Our favourite science fiction and phantasy film seem to have split into creation amply formed , already perfect . So it ’s weird when you realize that a lot of the adept picture had the biggest false starts and dead ends . Here are 12 much - loved movies that had very different plot line early on in their cosmos .
Top image : The Star Wars by Dark Horse Comics , base on original art by Ralph McQuarrie .
1. Star Wars
“ Star Wars , ” George Lucas told film mag Chaplin in 1973 , “ is a potpourri of Lawrence of Arabia , the James Bond films and 2001 . The space aliens are the heroes , and the Homo Sapiens by nature the villains . ” Indeed , the original Star Wars concept ran the jeopardy of being a bit too much like Lawrence of Arabia , or A Man predict Horse , in infinite . Luke , at one point , push and outwit a Wookiee “ chief . ” According to Lucas , “ He wins the fight and the Wookiee say , okay , you are going to be the Logos of the headman , and all that . ” Luke , Ben and Han trained the Wookiees — “ noble beast , ” says Lucas — to fight the Empire . At this stage , though , during the filming of American Graffiti , the Wookiees were short and furred . histrion Charlie Martin Smith retrieve , “ Richard Dreyfuss and I kept begging George to let us dally them . [ … ] Then , he move around around and made the Wookiees seven feet tall , which knocked me out of the running for that part . ” A Wookiee battle was part of the script in this version , which is believably a germ for the apocryphal story that the Ewok struggle in Return of the Jedi was originally suppose to have been fought by Wookiees . While most of the changes in the filmed adaptation are definite betterment ( less of the “ stately savage , ” thank good ) some are too bad . In the first full script selective service , Luke Skywalker was the much more badass Starkiller , and Han Solo was a greenish lizard stranger — as you may see in Dark Horse ’s comics series The Star Wars . ( And of course , one former approximation for Return of the Jedi involvedLuke turning to the Dark Side and becoming the new Emperor . )
Sources : A New Hope : The Illustrated ScreenplayandThe Connoisseur ’s Guide to the Scripts of the Star Wars Saga .
2. The Truman Show
The script for this film was breathe in by a Twilight Zone episode , “ Special Service , ” about a serviceman who discovers his life is a television receiver show . The Truman Show — ab initio called The Malcolm Show — was imagined as a science fiction thriller . Although Brian DePalma was attach to early versions of the project , Paramount eventually bring in Peter Weir , who shared with the studio apartment a vision for a sluttish and more comedic version of the film . Screenwriter Andrew Niccol allegedly wrote twenty - four drafts before Weir was satisfied with the hand . Niccol ’s later film , Gattaca , which he wrote and conduct , kept the darker , weird sensibility he to begin with conceived for The Truman Show .
3. The Wizard of Oz
When MGM started output on the film , they take at least three film writer , one of whom was Ogden Nash , to make treatments . However , MGM let each author think he was the only one on the project . The early discussion for the 1939 film hews close to a 1925 short film version in its Depression - era aesthetic . It understate the grotesque elements of Oz , and made the major characters strictly allegoric . The Scarecrow was just an astonishingly stupid man , and the Tin Man was a malefactor whose metallic element suit was his punishment .
4. Ghostbusters
Dan Aykroyd ’s original concept saw “ Ghostsmashers ” travel through metre , quad , and alternate dimensions to oppose vast ghosts — the Stay - Puft Marshmallow Man is the only one that survived . When Ivan Reitman came on board he scaled the undertaking down considerably in ordering to save on costs . The “ smashers ” themselves were also a little more like Jedi Knights than working - class exterminators . other storyboards show them wearing SWAT style helmet and using wand rather than proton packs . Image viaGhostbusters Wiki .
5. Jurassic Park
Even before the novel add up out , Michael Crichton started go on a screenplay in which a grad student quicken the dinosaurs , which predictably head for the hills amok . Although Crichton was the generator of the first drawing , Steven Spielberg bring in several heir to modulate down furiousness , expo , and character growing , and to rewrite scene that were deemed too expensive to shoot . Two of these : a sequence with Procompsognathus attacking the child , and another with the T. Rex chasing Grant and the fry down a river , were added in subsequent continuation .
6. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
First title Experiences and then Watch the Skies , and then Kingdom Come and featuring flying saucers landing on L.A. ’s Robertson Boulevard , one manufacturer described an early treatment as “ the bad idea I ever listen . ” Steven Spielberg try out out several collaborators . Paul Schrader ( Taxi Driver ) , bring Spielberg a screenplay that the managing director delineate as “ sticky , ” focalize on a 45 - year - sometime Air Force officer whose caper is to ridicule and expose UFO claims . At one item this quality became a police officer , at another , in a script by John Hill ( Quantum Leap ) , the screenplay was closer to James - adhesiveness - with - Aliens . David Giler , who worked with Dan O’Bannon on Alien , also did a rescript . Finally some friends suggested the abduct - child plot of land , and Spielberg end up with the sole writing recognition on this film .
germ : Steven Spielberg : A Biography
7. E.T.: The Extraterrestrial
After he completed Close Encounters , Spielberg started working on Night Skies , a science fabrication horror film sport a work party of vicious alien lead by the vicious Scar , who bolt down cattle just by touching them with his long , bony fingerbreadth . Only one of Scar ’s ten follower is beneficent : an alien named Buddy , who gets abandoned by his malign comrade and befriends a untried autistic son . Spielberg decided this concept of evil aliens was xenophobic and he “ must have taken leave of my sense ” in develop it . So he threw out everything except Buddy the friendly alien , who became E.T.
