As lavish and exciting as the production is, a slightly shorter film would benefit the story and prevent audiences from feeling fatigued by an overly lengthy film.
One of the perks of purchasing a film on Blu-ray or on iTunes is getting to see those scenes for yourself, at least before they hit YouTube.
Sometimes viewers bemoan them being cut, and other times they immediately understand why certain sequences were left out of the final picture.
Adding 20 extra minutes of footage would have pushed it over the line and turned the film into a lengthy and tiresome tale.