Why don't we get to see all the 7 lightning strikes?

Why don't we get to see all the 7 lightning strikes? - Silhouette of Mountain Under Orange Clouds

In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button the eponymous protagonist grows up in a nursing home where he meets Mr. Daws, a man who claims to have been "struck by lightning 7 times". In fact it's a recurring theme/joke when Mr. Daws tells him about yet another of those incidents, accompanied by some old footage, showing exactly that, a man hit by a lightning.

Seeing Mr. Daws' last quote

I'm blinded in one eye, can't hardly hear, get twitches and shakes out of nowhere, always losing my line of thought. But you know what, god keeps reminding me I'm lucky to be alive... Storm's coming.

It becomes apparent that, apart from being a quite humorous and slightly out-of-place addition to all the other interesting acquaintances in Benjamin's life, all those incidents and Mr Daws' story in general are most likely part of a moral to always see the positive side of things.

In light of this the following question might seem quite trivial up to stupid, but from the first time on I watched this movie I always wondered why on earth they didn't show us all the 7 incidents he was struck by lighting? We only get told of 5 of the 7 incidents (though, a 6th with him just standing at a fence is at least shown during Benjamin's final monologue at the end) and Mr. Daws' last words somehow mark the closing words of this whole story arc, so it is unlikely for him to tell us more about it after this anyway.

So what I would like to know is, is there any specific reason why they refused to show us (or even Benjamin?) all the 7 times that Mr. Daws was struck by lighting? Was this always the intention or were the others just cut after the movie was finished (or are there even an extended cut or deleted scenes showing them)? Or was it simply to undermine the expectation of the audience?



Best Answer

In watching the movie I found that the 1st Story had 2 lighting strike events in it. That would make the telling of 6 stories have 7 strikes because if the 1st story had 2 strike and the other stories only had one then that means there would have been 5 lightning strikes left out of six stories so we actually did see 7 lightning strikes it was simply spanned across an even number of stories.




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Why don't we get to see all the 7 lightning strikes? - Photo of Thunderstorm
Why don't we get to see all the 7 lightning strikes? - Photo of Lightning
Why don't we get to see all the 7 lightning strikes? - Lightning and Gray Clouds





8 Letters - Why Don't We [Official Music Video]




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Answer 2

At the end Mr Daws' last conversation with Benjamin, he seemed to smell something and then foretold that a storm was coming. May be this was to imply that the 7th time had not happened by that time, but would take place during the upcoming storm, or at least the old man believed that it would.

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