If you’ve read Divergent, you probably noticed that one particularly unforgettable scene never made it into the movie – the eye stabbing.  In the book, during Dauntless initiation, the #1 ranking transfer initiate, Edward (Ben Lamb), is stabbed in the eye in the middle of the night.  It’s a pretty brutal moment in the book, so it is reasonable that they opted to cut it from a PG-13-rated film, but they actually did shoot it and it’ll be on the Divergent DVD and Blu-ray special features menu.

You can’t get a copy until August 5th, but Summit opted to unveil the long lost stabbing scene a little early.  Hit the jump to check out the Divergent deleted scene and also to find out what Lamb himself had to say about shooting it during our set visit.  Divergent also stars Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Jai Courtney, Zoe Kravitz, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort and Kate Winslet.

divergent-ben-lamb

Even though the scene never made it into the final cut of the film, while we were on set back in May of 2013, Lamb told us it was his favorite scene to film.

“The scene that I really enjoyed the most was the eye stabbing.  I mean, it’s a no brainer.  We’ve already done that.  It was great actually … I met this guy and literally within five minutes of meeting him, he had a silicone cast about that thick surrounded by plaster of paris surrounding my head.  Him and Brad [Wilder], the makeup designer, were the first two people on the set that I met and then he had a couple of months to work on the eye patch.  Then he came in the day before we actually did the scene and he had like thermo plastic and fake skin stuff.  It was really amazing.  [I] put it all on and then, the pièce de résistance, is where you have to actually push the knife into the thermo plastic, which basically feels like you’re poking your own eye out, and you have to trust pretty strongly that the thermo plastic is gonna hold.”

Gore for the sake of gore is never a good thing, but back then, Lamb insisted that Neil Burger shot the scene in a way that’d serve the story:

“It’s very gruesome.  I think it just serves the story.  Obviously in the book, Tris quite often harks back to that moment and it’s got to be quite a gruesome and changing experience for all the guys, and I think Neil shot it in a way that hopefully will do that for the story.”

There’s nothing wrong with the scene, but after finally getting to see it, it is clear why they cut it out.  Where would this have fit and is it too similar to the late night attack during which Peter (Teller) and Al (Christian Madsen) try to throw Tris into the chasm?  It’s a bummer to have your big scene cut, but Divergent is probably better off without this moment.