16 Really, Really Famous Movies That Are Super Close To Being Really, Really Terrible

Movies! Everybody loves movies! Even if you hate movies, there’s at least one movie you really really love. And there’s also at least one movie you pretend to love because it’s a “classic” and everyone says that you should despite the fact that you kind of really don’t care for it at all-

ANYWAY, it’s pretty common knowledge that movies do in fact go through quite a few rough drafts during their early stages of conception. This is presumably due to the fact that those poor, exhausted creative teams constantly have to try and figure out what exactly it is that kids are “into these days”…yikes.

Because of that, there are so many ill-conceived, laughable concepts that it’s absolutely wild that anything coherent ever makes it onto our screens at all.

Still not sure what I’m talking about? Well lucky for you I’ve collected some of the weirdest plots and characters and… general ideas that at one point studios were seriously considering for some of the most famous movies ever made.

1. Return of the Jedi

In one of the original drafts of The First Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi was actually… a zombie.

Basically, in the initial script, Luke Skywalker travels to a planet made entirely of Lava in order to confront Vader… and he is joined by the one and only, Obi-wan… who at this point, is dead. That’s right, Obi-Wan came back from the dead to help out, because apparently, Jedi can do that… and Yoda jins him too!

2. Birdman

Believe it or not, but the movie Birdman was originally meant to be just one giant set up for a joke about… Johnny Depp.

Birdman’s  ending is well known for being super ambiguous and poignant… however it very nearly ended up being the complete opposite of this. After Michael Keaton’s storyline was all said and done, the movie was then meant to start back up again but with Johnny Depp as the protagonist, meaning it to be a joke about how Johnny Depp is now a has-been. Luckily (or unluckily) they couldn’t get Johnny Depp on board… weirdly enough.

3. Spiderman

Okay, so there’s been a lot of Spiderman’s. But during the initial set of movie’s, Doc Oct was originally meant to be some sort of “Professor Spider-Octopus”

The script for the first set of Spiderman movies crossed over many hands before Sam Raimi took over… and one of those pairs of hands was James Cameron’s (I KNOW!). At this point, Dr. Octopus was supposedly bitten by the same radioactive spider as Peter Parker was.. meaning he would become “Professor Spider-Oc”… or whatever. Also he had a sidekick.

4. Batman 

Batman was originally meant to fight bad guys with a giant magnet. Yeah… I know.

This was before Tim Burton was brought onto the project (Thank you, Tim Burton). At first Batman  was meant to be some kind of weird blend between dark and campy . Yes it was about a dark and broody oprhaned rich guy vigilante… but he also had some fun gadgets. At one point, Batman supposedly used a giant horseshoe magnet to get a bad guy wearing a jet back into the back of the Batmobile.

5. Beetlejuice

Unsurprisingly… Beetlejuice was almost written as a murderer.

Initially, the movie Beetleuice wasn’t planned as a whimsical comedy, it was actually supposed to be a straight-up horror flick. In fact, the protagonist… aka Beetlejuice, was supposed to be way, way waaaay more villainous. In fact, at one point, he was even supposed to maul a 9-year-old girl to DEATH. Sheesh.

6. Back To The Future

Back to the Future was very nearly just one giant feature-length ad for coca cola. Yep.

In the first few drafts, Doc Brown was supposed to be a massive scientific failure who could never get any of his darn inventions to work. That is, until, he meets Marty McFly who stumbles upon the one thing he’d been missing all along: Coca-Cola! Whewww! Coca-cola turns out to be the perfect chemical mix in order to get the time machine to work, can you believe it!?

7. Night of the Living Dead

Night of the Living Dead was supposed to be an Alien invasion movie!

It’s true! George Romero may have been the one to have kickstarted this everlasting, 50-year-old zombie genre, however, this was almost not the case! His first draft of the movie was actually meant to be about an invasion of flesh-eating Aliens, but luckily Romero decided to take some inspiration from Richarch Matherson’s I Am Legend and turned the baddies into living corpses instead. Phew!

8. Gladiator

In Gladiator… initially, Commodus was actually supposed to roast the Senate.

Honestly, some earlier scripts of Gladiator really do include some freakin’ bizarre things. For example, Commodus deciding that the Senate is actually evil traitors so he cooks them all alive (including his sister) inside a giant brass bull (YEP)… although, part of me kinda wants to see that version.

9. Wall-E

Originally, Wall-E was supposed to fight off a horde of giant alien blobs of jello… yeah…

During Wall-E’s first couple of drafts, the adorable little trash-compacting robot is eventually roped into a rebellion against evil blob-like aliens who are referred to as “Gels”.

SPOILER ALERT: It eventually turns out that these “Gels” were actually once humans, whose bodies had just strophied after years of living in zero-gravity space. WILD.

10. The Matrix

In The Matrix Neo supposedly won with just “the power of the finger”.

In the first draft, the bullets that Neo stops at the end of The Matrix we all know and love were actually meant to kill him dead. Not that that lasts, however, because Neo just rises promptly from the dead, kills Agent Smith by flipping him the bird and escapes in an elevator.

11. The Truman Show

The Truman Show is already a pretty wild, slightly dark movie, but the original one was supposed to be even darker.

In the first couple of drafts, Truman was actually supposed to take a real baby and threaten to smash its head in, in front of its mother in order for the mother to admit that the whole thing is just a sham of a show. At leats he was never actually meant to go through with it.

12. Star Wars

The earlier drafts of Star Wars wasn’t really Star Wars whatsoever.

In fact, in the first draft, the character was supposed to be a fat, horny teenager who went by the name of Annikin Starkiller… who at one point was also supposed to punch the princess. However, the Death Star was supposed to be defeated by a squdron of Wookies, which may have been cool to watch!

13. Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland? More like Alice in Horrorland.

The 1938 Disney version of Alice In Wonderland was at first going to be absolutely nightmarish. In fact, it was initially supposed to end of the very-near execution of Alice herself… which I’m sure the kiddies would have just loved to see. No wonder Walt Disnet decided to go in a different, er, direction.

14. Jaws 3

Jaws 3  was very almost a straight spoof of the other Jaws movies.

So much so that it had a very “National Lampoon’s”  feel to it. John Hughes was brought on and wrote the script and Joe Dante was supposed to direct it. However, when the news reached Spielberg himself, he was SO freakin’ incensed by the whole idea that the studio decided to immediately back off and made the… er… very serious Jaws 3-D instead.

15. Alien

Alien was almost an incredibly laughable B-movie.

After the script was rewritten in order to add a few subplots and tighten the dialogue blah blah blah… we were robbed of some seriously golden moments. For example, at one point the “Alien” was supposed to use a human shield against a flamethrower.

16. Planet of the Apes

And last but by no means least, the Planet of the Apes.

Once again, thank Gosh for Tim Burton. Okay so maybe his version of Planet of the Apes didn’t completely make sense… but when you compare it to what Peter Jackson wanted from it you’ll appreciate it much more.

Basically, Jackson wanted to create a straight sequel to the original film, and he wanted it to take place during an “Ape Renaissance” complete with a chimp Leonardo Da Vinci and some sort of ape-human hybrids… well, maybe next time eh Jackson!?

Let me know what you think in the comments below! And don’t forget to share this with friends, family and any other movie lovers you can think of! x

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