Bring It On Shot Extra Footage Of The Clovers To Fake Equal Screen Time
Peyton Reed's energetic cheerleader comedy "Bring It On" was released to merely warm reviews when it was released in August of 2000, but was greeted with massive box office success, ultimately earning over $90 million on an $11 million budget. The film's featherweight filmmaking, outsize characters, PG-13-level sexuality, and light messages of ethics in the cheerleading world led "Bring It On" to be a slumber party staple for a generation of young people. The film even inspired a rash of straight-to-video sequels, including a 2022 film — "Bring It On: Cheer Or Die" — that tilted the series into the slasher genre.
For those unfamiliar, "Bring It On" follows the adventures of Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) and her cheerleading crew at Rancho Carne High School in San Diego. The RCHS crew has been proudly perfecting certain dance moves at football games for generations. Torrance is crushed, however, when a rival cheerleader reveals that RCHS has been passing down plagiarized dance moves that originated in L.A. with the Compton High School Clovers. This is also something the Clovers know, and Torrance is even confronted by the Clovers' cheerleading chief, Isis (Gabrielle Union). Torrance is faced with an ethical quandary: Does she win contests with stolen moves, or stop using the moves, risking a loss at a high-stakes cheerleading competition?
The previews for "Bring It On" made it look like a story told from two perspectives. Torrance was to struggle in one story, and Isis was to face injustice in the other.
It seems, however, that those trailers were deliberately misleading. "Bring It On" was not going to feature as much of the Clovers as the ads made one believe. On a recent episode of Bloomberg's "Idea Nation," Union revealed that extra footage was shot exclusively for the trailer.
One third vs. one half
The Clovers only took up about one-third of "Bring It On," despite the previews making it look like they might have split their time with RCHS equally. Those characters were testing well with audiences in early screenings, and the filmmakers knew they needed to expand Union's role. But, it seems, not in a way that would ultimately change the feature film. It appears that extra scenes were scripted and shot with Union and the other Clovers actors, but they were only ever intended to be used in the trailers.
Union recalled filming the extra scenes, and the lingering sense of utter injustice. She said:
"The Clovers were only in like a third of the movie, and when they started showing it to test audiences, The Clovers tested through the roof. [...] They were like, 'We need more with The Clovers but we can't add it to the movie. We're going to shoot scenes, fake scenes, that will only be in the trailer to create the illusion that it was like a 50-50 movie.' But what's interesting is, the people spoke. When the people spoke, they were like 'Okay, we got to deliver ... at least fake deliver.' And the rest is kind of history. It's wild to me."
The irony, of course, shouldn't be lost on anyone. "Bring It On," after all, was ultimately about giving credit to the Clovers, a crew of Black women, after their spotlight had been stolen by the white kids next door. The previews for "Bring It On" tricked audiences into believing that the film's Black actors would get equal screen time as the white cast members, but then continued to follow Torrance and her crew.
The marketers of "Bring It On" would have benefitted from watching "Bring It On."
'Badass young Black girls'
"Bring It On" is a fun but frustrating movie about how racial injustice has been discovered in a presumed squeaky-clean institution like cheerleading, but then the film chooses to focus on the oppressor rather than the oppressed. While Torrance realizing that she has an opportunity to undo systemic plagiarism in her craft provides catharsis, it would have been nice to see more about how the real artists of the picture, Union and the Clovers, invented their dance moves, and maybe even what they had been doing to fight the injustice they saw prevalent in their world.
Union herself prefers to see "Bring It On" as ultimately being about the Clovers:
"I think it's just what the movie represents. Badass young Black girls who refuse to take s*** and never back down. It still appeals to me to this day."
Union has been advocating for a Clovers-centric sequel for some time, and in the era of legacyquels, that idea might be more possible than ever.
"Bring It On" was a boon for Union's career, and she has been acting in high-profile film and TV projects ever since. In 2022 alone, Union appeared as an abusive mother in "The Inspection," as a loving mother of a very large family in the remake of "Cheaper by the Dozen," and she played a voice role in the Disney animated feature "Strange World." She also published a memoir, "We're Going to Need More Wine" in 2017, and a follow-up, "You Got Anything Stronger?" in 2021. She also owns Flawless, a hair care line, and Vanilla Puddin', her own wine brand.
If one needs a role model, it seems Union is a great place to look.