8 Abandoned Plot Twists That Almost Ruined Famous Movies

7. Chuckie Is Crushed To Death In A Horrible Construction Accident - Good Will Hunting

Good Will Hunting stars Matt Damon as a lowly janitor named Will Hunting who also happens to be a genius. Instead of realising his potential, though, Will just spends his time sweeping floors in the day and slacking off with his buddy Chuckie (Ben Affleck) at night. Also there's Robin Williams, the affable professor who realises that Will is really smart. The movie is generally regarded to be a pretty awesome one, and that's partly thanks to Gus Van Sant's amicable direction. And yet Gus Van Sant also very nearly ruined the movie with his meddling. That's to say, during the writing and development stages, the director insisted that - for absolutely no reason - Ben Affleck's character, Chuckie, should end up getting killed in a freak and very unexpected accident at the construction site where he works. Affleck and Damon - who wrote the screenplay, by the way - were not impressed, but decided to indulged their director and wrote the requested scene into the script. When it was finished, Gus Van Sant read the new draft - now inclusive of his crazy plot twist - and decided what he had suggested was terrible. Out it went. It would have been terrible, of course, because there is literally no reason for Chuckie to die. Not only would such a death have distracted from the most important part of the story - i.e. Will's development - but it would have added a unnecessarily schmaltzy layer that might have rendered the film as way too sentimental - not to mention depressing.