I think they may shoot and have the film to develop all the parts some of the audience wants, but if they include it it can just be too damn long and\or boring to some. In this movie, I was enthralled the entire time, and wouldn't have cared if they dragged it on another hour.
The part about his wife, was how he had to watch her be raped and murdered right in front of him. I think a lot of the stuff is just left on the editing room floor.
I don't doubt it. There are many versions of a film and how test audiences react in screenings, plays a big part in whether the film is re-edited, scenes chopped, or if entirely new endings are shot. On the John Travolta Samuel L Jackson film 'Basic'... they went back into the studio and re-shot an entirely new ending because of the passionate responses of test audiences. They were adamantly against the ending.
As for the wife and seeing more of her, ...I don't mean seeing more of her brutalization. I was refering to seeing more of her as his wife. They should have established the level of closeness, the happy memories they shared together etc. even if as mere memories or flashbacks. Similar to the way those connectioins were established by M. Night Shamalyan between Bruce Willis' character and his wife in 'The Sixth Sense'. He was able to establish such incredibly deep devotion, love and longing in two characters who essentially never spoke a single word to each other, ...and when they did, those questions remained unanswered. But it's a brilliant technique imo for establishing the closeness that we then get to juxtapose against the stark reality of his newfound solitude. They approached that with his little girl, but we saw nothing of that with his wife. Do we even know the wife's name? We at least remember his little girl's pet name 'Pumpkin'. But would we even remember the wife? It took me a while to figure out those crime scene photos were even of his wife. It's like what was she there for. She could have been the maid, the housekeeper, his mother, the paperboy collecting his bill, a girl scout selling cookies... there was nothing significant enough about her that made her essential to the film, that's why I wonder if she was a package, because she was so insignificant, ...or if her attack scenes were so disturbing to audiences they had to leave them out, ...in which case, all the more reason to establish the state of their marriage prior to the attack..
