The next deleted scene is much closer to the first in terms of careful fat removal and clearer transitions from one scene to the next. After being told by Emily Blunt’s Rita Vrataski to find her when he wakes up from a murder, she begins training Major Cage Cruise to improve his fighting skills. In the final cut of the film, Cruise utters the line, “I’m not even trained in combat,” and after Blunt’s brief reaction, we immediately see him recklessly shooting bullets at the mechanically trained Mimics, missing the only clue to what he’s doing.
However, in a deleted scene, we see Cruise’s character in a more frantic state, very concerned that he can’t perform well on the battlefield at all. Then when we get to the first workout, we see him go out to the training area and do some light stretching. Rita asks: “How good are you, would you say?” His response: “Okay. Pretty good. I learn fast”. Even if it was said with deliberately false confidence, the abrupt change from his panicked state twenty seconds earlier to this more brash behavior. In isolation, each scene works on its own, but when combined with each other, they feel disjointed.
By eliminating these details, they not only simplified the story, but also maintained a tonal consistency that was missing in the earlier version. Again, it’s the first forty-five minutes of the film and our two heroes have finally gotten together. You don’t want to stop having fun just yet, and maintaining that tone is paramount while doing so.