, just because you can’t cut out such character with no explanation; imagine if Darth Vader suddenly disappeared and we just had Luke fight the Emperor

It was indeed a strange decision to cut Saruman’s death from the picture. One of the key antagonists. Glad it made it into the extended version, which I believe has become the standard way to watch LOTR now anyway.

100% with Christopher Lee on this. Lee wasn't just a distinguished, esteemed veteran actor, he was the only person involved in the production to have actually met J.R.R. Tolkein. After playing such a major role in the first two parts of the trilogy, it was the best decision story-wise as well to bring closure to his character. This is why people hate when the suits get involved.

I think the worst part of all this, is that they ended up doing EXACTLY what Jackson said they were trying to avoid here when it came to The Hobbit and they left the Smaug climax for the last movie.

No one can ever compare to the villains Sir Christopher Lee brought to life on screen. I hate that we didn't get more time with him.

One of my big questions at the end of RotK was "what happened to Saurman?" When I received the extended edition of TTT, I thought that scene was both one of the best performed and critical to the story. That is one of Jackson's only mistakes making that trilogy.

It's worth mentioning Lee's relationship with Tolkien's work. He was a massive fan of The Lord of the Rings and read the books several times throughout his life. He had dreamt of playing Gandalf for years should a film adaptation ever come to be. This fantasy epic was a huge part of his life and to see it broken for the sake of 7 minutes must have been heartbreaking to say the least.

"From Lee's perspective, this was a massive betrayal." So did he feel like he'd been stabbed in the back?

Having watched the extended editions, as much as I love them, I agree with most of what they chose to cut for the theatrical releases as far as pacing goes. But they should've never cut this scene for the theatrical release. It makes no sense that Saurumon just disappears from the story and is never spoken of again.

Another detail that might add to the pain that this scene was cut: originally, Sir Lee was told to scream when his back is stabbed. And he refused to do that and said, if someone is stabbed, the person sharply inhales, but does not scream. He asked the team, if they ever had to whitness a person beeing stabbed, of course they said no. Unfortunately, he had to whitness such events during his service. So they changed the scene to how it is now in the extended edition. That made the scene really personal to him, since it triggered a lot of bad memories and he had to put a lot of his own trauma into it, I can imagine. Seeing it landing on the cutting room floor must have hurt deeply.

For everyone that doesn't know, Christopher Lee was the only one in that set that met personally Tolkien, he liked his books so much that was a tradition to him to read all the Tolkyen books once a year, so you can understand why he was so upset.

The commitment of the fans to the extended editions was probably something no one anticipated at the time. I think at this point the extended editions are considered the “official” versions by most fans. I watched a theatrical cut for the first time in years a little while ago and there seemed to be a LOT missing - not just Saruman’s death.

In the books, Saurman died in the Scorching of the Shire which was a whole story from the books that got left out due to time limitations for the films. Sorry that the whole situation wasn’t handled well, but the extended editions definitely create a fuller/better movie version of the story for sure- I love both the films and the books

The extended versions are just so essential. I wish there were extended versions of the extended versions.

Knowing that the shot of Saruman saying “Leave Sauron to me!” in Battle of Five Armies was the last time we would ever see Christopher Lee on screen makes me even more glad that he and Jackson reconciled. Man was an absolute legend to the end!

The fact that Lee found out he wasn’t in the third movie until he saw it is very telling. This story would almost certainly would have been different if someone had the balls to have a hard conversation with him.

My favorite character in the trilogy due to Lee's presence, he and the Witch King of Angmar deserved more screen time in my opinion.. RIP to the great Sir Christopher Lee