Here's why Star Trek 2009 ended up trimming scenes with Winona Ryder's Amanda Grayson. The future of the Star Trek franchise looked bleak back in the early 2000s, following the box-office failure of Star Trek: Nemesis and cancellation of TV series Enterprise. Director J.J. Abrams managed to give the sci-fi property a shot in the arm with Star Trek, a 2009 big screen reboot that took the original show's characters but split them into a different timeline.
Star Trek 2009 may have divided opinions critically, but it was a solid hit. The movie was followed with Star Trek Into Darkness, but while the sequel was the most financially successful of the Kelvin Timeline trilogy, it's arguably the weakest. From multiple plotholes to its bizarre, self-defeating attempt to hide the fact Benedict Cumberbatch was playing classic villain Khan during marketing, the sequel was an enjoyable but hollow experience. The trilogy ended with Star Trek Beyond, which received strong reviews but, sadly, was also something of a box-office dud.
Winona Ryder has appeared in a lot of classic projects, from Beetlejuice to 1992's Dracula and Girl, Interrupted. In recent years she's starred in everything from rom-com Destination Wedding, psychological drama Experimenter and - of course - Stranger Things. In 2009 she took a small but key role in Star Trek 2009 as Amanda Grayson, the human mother of Spock (Zachary Quinto). Amanda represents Spock's human side while his Vulcan father Sarek (Ben Cross) symbolizes the colder, more logical part of the character. Amanda's sudden death and the destruction of Vulcan has a huge impact on Spock, though unfortunately, Ryder's screentime is somewhat limited.
This wasn't the original plan, as Winona Ryder's Amanda and Sarek had a couple of scenes deleted from Star Trek's first act. This includes a flashback to Spock's birth where she and Sarak name their son and another scene where they argue over how Spock should react to bullying. Spock's arc in the story was supposed to mirror that of Kirk, with both losing a parent in the movie and these early scenes followed their births and childhoods side by side.
These deleted Winona Ryder scenes also underlined how the importance of Spock's relationship with her, and how painful her loss is to both Spock and Sarek. The Star Trek 2009 DVD and Blu-ray come with the aforementioned deleted scenes, with producer Damon Lindelof explaining on the optional commentary track that while they thought they'd need more scenes with Amanda Grayson to establish their bond, they eventually found less was more during editing. The movie doesn't necessarily hurt for these scenes being removed, though the "Spock Birth" sequence still would have made a nice addition.