5 Early Versions Of Movies That Would've Changed Everything
Deleted scenes are cut for a reason. Sometimes you need to trim the fat for pacing purposes, maybe nix some jokes that aren't living up to their potential. Heck, you might just need to crop out a boob or three. But sometimes a scrapped idea or a cut scene is so wildly different in tone that, had it not been deleted, it would have changed the track of the entire movie. For example ...
At One Point, Jurassic World Had Manosaurs
If you thought hybrid dinosaurs was the "jump the megalodon" moment in the Jurassic Park franchise, be thankful they only crossed them with frogs and snakes and not, say, humans and dogs. That was the original plan for the movie. Why on Earth would anyone create such a monstrosity? According to the script for Jurassic Park 4, increased obedience and problem-solving skills. Rest assured that it would have looked as horrifying as it sounds.
These were soldier dinosaurs trained by the military to kill terrorists and rescue their victims, as if those victims wouldn't take one look at a murderous manosaur and run right back to their captors. They were also tasked with killing normal dinosaurs that escaped the park, because the scientists at InGen never met a problem that couldn't be solved by cloning more dinosaurs.
This was not from the brain of some coked-up producer. The whole DNA-splicing concept was in fact Steven Spielberg's, and he called it "the mother of all ideas." You could say he was so preoccupied with whether or not he could, that he didn't stop to think whether he might be an idiot.
King Kong Was Set To Fight A Giant Frankenstein Monster Instead Of Godzilla
Godzilla wasn't the first green monster set to take on King Kong. The original draft of King Kong vs. Godzilla was titled King Kong Meets Frankenstein. The idea, complete with size-comparison sketches, was for a gigantic Frankenstein monster to battle the iconic man in an ape suit.
This freak show was pitched by Willis O'Brien, who did the special effects for the original King Kong. In O'Brien's script, a relative of the famous Dr. Frankenstein is hiding out in the jungles of Africa, but instead of stitching together pieces of dead humans like a normal Frankenstein, he opts to do his thing with parts of various giant animals for his own wacky experiments. Predictably, things don't go as planned, and Frankenstein is killed by his unnecessarily large creation. Word gets back to the U.S., where showbiz promoters plan to capture the creature and pair it with King Kong for a big stadium display show, because entertainment was very different before cable.
Both monsters escape and tear through San Francisco, eventually beating each other senseless atop the Golden Gate Bridge. RKO Pictures fully intended to make the movie, but sadly, they were unable to afford the special effects. They sought funding from Godzilla owners Toho, which bought the script and swapped in their own giant monster, saving us all from the pedants who would forever point out that the title should actually be King Kong vs. Frankenstein's Monster.
Related: 21 Real Deleted Scenes That Completely Change Famous Movies
James Cameron Was Super Into Spidey Semen
James Cameron wrote a Spider-Man script back in the early '90s. In it, not only does Spider-Man have sex with Mary Jane on top of the Brooklyn Bridge, but he first seduces her by explaining the mating habits of spiders.
In an earlier scene, Spider-Man discovers his web-slinging abilities, and weirdly enough, the whole thing is presented as a thinly veiled metaphor for nocturnal emissions. Cameron describes it in such obscenely loving detail that even now, somewhere on this planet, a nerd is masturbating to it:
Despite its failure to become a reality thanks to a tragically bankrupt studio, some elements of Cameron's script were later revisited in Sam Raimi's version, like Peter Parker's organic webbing. And of course, that webbing is still explored in a scene vaguely reminiscent of furtive masturbation.
Related: 6 Classic Movies That Were Saved By (Wisely) Deleted Scenes
Ridley Scott Was Supposed To Direct Arnold Schwarzenegger In I Am Legend
If the studio had agreed to let Ridley Scott spend more money, we might've gotten a version of I Am Legend that didn't suck. The script Scott planned to work with not only had more action and no Willow Smith, but the creatures were also far from the cartoonish vampires that ended up in the final film. The creatures protect themselves from sunlight by wrapping their bodies in plastic or gauze, with the leader even adorning himself with human skin and bones.
The script was written with Arnold Schwarzenegger in mind for the lead, an architect who survives the apocalypse by stocking his swimming pool with fish and collecting an almost comical supply of machine guns. As a plus for non-Schwarzenegger fans, he would've played a largely silent role, with nary a "suck" pun to be heard.
The script is packed with action-filled scenes that are much more appropriate for Arnold, too -- like one in which he reverses his car through dozens of creatures in a back alley while simultaneously punching the one in his passenger seat. We can't say this would have been more true to Richard Matheson's novel, but it would have been, in critical terms, "hilariously badass."
Related: 5 Deleted Scenes That Would've Made Movies 10 Times Darker
Freddy vs. Jason Involved Cheech & Chong And Child Molestation
Bringing Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees together on film took longer than perhaps any other blatant cash grab in history. As you can imagine, it went through a number of rewrites, and along the way, it picked up garbage like a snowball rolling through decades of cigarette butts and used condoms.
In an early draft titled Nightmare 13: Freddy Meets Jason, the legendary monsters face off in a hellish arena, along with Ted Bundy, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Hitler. It's handled with exactly the gravity you expect. At one point Bundy falls over, apparently dead of a gunshot wound to the head, then gets back up and tosses off an "Oh, you!" at Oswald in the balcony. This is after Freddy chases a girl around in the form of "The Boogerman," a booger monster. It ends with a tastefully shot POV of the girl he inhales "clinging to one of hundreds of pointed tree trunks jutting out from the circular walls -- Freddy's nose hairs."
It only gets weirder from there. A later draft reveals that Freddy raped Jason as a child, then drowned him so he wouldn't tell an adult. That might be the worst shot at Jason's origin story ever -- and that's saying something. According to Fangoria, the molestation part was taken pretty seriously. It remained in drafts over a four-year period without anyone stopping to say, "Wait, is there even a slight possibility that this is totally insane?" It even shows up in a toned-down form in the final movie, in which Freddy is shown as a camp counselor in a dream sequence and drowns Jason.
Another idea was so ludicrous it never even made it to the scripting stage: Jason crossing paths with Cheech & Chong. They were to be stoner camp counselors, debating whether or not Jason was a myth. Thankfully, the screenwriters restrained themselves, and they did not molest Jason at any point.
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