There are precedents for this.
While I never saw it, I understand that The Crow was released in some form even after its star --Bruce Lee's son -- was killed in a gunshot accident of a different sort.
But I DID see "The Twilight Zone" (1983) and what happened with that movie forecasts poorly for "Rust":
The Twilight Zone consisted of four separate segments -- three based on original 60's TV episodes and one written especially for the movie. A major director was assigned to each segment: Steven Spielberg, John Landis, Joe Dante and George Miller.
Spielberg was the King Bee, but all the directors were pretty successful -- and John Landis was coming off of the megahit Animal House and the big hit The Blues Brothers. Landis's segment was the one NOT from the show (written BY Landis, I think) and was pretty heavy handed, with Vic Morrow as a modern-day bigot "magiclally transported" through time and space to become a target of the KKK, the Nazis and ...US forces in Viet Nam?
We'll never know who the oppressors were in the Vietnam "sub-segment" of the larger segment of the film, because all of that material was removed for the final release of the film. Left in only was the KKK and Nazi stuff (as I recall.)
Because: night filming on a sequence of helicopters chasing Vic Morrow with two small Vietnamese children in his arms became tragic as an explosion sent the chopper down onto Morrow and the children, decapitating him and crushing the children. All three died.
CONT
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ecarle (14979)
2 years ago
With this material removed, The Twilight Zone movie was released about a year later in 1983. (Morrow and the children were killed in 1982.)
The John Landis/Vic Morrow "episode"(put up first in The Twilight Zone movie to "get it out of the way") was choppy and gutted and made only a modicum of sense. The Twilight Zone was gutshot as a movie from its first sequence on. Spielberg's segment was surprisingly bad(he reportedly dropped out mentally on his work after Landis' accident marred production.) Dante did a little better, and George Miller did the best of all, with his balls-to-the-wall remake of the TV episode about a mental patient on a plane in a storm who sees a gremlin on the wing. (William Shatner originally on TV; John Lithgow here.)
Unlike with Rust, everything was big budget on The Twilight Zone movie, so I guess Warners and Spielberg(producer) felt that the movie HAD to be released, but the tragedy lingered over the movie and the sequence that created it(with Vic Morrow, rather grateful for the comeback and thus performing his own stunts) was missing and the story was incoherent. None of the other three segments(not even Miller's) were good enough to overcome the Landis segment.
I predict the same thing will happen with Rust. The film may likely lose the "church scene" where the tragedy happened this time, but everybody will know what happened and the story won't play.
This is being done for financial reasons. The movie is already a loser.
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
I respectfully disagree that this situation is analogous to the posthumous release of "The Crow" or "The Twilight Zone", or "Saratoga" or "The Dark Knight", for that matter.
Those were all films in which an actor seen onscreen died before the film was released, they were NOT films where an actor killed someone on camera... and then expected the audience to forget all about the poor woman who died young and needlessly, and let him disappear into the character, and empathize with the character's struggles. No, I don't think anyone's ever released a film where an actor who's (accidentally) shot and killed someone goes around shooting and killing other characters onscreen.
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ecarle (14979)
2 years ago
No, I don't think anyone's ever released a film where an actor who's (accidentally) shot and killed someone goes around shooting and killing other characters onscreen.
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I could not agree with you more, Otter. In fact, while I would say "we were in agreement from the get-go" (I DO say that the movie will be a "loser" up thread), you raise here something incredibly painful about the continuation of Rust versus those other movies:
Baldwin's character SHOOTS PEOPLE all the way through it. How can they avoid the painful memories?
Which brings these thoughts to mind:
ONE: You can't shame a movie star.
TWO: Money talks. Evidently, even to widowers.
THREE: In the words of the late screenwriter William Goldman, "Its a given that all movie stars are insane. What's amazing is that they are not EVEN MORE insane."
PS. I would suppose that The Twilight Zone and The Crow are akin to Rust in that negligent/substandard filming procedures caused the violent deaths of actors -- adult and child alike.
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Otter (24464)
2 years ago
For the sake of everyone concerned, I just hope the finished film doesn't show Baldwin's character shooting any young women. Not even villainesses.
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