If there's one thing you should take away from the film-watching community's thirst for alternate casting, deleted scenes and rejected concept revelations, it's that the concept of the multiverse is alive and well around Hollywood. Imagine that world where David Bowie had become the Joker, or the one where Adam West got his frankly ridiculous 1970s Batman script about aliens made... Such are the marvels and grotesque curiosities that are revealed when the layers of pre-production are peeled back. And the same of course can be said for the entirety of the comic book movie genre: because the market is one that now juggles vast, vulgar sums, and star egos to match them, every single brush-stroke is scrutinised and criticised, and God help the film-makers when the fans discover that they actually rejected something awesome (like Aronofsky making Year One) in favour of something deemed less successful. Inevitably that happens, and it's now easier than ever to find out the steps film-makers made on their journey to their final product. Blu-ray easter eggs include rejected early concepts, interviewers pry at what could have been - as with Chris O'Donnell's revelation that we almost got a Robin movie - and fanboys hungrily trade mentions of the incredible sounding, or at least vaguely entertaining scenes that could have made it into - and improved - even the greatest of comic book movies. So, with that in mind, we're looking back at the scenes that could have been: the rejected storyboards and early concepts that should never have scrapped...
10. The Jokers Statue
In the original Batman, in an early draft there was to be a scene before the parade sequence in which the Joker took over the Gotham City 200th birthday gala and held Mayor Borg hostage, which in turn made the mayor have a break-down. In typically understated fashion, the Joker would then unveil a statue of himself replacing the statue of John T Gotham that appears throughout the film in the background, that was supposed to be the centre-piece of the gala. In the same missing scene, The Joker drugged the Gotham City Police Department's coffee with non-lethal poison, which explains why there's no police presence at all during the parade scene when he appears again and starts trying to wipe out all of Gotham - a crime that would usually elicit at least a raised eyebrow from the police. The sequence was ultimately dropped, but it must have made it close to the final movie, as the Joker statue was actually made and was discovered on the set on the back of a flat-bed truck by an adventurous competition winner who wandered off from the VIP set tour to investigate Gotham's sprawling Pinewood set for himself. The statue is still in circulation, having been rescued by Planet Hollywood, painted and given permanent residence in one of their restaurants...
