It’s never a good feeling when you work hard on a scene in a movie, only to find out later it’s been cut. Unfortunately, this is a typical casualty in the movie business that happens more often than not. But for Constantine, which starred Keanu Reeves, it ended up having to cut a star not once, but twice from the movie.
Constantine producers Akiva Goldsman and Francis Lawrence, as well as Keanu Reeves, recently sat down with Collider to talk about the movie during Comic-Con. One thing few people know is that Mission: Impossible – Fallout’s Michelle Monaghan appeared heavily in the movie as John Constantine’s love interest. But most of her scenes were cut... twice. Here’s what Francis Lawrence had to say about it:
I had to tell her that we were cutting all of her scenes before we got to do this pickup stuff. We then, Akiva [Goldsman] and I, came up with some new scenes and said, 'Hey, we've got some new ideas and we're gonna shoot some new stuff with you.' She was like, 'Great', and she came in and we shot it and tried it and it didn't work, and I had to call her again, a second time. The worst part was that the only piece that stayed in the movie was this moment at the end where Constantine lights the sprinklers which starts spraying the holy water. She gets hit and starts to burn, and she says, you know, surprised, 'Holy water?' and she hated that line. She hated that line, she hated that moment, and it ended up being the only moment of her in the movie after two attempts at various scenes.
Ouch, that sounds tough. Actors get cut from movies for all kinds of reasons, but it sounds like in Constantine’s case, it wasn’t anything Michelle Monaghan did; the filmmakers just wanted to take it in a different direction. Unfortunately for her, she’s barely in the movie at all, and the one part she appears in, she hated the most.
Constantine, a 2005 movie adapting the mythology of DC Comics' Hellblazer, is about John Constantine, an exorcist who can see angels and demons in their true from and helps a woman solve a mystery of her sister's death. Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly greeted with acclaim upon its release. However, since then, it has seen a bit of a resurgence and become a cult fan favorite. Even Rotten Tomatoes this year issued an apology regarding the movie on its 15th anniversary.
With all the renewed interest in Constantine, we’ve gotten a bit more information about what went on behind the making of the movie. For instance, the ground-breaking post-credit scene involving Shia LeBeouf’s character, Chas Kramer, wasn’t originally scripted and happened only after the Warner Bros. liked the sizzle real and gave Lawrence and Goldsman more money to shoot extra scenes.
One would hope that all this buzz about Constantine would generate interest in Warner Bros. developing Constantine 2. After all, Francis Lawrence and Keanu Reeves have said they’d be down to make another. And, I think Constantine fans would eagerly come on board as well. Unfortunately, as much as many of us want to see it happen, the chances still seem pretty slim. Stay tuned for more movie news at Cinema Blend.
