The rare Tim Allen movie that’s actually watchable, Galaxy Quest remains beloved by fans who don’t care that it’s basically just Three Amigos in space. But the movie may have been even more beloved, had the studio that made it not interfered at the last minute.
As we’ve mentioned before, Galaxy Quest was very nearly an R-rated comedy, even featuring jokes involving graphic decapitations. And Sigourney Weaver’s character Gwen was originally going to drop F-bombs and attempt to “seduce” aliens.
Weaver just revealed that a performance from her co-star, the late Alan Rickman, was severely impacted by these cuts. And it turns out that the studio insisted on these edits for the dumbest of reasons.
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During a recent appearance at New York Comic Con, recorded for Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Weaver was asked about the long-gestating Galaxy Quest streaming series sequel. While producer Mark Johnson suggested that the show was still in the works earlier this year, Weaver seemed skeptical. “I think it would’ve happened by now,” she admitted.
As for how the death of Rickman would have impacted the project, she explained that “at a certain point they talked about Benedict Cumberbatch playing a version of Alan’s part.”
Cumberbatch aside, Weaver noted that it would be “very hard to come back to it without Alan.” She then went on to explain that many of the Die Hard star’s best moments were removed from the film, thanks to DreamWorks’ concerns about a talking mouse. “Some of his scenes were cut because they weren’t good for children,” Weaver explained. “They decided (at the) last minute it was a children’s film, because it was going to go up against Stuart Little, and they cut some of Alan’s great scenes. And I wish they’d put out a director’s cut because those scenes are the best.”
In 2019, The Hollywood Reporter stated that “several of Rickman’s scenes were cut because they were a little kinky for a family audience.” And Weaver similarly confessed that his boundary-pushing moments “had to go so they could make it a kids movie, which is such a shame.”
Maybe instead of making a Galaxy Quest TV show starring Doctor Strange, Paramount should just restore the original movie that was butchered in order to compete with a CGI rodent?
