Great Movies That Never Were

[gojikranz]

how about super man II III IV V....?
donner apparently had plans to keep going after II if they had let him finish that.  we could have been spared prior and nuclear man.  and gotten a way better II to boot.  ive seen the richard donner cut of II that they made for dvd its pretty cool but the ending is lame they shoulda just left the lester ending, either way terrible that they took him off.

[bratpop]

Dune Messiah (film) or God Emperor of Dune (TV).

[doggans]

Well, let's get this thread rolling again:

An obvious addition to this thread is Frank Darabont's Indiana Jones IV script.  It contains many elements that were used in the final film, including crystal skulls, Marion being the love interest again, Indy being friends with someone whose connections to the Soviet Union end up with Indy being watched by the Feds, and the character of Oxley.  (Although Darabont's script leads you to believe that Oxley is dead for the first half of the film, while Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is a bit more ambiguous.)  And the A-Bomb-proof fridge has its origin in this script.

What's different is that there's a lot more character development, with the script going out of its way to show how the characters have matured since the last time we saw them.  Indy is no longer afraid of snakes, and Marion is happily married.  (With no children.)  There's a few tongue-in-cheek moments, including sort of a parody of the scene of Indy grabbing the Idol from Raiders, and a fourth wall bending reference to Willie Scott.  (Marion asks what happened to her, and Indy tells her that she went off to Hollywood to become an actress and ended up marrying some famous director.)  Is it perfect?  No.  A lot of the dialogue seems awkward and stilted, and there are a few moments where Indy acts really out of character, such as when he gets drunk following being given a "leave of absence" from Barnett College because of his accidental ties to the soviets.  And the scene with Henry Sr. seems a little forced.  But these are problems that could have been fixed in subsequent drafts and during shooting. 

See, I didn't think Darabont's script was any better than the movie we finally saw. Sure, future drafts could have been improved, but most of the unconditional praise for Darabont's version and unconditional bashing for the final film seems to be based in nothing more than a pathological desire on the part of the geek and nerd community to call Lucas an idiot.

The giant animals in Darabont's script were stupid, and would have been much less creepy/gross/intimidating than the "big damn ants". The use of the Temple of Doom catchphrase was stupid. The Yakov Smirnoff traitor friend was obnoxious. And pretty much everything else was just pointless fanservice.

Sure, the final movie had stupid things in it too, but nothing that wasn't already in Darabont's version.

[bratpop]

Was Darabont's script based on the Stephen King novel of the same name?