SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY Ramrod Actor Reveals Huge Cuts and Says "More Recognizable Actors" Were Removed
Spider-Man: Brand New Day is finally swinging into theaters, but as always with big blockbuster movies, what audiences see on screen is only part of the story. It turns out quite a bit ended up on the cutting room floor, and one of the film's villains has now shared just how much was left behind.
Billy Clements, who played Ramrod in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, recently revealed that his role was originally much larger before the movie was trimmed down for its theatrical release.
Clements, who Marvel fans may also recognize as The Russian from Deadpool & Wolverine, reflected on the experience in a post shared on Instagram, explaining:
"A lot of Ramrod's stuff was cut, but they had to cut out 3 hours and a lot more recognised actors were totally cut out… Really happy to be there if only for a bit."
If the finished version of Brand New Day still clocks in as a sizable movie after removing roughly three hours of footage, it sounds like director Destin Daniel Cretton had an enormous amount of material to work with during the edit.
Clements also revealed that he did his homework before stepping into the role, studying every one of Ramrod's comic book appearances to portray the character as faithfully as possible. That research apparently included The Amazing Spider-Man #221, an issue recreated in the film by Cretton.
Even with much of his material removed, Ramrod still pops up during the movie's opening montage, where Spider-Man tears through a string of street-level criminals. Along the way, the wall-crawler takes down familiar comic book baddies including Boomerang, Tarantula, and Scorpion.
Of course, Clements' comments have sparked plenty of speculation about which other actors and scenes didn't survive the final cut. While fans will undoubtedly be trying to piece that mystery together, there's already at least one confirmed casualty.
Rosario Dawson, who plays Claire Temple in the Marvel universe, previously revealed during an appearance at GalaxyCon that she filmed a scene for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but audiences won't be seeing it.
As Dawson explained: "I shot a scene" for Brand New Day but it "got cut out."
Claire Temple has long served as the trusted nurse and confidant for many of Marvel's street-level heroes, making her a character who would've fit naturally into the events surrounding Brand New Day.
Without getting into spoiler territory, it's easy to imagine where she could've shown up near the film's ending. If you've already seen it, you probably have a pretty good idea.
Big studio movies almost always lose scenes during post-production, but hearing that multiple recognizable actors were removed entirely makes you wonder what Spider-Man: Brand New Day looked like before it was trimmed down.
Maybe one day Marvel will pull back the curtain on some of those deleted sequences, because it certainly sounds like there's a lot fans never got the chance to see.