Spoiler for The Grey, you guys. Seriously, go watch the thing now. It’s on Instant Watch, it’s one of last year’s best movies. Get to it.
Anyway, I’m not going to make a big thing of this, but it’s worth reporting purely because the debate around the ending of this film was so robust, and any chance to remind people to see it is worthwhile. A lot of people had a lot of opinions about the ending of The Grey, which embraced poetic ambiguity rather than cheap spectacle. I believe it was a fine choice. The right choice.
However, the ending many wanted –the one in which Neeson fights that fucking wolf– was indeed shot, but ultimately cut. There was some indication that it would be on the DVD but, unless I’m much mistaken, that did not end up being the case. That doesn’t mean you’ll never get a look at it though!
Director Joe Carnahan is prone to doing fun things with his twitter account –like releasing the sizzle reel for the Daredevil reboot that didn’t happen– and today he’s promised to let loose some of the beautiful storyboards from The Grey. Coming from artist Ray Harvie, the boards illustrate how the Neeson/Wolf fight was pre-visualized, giving you an idea what it would look like had it been cut.
Keep an eye on Joe’s twitter feed for more.
7 comments
I propose a sequel, “Fifty Shades of The Grey”, where the wolves take on an ARMY of Liam Neesons, each slightly darker than the last.
Oh my God, are you serious? They filmed it?! Why the hell did they not put that on the blu-ray. I would have paid an extra ten bucks for that.
Imagine if you will, the climax of Jaws. The shark is speeding towards Brody. Brody aims his rifle…and then the screen suddenly cuts to black. That’s exactly how I felt at the ending of The Grey.
Then I would posit that you watched it wrong. Maybe give it another shot.
I’ve come to the conclusion that “action” is boring. The real stuff is what happens to the characters before and after the fight. Consider Asimov’s Foundation. He never bothered to describe space battles. You just read the buildup and the aftermath. The cool stuff on Cloud City in Empire wasn’t the choreography but the character work, and Vader’s big reveal. Vader vs. Obi Wan/Death Star was far more interesting than Vader vs. Obi Wan/Lava Planet, even though the choreography was non-existent in the former.
SPOILERS, I guess. Showing Neeson fighting the wolf would’ve been redundant and against the purpose of the whole movie. He was going to die. He knew it. Why bore us with 5 to 10 minutes of wolf punching? And stick around until after the credits for the final end, a shot that tells us everything we needed to know. If a fight scene adds no information, then it needs to be cut. Unless it’s Jackie Chan.
What Renn Brown said.
Not that I needed to see the fight, but I maintain that the ending cut out a few seconds too early. Honestly, is there any ambiguity to the end? The final post-credits scene pretty much spells it out. A few seconds to provide a modicum of catharsis would have been perfect.
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