Planes, Trains & Automobiles 4K Release Unearths a Full Hour of Deleted Scenes from the Thanksgiving Classic

Thanksgiving movie season means Planes, Trains & Automobiles gets dusted off again, and honestly, it still hits like comfort food. John Hughes at the helm, Steve Martin trying to claw his way home for turkey, and John Candy as the well-meaning chaos magnet who will not go away. Classic setup, classic duo, classic meltdown at a rental car counter.

The 4K re-release quietly dropped a treasure trove

A couple years back, Paramount put out a 4K edition loaded with extras. The standout is wild: a full 75 minutes of never-before-seen deleted and extended scenes, pulled straight from John Hughes' personal archives and released by his estate. Not a few trims. Seventy-five minutes. If you love Steve Martin and John Candy in this, it is essentially bonus footage of two comedy heavyweights going long.

Why was there so much on the cutting room floor?

Because Hughes could not stop writing. He was tweaking the script while they were shooting, handing out new pages like snacks. The assembly cut ballooned to nearly four hours. He never planned to put a four-hour travel nightmare in theaters, so he carved it down to a lean 92 minutes. Hughes had final cut and was happy with what played in theaters, but yeah, things got trimmed to the bone.

The 'wait, why is she crying?' mystery

If you have ever noticed that Neil's wife looks wrecked when he finally walks in at the end, the 4K extras answer that. One deleted subplot reveals she thought Neil's mystery travel companion was a woman and that he was cheating. Once you know that, her tearful relief makes a lot more sense. Some of this material did pop up in TV edits back in the day, but seeing the full context is new.

• 4K edition includes 75 minutes of deleted and extended scenes from Hughes' personal archives
• Plenty of extended Martin/Candy material you have not seen
• Production was a rewrite machine; Hughes kept generating new pages on set
• The first assembly cut ran close to four hours
• The theatrical cut is a tight 92 minutes, approved by Hughes
• Deleted subplot clarifies why Neil's wife is so emotional at the end
• Bits of the cut footage showed up in old TV versions, but this is the most complete look yet

The takeaway

It is kind of perfect that a movie about travel delays had an edit this chaotic. The finished film still moves like a rocket, and this release is a great little filmmaking lesson: even good stuff gets axed to keep pace. If Planes, Trains & Automobiles is in your Thanksgiving rotation, the 4K makes a strong case for an upgrade just to see how much gold Hughes left on the table.