8 Early Drafts That Almost Ruined Great Movies
2. Up Nearly Was A Suicide Metaphor
Fitting of how extensive their production process is, Pixar films go through all manner of drafts, not all of them good. Famously Woody was a dick in the storyboards for Toy Story, but every movie - from Ratatouille almost having anthropomorphised rats to the wrong robot almost getting crushed in Wall-E - has some strange early versions. Add to that the cancelled Circle 7 projects, where Disney tried to rush out direct-to-DVD sequels to all the previous films before John Lasseter took over and stopped that ridiculous, and you basically have enough alt-versions for a list (cough, cough).
Perhaps the most curious, however, is Up. Contrary to what you might expect after seeing the film, the inciting idea wasn't anything to do with the Married Life segment, but the simple image of a house being carried by balloons. It was only when exploring the "why" of the idea that Pete Docter landed on an old widower going on an adventure, although even then things weren't all perfect; the object of the journey was so he could go into the sky and reunite with his dead wife... Which is pretty dark, no two ways about it.
This was obviously changed to Kevin the Snipe in later versions, mainly because the abstract goal didn't fit a proper narrative (the house eventually became the metaphor for his unwillingness to let go).