Holy cow. My mind is blown. Everything from the title, to the director dying 5 days after submitting the final cut, to the location chosen to film the cult party. These links are a long read but a great explanation of the movie.
So many unbelievable things that I've come across in this group are confirmed by this movie. I saw someone mention it in a comment months ago and glad I finally came around to watching it. It was very strange in the beginning, but you have to remember you're not watching a regular movie, you're watching someone trying to show you what's going on without explicitly saying it. After reading the above articles I am just blown away.
That would have raised so much more suspicion.
This way, he dies “naturally” and the version the came out is “basically what he wanted it to be” without anyone else to call the studio out on it.
What was left on the cutting room floor had to be so much more damaging.
Completely ghosting the movie and putting it on the shelf would have drawn ire from Kubrick’s massive following.