Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Every Way Dream Warriors Original Plan Changed

A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors was originally intended to be less funny and carnivalesque, a change that would have reshaped the series.

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A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors earned the rare distinction of being a slasher sequel that many franchise fans prize as much (if not more than) the original 1984 movie, but what was different about the outing’s original plans and would they have made things worse, or even better? Ever since he was first introduced to audiences back in 1984’s supernatural slasher A Nightmare On Elm Street, Freddy Krueger has been an icon of slasher horror. Wes Craven’s chilling creation reignited interest in the tired sub-genre after years of Halloween rip-offs by adding an ingenious edge to his villains’ modus operandi—namely, that Freddy killed kids in their dreams.

Since being killed at a young age, Freddy Krueger haunted the dreams of Springwood’s children and those of horror fans who grew to love this paranormal spin on the slasher formula in the ‘80s. However, while Freddy terrified audiences in his first appearance onscreen, gradually the character underwent a slow but unmistakable change over the next few movies in the series. Becoming the joking antihero of the movies instead of their terrifying villain, Freddy Krueger started to crack wise and quip before each kill by the fourth outing of the franchise.

By the time the series hit its sixth outing, the villain was a joke; a supposedly terrifying individual who now had a full-blown rap career as Freddy Krueger thanks to the franchise’s many attempts to lighten his image across various pieces of Freddy-related media. Original creator Wes Craven bemoaned the change, but what may surprise some fans of the franchise is that this tonal switch has its origins in what many viewers consider the best movie of the franchise. 1986’s Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors was the first film to really take advantage of the creative freedom that Freddy’s dream demon status offered and to give the character a more comical edge than earlier outings, both decisions that would never have happened if the original plans for the sequel were stuck to.

Wes Craven’s Canceled Nightmare 3

Originally, Wes Craven was meant to direct the second sequel in the series and pitched two concepts for the follow-up film (alongside John Saxon and Robert Englund’s scripts for the NOES threequel). However, the horror icon was tied up with Deadly Friend at the time, and directing duties instead went to The Blob re-maker Chuck Russell. It was Russell, along with his co-writer Frank Darabont, who instigated the tonal shift in the series—much to Craven’s chagrin.

A Scarier, More Surreal Freddy

In a move that Craven despised, Russell and Frank Darabont suggested making Freddy a funnier, more carnivalesque character. Fans loved the transition, but it eventually gave way to the goofier self-parody Freddy seen in parts 4—6. Per the director, “By the time I came along on 3, the way to go was to make the whole idea of dreams and nightmares into a carnival and go further into the dreams and make Freddy Krueger more outrageous and add more of an element of dark humor.” Craven hated the Nightmare On Elm Street sequel as a result, feeling the creators of the franchise muscled him out of creative control and handed the reins over to new talent thanks to his uncompromising vision for the series. Russell said that the darker, more profane Freddy seen in Craven’s draft of Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors was terrifying, but the franchise producers were reticent about how expensive the original helmer’s vision sounded even before the shift in tone was decided on. In his defense, producer Rachel Talalay calling Cravens’ draft a $20 million script does back up this claim.

A Different Cast of Dream Warriors

Will was the one making puppets, and he did not use a wheelchair; Philip was only 13; Joey had trouble getting around (but also wasn’t a wheelchair user), and Neil was far younger. With Wes Craven out of the series until New Nightmare almost a decade later, his early drafts of character for the sequel were free to be rewritten and rearranged until, all in all, the entire supporting cast were unrecognizable from their original draft iterations. To be fair to Darabont and company, adding a wheelchair user to the cast was a progressive bit of inclusion given the time of the movie’s release, although the circumstances of his death could have been a bit more tastefully handled.

No Zsa Zsa Gabor Cameo

Later on in the series, as Freddy entered his flop era and became more of a comic figure than a threat, the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise began to rely on the novelty factor of unlikely celebrity cameos to keep audiences interested. However, like the softening of Freddy’s terrifying demeanor, the roots of this phenomenon that reached its zenith in Freddy’s Dead’s parade of celebrity cameos can be traced back to A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. The movie was always destined to feature a late-night host interviewing a starlet, only for the back-and-forth to be cut short by Freddy cutting in on the banter unexpectedly, but the choice of the actor involved was changed during the making of the movie, and the decision changed the tone of the scene to be sillier and less intensely scary.

The less outlandish and more reserved celebrity Sally Kellerman was the actor that Dick Cavett is interviewing in the shooting script for Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and it was the legendary late-night host himself who suggested that Zsa Zsa Gabor would be a better nightmare guest for the in-dream episode of his talk show. He was right, too, as the witty socialite’s larger-than-life persona soon proved to be a perfectly heightened match for Stranger Things season four cast member Robert Englund, and his portrayal of Freddy. However, the horror icon later revealed that Gabor actually had no idea what the role entailed, and was genuinely terrified upon seeing him in full Freddy makeup for the first time during shooting. Per Englund’s recollection, the terror Gabor has in the finished film was her unpracticed response to seeing Freddy Krueger up-close and personal for the first time, proving that not every unexpected change made to the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise during filmmaking ended up being to the detriment of the movies.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/nightmare-elm-street-3-original-plans-script-canceled-changes/