In an earlier article, I wrote about the cleaned-for-TV version of Samuel Jackson’s famous in the movie Snakes on a Plane. Here’s an even better-known line – Bruce Willis’ battle cry from the Die Hard movie series – as edited for prime-time television audiences:
You have to keep in mind that there is no character or concept in the movie named “Mr. Falcon”; the words seems to have been picked randomly. He might as well have said “major factor”, “motor fixer” or even “mojito freezepop”.
(And whoever did the voice rework did a terrible Bruce Willis impression. He sounds more like a young John Travolta saying “Yippee ki yay, Mr. Kotter.”)
For reference, here’s the non-Bowdlerized version:
Inventive as the attempt to come up with a prime-time TV-friendly substitute for “motherfucker” in Die Hard 2 is, it doesn’t hit the creative new heights achieved in this clean-up of The Usual Suspects’ “lineup scene”:
I think it might’ve worked better had they simply bleeped those words out.
Once again, in the name of completeness, here’s the unedited version: