In the history of movies, there are some pretty horrendous names for some good films, but some hugely successful films were able to avoid such disaster. Back to the Future, and Beetlejuice were both nearly victimized by their respective studios who strongly suggested really bad movie titles.
There’s a really good 1954 comedy film starring Judy Holliday and Jack Lemmon titled Phffft!. The sad part is, the name likely prevents it from being a movie that today’s audiences would want to check out, despite the fact that the film was nominated by the Writers Guild of America for Best Written American Comedy.
To me, the funniest movie title of all-time is Rambo III because it doesn’t actually make mathematical sense. It’s the third film in the First Blood franchise. The first film is called First Blood. The second film is called Rambo: First Blood Part II (which I humorously call Second Blood) so the third film should be First Blood Part III but it’s instead named Rambo III, which technically means that it’s really First Blood Part IV, but it isn’t. Ugh!
It would’ve been nice if someone involved with the movie stopped them from naming it Rambo III, but the list below is indeed movie titles that actually were thankfully changed during production because, in most cases, someone realized that the title just wasn’t good enough.
Perhaps the most popular example of is License to Kill. The title hits. It’s James Bond. It’s a must-see film partly because of the title but it was originally called License Revoked. That was actually the title of Ian Fleming’s story upon which the movie was based, but when screened for test audiences, they complained that the title made it sound like an appointment at the DMV. As a result, License to Kill became the first Bond film not to have the same title as the story it was based on.
Here are some more examples of titles that were changed but, to make this more fun, I’ll show you a list of the original titles, and you can try to guess what movie it actually is.
The Lunch Bunch
The Adventures of Luke Starkiller
Star Beast
Ghoststoppers
The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night.
Blood and Steel
Scared Sheetless
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Space Man From Pluto
Any guesses? For the The Lunch Bunch just think of a different meal and you might get it. The movie title was changed to The Breakfast Club. I don’t think it has the same impact if still called by the cartoonish name of The Lunch Bunch, which is ironic because then the Don’t You Forget About Me song would have a totally different meaning,
The Adventures of Luke Starkiller was one of the original titles for a major sci-fi hit. The main character’s name changed to Luke Skywalker and the movie title changed to Star Wars.
Star Beast was also the title of a major sci-if hit from the late 1970’s. The movie was initially from a script called Memory which when focused on one particular part of that script became Star Beast then ultimately changed to the more simpler Alien.
Sigourney Weaver was in Alien and she was also in Ghostbusters, which was forced to change its title because The Ghost Busters was already the name of a cartoon. So, they called it Ghoststoppers until they decided to buy the rights to use the name and thus went back to Ghostbusters.
The 1977 box office smash hit Saturday Night Fever was based on a 1976 New York magazine article by Nik Cohn. That article is titled The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night and, in turn, it was the original title of the film. However, they decided to shorten it to Saturday Night until The Bee Gees recorded the song Night Fever for the soundtrack, and producers decided to call the film Saturday Night Fever.
Blood and Steel is quite generic and makes you believe it’s a movie with a lot of sword action. However, despite it being a martial arts film, there is no swordplay and its star, Bruce Lee, convinced the studio to change the name to Enter the Dragon.
Scared Sheetless was a movie title that the director suggested to the studio as a joking response to their idea to call the film House Ghosts. What is this horror film? Well, it’s not really a horror film. Hence why its director, Tim Burton, insisted on the studio not changing the name from Beetlejuice.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the autobiographical book that one of the most epic movies of all-time is based on. In fact, failed attempts to make the movie in the 1940’s had that title. Finally, in the 1960’s, David Lean made the film and retitled it Lawrence of Arabia, which T.E. Lawrence was often referred to. The film, about the Englishman leading the Arab Revolt during World War I, is often praised as one of the greatest movies ever made.
None of these possible film title quite hit my funny bone like the one for Back to the Future, especially considering the Robert Zemeckis film is perfectly named. The title was never changed, however, so it was never a working title but, incredibly, a studio executive didn’t like the name and decided to write to Zemeckis to try and convince him to change the name of Back to the Future to Space Man From Pluto. His idea was to emphasize the reaction of some people thinking he was from out of this world, like the family whose barn he crashes into, who think he’s from outer space.
I can’t say I understand that exec’s way of thinking but I’m glad that Zemeckis refused to heed the letter. I’m also glad he didn’t call the film Marty: Back to the Future Part II and then follow it with Marty III.
