The Top 5 Films That Almost Were

The DVD release of the new Indiana Jones movie opened my eyes to the horror that is development hell. In one of the interviews, Steven Spielberg claims that the release of Independence Day sidetracked the script for Indy 4. Excuse me? Independence Day? I think we should all count ourselves lucky that we were spared the sight of Harrison Ford flying a WWII fighter jet into the side of a flying saucer. Makes KOTCS look spectacular, right? This prompted me to take a look through my DVD back catalogue to find other films that almost turned out completely unrecognisable.

5) Beverly Hills Cop

This 1984 Bruckheimer action/comedy masterpiece cemented the popularity of Mr. Eddie Murphy and has been shamelessly imitated, but never surpassed, since. Murphy’s manic banter and fish-out-of-water charisma was what made the movie work as well as it did.

Now imagine an alternate 1984, when Beverly Hills Cop climaxed with a chiselled bodybuilder in a stolen Lamborghini playing chicken with an oncoming freight train and you have Sylvester Stallone’s Beverly Hills Cop. Sly was reportedly offered the part after Mickey Rourke turned it down, but even he could see his muscle-man features might look a bit silly in a comedy about upper class snobbery. Stallone’s rewrite featured his character avenging the death of his brother in Beverly Hills and, from the sound of it, destroying most of the surrounding area while he’s at it.

Stallone recently compared his perceived version of the film to the opening sequences of Saving Private Ryan. If you’ve ever felt the need to watch this sequence with Harold Faltenmeyer’s “Axel F” theme playing in the background, you’ll get a pretty decent idea of why this was never made.

4) Alien 3

I was seven years old when I first saw Aliens, and it stands up as one of the finest movies of our time. I remember visiting London during the release of Alien 3 and seeing a poster the size of a building advertising the forthcoming release of Alien 3. I couldn’t believe it! A sequel to Aliens? Amazing! I set my older brother the task of gathering together anything he could about this film. I wrote a few ‘short stories’ about what I wanted to happen and most might have been more satisfying than what we ended up with. This was a time before the Internet existed but somehow, news of this trailer trickled back to me. Aliens were coming to Earth. This movie is going to be the greatest movie of all time.

The movie came and went and by the time I saw the tie-in action figures and comic book, I quickly realised that this film wasn’t set on Earth, the advance buzz had been misinformation. It was also far too dark and broody for a nine year old to get any interest out of. In retrospect, whiles not living up to my admittedly high expectations, it’s a pretty solid movie. Ripley’s still fighting the good fight, that alien is still impossible to kill, and all those bald convicts died in pretty gruesome and entertaining ways.

Those who have seen the documentaries on the Alien Quadrilogy box set can testify that this almost wasn’t the case. Vincent Ward, a New Zealand filmmaker, was given a stab at the Alien 3 script and his ideas were quickly rushed into production. Only problem was, his ideas were insane. Ripley crashes on a wooden (yes, wooden) planet inhabited by monks who end up believing the alien is Satan and Ripley is a test from god, sent to tempt them away from their vow of celibacy. I’m not exactly sold on a wooden planet for starters, but when you add religious metaphors and iconography in the mix, you have a recipe for disaster. David Fincher took the reigns of this doomed production and had enough sense to keep things simple. There’s an alien. It needs to die. End of. Though not the most imaginative of the series, it still has its fair share of memorable moments - and no wooden planet. Thank goodness.

3) Big

Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia jumping around a giant piano in one of the world’s largest toy stores is an iconic image of ’80s cinema. Hanks’ sensitive and joyful portrayal of a child trapped in a man’s body helped make Big one of the most successful films of 1988 and it still holds up to repeated viewings today. The criminally under-marketed recent release of the extended cut of Big offers few surprises in terms of additional scenes but it does explore another potential casting misstep.

Robert DeNiro accepted the role and it was to be rewritten to reflect the actor’s dark side, depicting a street-smart youth trapped in a man’s body. DeNiro is a mighty fine actor, and I’m not disputing the fact that this would have been an interesting movie, but DeNiro was never getting on that piano (not in 1988 anyway).

Big was set to be more of a comedic drama than a dramatic comedy, until the deal with DeNiro broke down and Hanks became available. DeNiro’s Josh would no doubt become involved in the criminal underworld and his decision whether or not to go back to being a kid probably ended in some kind of breakdown or shootout. What we ultimately received was one of the finest family comedies of the decade thanks to Hanks’ sincerity and the nuances of his performance. I watch it now and see myself at that age. And by that age, I mean 12. I doubt DeNiro would have been that empathetic.

2) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade/Monkey King

Yeah, yeah, there’s an alien in Crystal Skull. At least it doesn’t talk. In Chris Columbus’ initial story outline for what would have been the third Indiana Jones film, there’s a monkey and he talks. Indiana Jones and the talking monkey. Does the phrase “nuke the fridge” come to mind? To add insult to injury, the opening sequence was set in a haunted Scottish castle and Indy was set to marry some lady named Clare.

Please check out J.W. Rinzler’s wonderful book The Complete Making of Indiana Jones for the full story, but believe me when I say, the comic banter of father and son, and the personal discoveries of the final film are nowhere to be found. In fact, I found the synopsis pretty incomprehensible so I dread to think what the finished version would have been like.

Last Crusade arrived five years after the critically maligned Temple of Doom, and while not as imaginative or exciting as that first sequel, it recaptured some of the magic and fun that was so prevalent in the initial Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Monkey King would have been a cash-in and an embarrassment. For what it might have looked like, please check out the 1995 film adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Congo.

1) Jurassic Park 4

OK, so this film is still stuck in development hell. Last I heard, Keira Knightley and Laura Dern were scrapping it out for the female lead, but rumour has it, the dinosaurs would have once again stolen the show. Only this time they were armed with automatic weapons. Yes, dinosaurs with guns.

Rumours persist that in John Sayles’ unfilmable draft, dinosaurs would have been genetically crossed with humans to make a super-race of gun-toting dinosaurs. On paper that sounds pretty cool. On film, with the Jurassic Park logo tacked on, well, I can’t even imagine. Perhaps the film is shooting as I write and Vin Diesel has signed up to provide the voice of the T-Rex. We can only dream.

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