8. Metropolis
Despite being a silent film , this other of science fiction epics went through multiple rescript . The novel was written by Fritz Lang ’s then - married woman , Thea Von Harbou , with the express purpose of being turned into a film . But some key topic , like magic and occultism , were cast off from the playscript along the way . In one scrapped ending , the hero , Freder , flies up into the stars . While this was eventually exclude , it became the footing for Lang ’s previous scientific discipline fable plastic film “ charwoman in the Moon . ”
9. Monsters Inc.
Audiences wo n’t even recognize theoriginal pitch for this motion-picture show . According to Pete Docter :
“ My idea was that what it was about was about a 30 year old valet who is like an comptroller or something , he hates his job , and one twenty-four hour period he get a Holy Scripture with some drawings in it that he did when he was a kid from his mamma , and he does n’t think anything of it and he puts it on the ledge and that night , monsters show up . And nobody else can see them . He imagine he ’s starting to go demented , they follow him to his line of work , and on his dates , and all this — and it turns out these monsters are fears that he never dealt with as a tyke . ”
In another rendering , Sulley was just a supporting graphic symbol , andthe main character would have been George Sanderson , an unqualified scarer who ca n’t do his job — until a timid niggling girl who ’s terrorise by her brothers teaches him to be scary . ( you may still see George in the picture show — he ’s the shaggy brown - furred monster who maintain getting caught by the CDA for “ 2319 ” parking brake .
10. Iron Man
The Mandarin was supposed to be the villain in the very first Iron Man film . accord toKevin Feige , this classic scoundrel “ was in every Iron Man 1 script until about 10 week before we begin filming . ” And he was supposed to be sort of an evil interpretation of Tony Stark , and Tony ’s business rival . And Obadiah Stane would have been a relatively pocket-sized baddie who serve the Mandarin out . In the end , this Mandarin was scrapped for Jeff Bridges ’ mephistophelean Obadiah Stane , and Ben Kingsley ’s very dissimilar take on the character reference in Iron Man 3 . Also , early draught of Joss Whedon ’s Avengers screenplayfeatured the Wasp instead of Black Widow — but Whedon enjoyed writing Janet Van Dyne too much , and end up with scripts that were “ way too Wasp - y. ” Whedon also kept include a 2d villain , because he did n’t think Loki was enough to have a bun in the oven the picture show .
11. X-Men
This project saw numerous author , working on it throughout the 1990s . For a long time , the main plot of this film was about Magneto trying to take over Manhattan and turn the island into a mutant resort . Inthe 1994 draft by Andrew Kevin Walker , Magneto destroys most of the bridges and floods the tunnels , cause Manhattan near untouchable , and then give this spoken communication :
Manhattan , in case you had n’t detect , has been brought to its knees . Your subway are swamp , your tunnels blocked … Your bridges , from Sixtieth Street to Battery Park , are in ruining . And , the doubtfulness write out from the meek oral fissure of mankind is , “ Why , oh why has this forged fate bechance us ? ” Well , get my solution be carry to the end of the earth . Because you would not give us a place in your world , we have take this one pocket-size piece . From this day on , the isle of Manhattan no longer belong to mankind . It now belongs to me and to mine . To mutants . All those of the human persuasion will be relegate , while mutants are welcomed … free to last in peace and solitude , away from baseless discrimination , oppression , and prejudice .
Magneto leaves bridges in and out of Harlem still standing for another five days , to allow human beings to leave the urban center . The political science prints pamphlets that say “ ” MANDATORY EVACUATION ! WHY YOU MUST LEAVE . ” And then there ’s a montage of draggle mankind fleeing New York , to the line of Rodgers and Hart ’s “ Manhattan . ” While Blob and Sabretooth laugh and pretermit pennies off the Empire State Building . Walker ’s draft also included the Sentinels and Bolivar Trask . And we learn that Magneto had caused the Chernobyl disaster the first time he and Xavier run across ( a item that the writers of Wolverine must have charge away for the time to come ) . A version by Joss Whedon that used the Danger Room and feature Jean Grey as Phoenix was rejected because 20th Century Fox did n’t wish Whedon ’s witty dialogue .
12. The Lego Movie
Anearlier screenplayis a very dissimilar , although just as allusive and funny , take on cinematic tropes as the filmed version . This one starts out with Indiana Jones failing to keep the Kragle out of the hands of villain The Black Falcon , and then follows Emmet , who go just across the hall from his control - monstrosity mom , who ’s a secret Master Builder and the choose One . In the original handwriting variant , Emmet is n’t a dull conformist at all — in fact , he ’s ineffectual to crush his creativity , creating a eldritch smiley face or else of follow the didactics when he ’s on a expression job . Emmet ’s uncontrolled creativity shoot down him in jail , but his mother breaks him out — and then , she ’s captured by robot ninjas . Emmet and his X - girlfriend , a MasterBuilder - in - training codenamed Gemini , slip through a dimensional portal site that takes them through alternating soda water - civilisation universes , including a diaphragm in The Lord of the Rings ’ Shire , and the Star Wars universe where they cull up R2D2 and precipitate a merging between Lego Indy and Lego Han . Oh , and the president in this version is named President Iamnotarobot .
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