8 Movies Where The Worst Version Got Made

8. Lethal Weapon 4

Mel Gibson Lethal Weapon 4
Warner Bros.

One of the most fascinating parts of Lethal Weapon as a series is the oscillating tonal battles that took place behind the scenes. The first film, written by Shane Black with some rewrites by Jeffrey Boam, is this gritty, post-Vietnam action film that tackles PTSD and the legacies of the conflict, while the second is a fun, slightly goofball adventure that sees Riggs and Murtaugh take on some apartheid gangsters while Joe Pesci tags along with the challenge of saying "okay" more times than any other actor in a single film. (Love Leo really.)

Lethal Weapon 2 was almost very different though. Black's script was tossed aside in favour of a rewrite from Boam, which toned down the darkness, and aborted an ending where Riggs would've died. Boam returned for the decidedly less-precise Lethal Weapon 3, retaining the previous film's antics but with a clumsy focus on gun crime. Lethal Weapon 4 course corrects ever so slightly, but it's not the gritty original nor the high-octane fun-fest that is the first sequel.

This is because Jeffrey Boam wasn't responsible for the Lethal Weapon 4 shooting script. Boam had developed a screenplay - one that would have, ironically, tapped into the dark roots of the Shane Black original by having Riggs and Murtaugh go up against Neo Nazis - but it was set aside by the studio, who ostensibly wanted LW4 to focus on the Triads.

Boam's script appeals way more on premise and reputation than what we eventually got - even if Lethal Weapon 4 (mostly) succeeds as a franchise send-off.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.