Tractor Tire Award of the Week - Your Highness ~ LightsRemoteAction

Have you ever watched a trailer and had that one scene, that one shot that made you go "Wow, that was cool!"? Or maybe there was something you saw that stuck with you, something that for some reason was in the back of your head and despite how insignificant it was you were waiting for it to show up in the final cut of the film. But when you watched the movie that scene was nowhere to be found or has been altered in a significant way. Well, that is what the Tractor Tire Award of the Week is all about. We try to track down those scenes that didn't make it into the final version of the film and make sense of them. Where in the film was it supposed to be? Why might it have been cut? Why has it been changed? We may not always have the answers for you but at least you will have your piece of mind and know that you aren't crazy. So, this weeks award goes to Your Highness!

Can you spot the difference?...

What a difference an R-rated trailer makes.

While an altered scene isn't really that big of an offense it at least is usually a curiosity. Most alterations to trailers are based solely on making something inappropriate for a certain age group work when advertising the film to a mass audience. This isn't anything new and happens all the time, but this was one of the more blatant and strange ones I had seen in quite some time. The image with Natalie in the thong is of course from the red band R-rated trailer and the one with her in a normal bottom is from the PG-13 trailer. However, there seemed to be two different PG-13 trailers, one that would play in front of other PG-13 films and one that would play in front of rated R films. So the thong image still made its way into the PG-13 trailer, but only certain ones. It started to become kind of funny because it felt like there were a few different trailers that all contained similar content EXCEPT for this one particular scene which seemed to change every time I saw it. Now if that were the only thing then I would write it off as the trailer people just being weird about the whole thong thing (seriously, is a thong really THAT bad?). But there was a second red band trailer released that had some more traditional omissions.

"Don't you f@%#ing touch me!".

First up is the fireside chat that Portman and McBride have shortly after meeting the woman warrior. In the finished film she played the entire scene like she was trying to be nice to McBride so she could take advantage of the situation. But in this second red band trailer there is a scene where she literally tells him "Don't you f@%#ing touch me!", which was nowhere to be found in the actual film. It was most likely cut because it didn't fit the scene and honestly I didn't miss it one bit.

"If I weren't already promised I'd dirty those waters".

This next one is very easy to understand why it didn't make it into the final cut. Most comedies of this type have a ton of ad libbing where the actors are given free reign to say whatever they come up with on the spot. Most directors let them keep going in hopes of mining some good nuggets from it all. This alternate version of the brothers watching Natalie bathe is most likely just a couple of the many different things they came up with during filming. The lines we hear are...

McBride "Filthy curves and muddy buttocks"
Franco "If I weren't already promised I'd dirty those waters"
McBride "Are you just going to sit here and ruin all my jerkings"

While it is a little unfair to throw alternate takes like that into your trailer (especially if they may catch on as quotes) it didn't really harm anything in the end.

So there you have it, out of what I believe to be four to five different trailers we got ourselves one alternate scene that was touched up for the PG-13 audience, a quick line of dialog with Natalie spouting the F-word that was cut and a couple of alternate takes from a scene still in the film but not like it appears in the second red band trailer. All in all it didn't turn out too bad and if they were going to include things in the trailer that weren't there I would have picked these as well since they were of so little consequence. If there is one thing I have taken away from all these different edits to the trailers for Your Highness it is that we will probably be getting at least two to three different versions of the film when it hits home video.

Your Highness R-rated trailer #1:

Altered scene at 1:30