Netflix’s dark ‘choose your own adventure’ interactive movie Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is big hit, capturing the zeitgeist with it’s revolutionary format, which gives viewers the option to choose how the film plays out, as well as creating some mind-bending meta cause-and-effect ripples, based on the options that viewers select.
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Bandersnatch’s greatest achievement seems to be the replay value that the interactive film inspires in viewers. Bandersnatch is drawing a majority of viewers into multiple viewings, as users explore different pathways of choice and consequence, trying to unearth of the hidden gems of key scenes and endings that have become trending topics of discussion.
Well in a new interview with Huffington Post, Bandersnatch co-creators Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones revealed that there was on especially dark and very bloody scene in the film that viewers will never be able to reach – because unfortunately it ended up on the cutting room floor!
As Booker reveals:
“Yeah, we changed the order of something, and if you chop up the body, sometimes Colin or Tucker would come over and discover you covered in blood. And then you had the choice to confront them then and there on the doorstep. Whereas now they only come round if you buried dad in the garden. Which was a nightmare, because we shot these whole scenes where Fionn [Whitehead] was covered in blood, and ultimately didn’t use them.”
Yikes. That sounds like Bandersnatch star Fionn Whitehead had to get down and very dirty one day on set – ultimately for no reason. Then again, those are pretty much the breaks when you’re an actor: you never know which of your performance efforts will actually make it onscreen! On the other hand, having played through one of Bandersnatch‘s most pivotal decision points several times (whether or not to kill your dad – and then, what to do with his corpse if you do), we can safely say that it feels like viewers got robbed of a particularly exciting (and gory) possibility.
Booker also revealed that there was one very-meta decision path that they ultimately had to cut as well: One where viewers would essentially get to watch an entire second movie hidden within Bandersnatch:
“The one thing that I really wanted to put in, that I really wanted but we didn’t have time to do, was, there’s a bit where Stefan gets a VHS tape and watches a documentary. And I wanted, early on, to do a bit where you got the choice of two video tapes, and one is essential for the story, and the other is just, like, a film that he’s taped off the telly, and you can watch the whole thing. Literally just putting on, and you could watch a whole film, from beginning to end, but at any time you could press a button to stop it. Which we could have done, it would have been great.”
Well, often the decision to of what to cut or keep can really challenge filmmakers – but eliminating an entire secondary feature within an already convoluted interactive feature pretty much sounds like an easy cut.
Have you enjoyed the Black Mirror: Bandersatch experience? Wish any of these deleted scenes made it into the final cut? Let us know in the comments!
Black Mirror: Bandersnatch is now streaming on Netflix. Watch it, or don’t. The choice is yours (or is it?).
