MovieChat Forums > Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) Discussion > An alternative storyline I came up with....

An alternative storyline I came up with. What do you guys think?

posted 3 months ago by DevonteHuntley (228)
12 replies | jump to latest

I think the plot of the movie is ALRIGHT, but as many have criticized, there's just too much going on and characters that didn't need to be there. Here is what I would have done with some tweaks:

For starters, I think the opening could have been done better. I feel having us start off with Lydia and her talk show was too abrupt. You're introducing us back to a world and characters we haven't seen in 36 years, so it needed to be done better. Rather than start off immediately with Lydia and even in live action, I'd start off animated in the afterlife with Betelgeuse who's spent the last three decades in underworld prison following his actions in the first movie. He's been sentenced to burn in Hell and during his transportation, he escapes and is aiming to cause trouble against the Deetz family as revenge for Lydia not going through with their marriage and allowing the Maitlands to defeat him.

We then have an animated sequence with Charles Deetz on a business trip and his death that is done under unusual circumstances. Then, he ends up in the afterlife where he gets lost and is captured by Betelgeuse.

Now in live action, we're reintroduce to Lydia who has a nightmare of basically what we see at the end of the movie with Astrid being married, but to Betelgeuse and having his child. She's no longer gothic and associating with the afterlife so she has a much lighter and normal appearance, but still is a believer of ghosts and has a show where people tell their paranormal experiences. I think seeing Lydia in this light showcases her growth and change as an issue the movie suffers is keeping her the same as she was in the original, just older and a mom.

Instead of being just a boyfriend, Rory would be Lydia's ex-husband and Astrid's father who still works for her on the show. Astrid's strain relationship with Lydia would be over the divorce after Lydia cuts Rory off for some reason they refuse to tell Astrid. Before doing her show, Lydia hears her father's cries from the afterlife and isn't sure what it means. Then we see the TV show scene play out the same way with Lydia seeing Betelgeuse. The plot of the movie plays out the same for a bit but with Rory trying to get back with Lydia and her refusal causing more of a strain between her and Astrid. The underworld stuff is also different. Delores is cut entirely, and Detective Wolf Jackson is investigating Charles' disappearance.

Astrid still meets/elopes with Jeremy, but a nice twist however would be him being Betelgeuse in disguise trying to cling with Astrid to reminisce on his attempt to marry her mother when she was a teenager. But unlike Jeremy in the actual movie, he's not trying to be alive again but wants a wife with him in the afterlife who's also his own personal slave to tend to his every needs so this won't be anything of a loving relationship. Of course, this now changes Lydia going to Betelgeuse for help and their whole marriage storyline, so she has to have some other means of going to the underworld to save Astrid. I'd use Rory as the key to this in which he has some witchcraft in his family and opens a portal. Rory's witchcraft heritage is the reason the two divorced as Lydia didn't want to be involved in this sort of thing and possibly attracting Betelgeuse.

Delia still gets bitten by the snakes, but they don't kill her but send her into a coma. She's partially dead and goes into the afterlife and is captured by Betelgeuse. Rory and Lydia go there to save Astrid and come across the Maitlands who inform them that Betelgeuse is on the loose and causing trouble and that Astrid is in danger. They go through obstacles through the underworld to find Betelgeuse and stop him. It'd have Wolf be Rory's dad to bring about a connection between them and give Wolf some more importance to the story in which Rory's parents separated on account of the witchcraft stemmed from his mother's side of the family.

In the end, Lydia, Rory, and the Maitlands find Betelgeuse and are captured and forced to watch him and Astrid's wedding along with Charles and Delia there as chained slaves who will work for them for eternity. It's revealed Betelgeuse caused Charles' death as revenge and tried to kill Delia possessing the snakes to attack her. His real intent on marrying Astrid is to stick it to Lydia and leave her alone and isolated in the mortal world with her whole family basically dead. Wolf appears, frees Rory who uses his powers to defeat Betelgeuse and frees the others, but sacrifices his own life to do so and isn't able to return to the mortal world. Lydia, Astrid, and Delia return there however, with Rory staying behind with his dad and the Maitlands showing him and Charles the ropes of the afterlife.

In the end, Lydia, Astrid, and Delia live happily ever after. Lydia and Astrid now getting along with them and Delia trying to move on past Charles and Rory's deaths. Meanwhile, Betelgeuse is sent to Hell and eaten by a giant snake. The end.

[–] HellFire (561) 3 months ago

Honestly pretty much anything else would've been better than what we got. As long as the narrative was more simple. When you've had 36 years to have all kinds of different ideas going on in your mind, and in that time there's been a cartoon, and a successful Broadway musical as well, it's not really a surprise it had too much going on. This film stinks of a committee panicking about which direction to go in and just deciding in the end to throw everything at it but the kitchen sink.

The original film, for all it's surrealism and macabre elements, was a simple story with real heart to it. A couple who haven't been able to have kids, die and become ghosts and meet a lonely teenager who's been mourning the loss of her own family because she's lost her mum, and her dad and step mum are too wrapped up in their own lives. In the end, they all become friends (after taking care of Beetlejuice) and form a new family where Lydia has the best of both worlds.

This film was soulless. It's doing well at the box-office but that doesn't mean anything about the quality. Great films, even films that have become classics have done poorly at the box office, and some mediocre films have done well. I don't think time will be kind to it.

[–] DevonteHuntley (228) 2 months ago

I take that as you saying you like my idea then. I wish you could have said more on it or what you could have done differently.

Given the movie's gothic nature, I would have liked to see Cassandra Peterson tossed in somewhere as Elvira as sort of a crossover with her movie series from 1988 to 2002. Perhaps if there's a third movie in the near future and if Cassandra still looks good enough to pull it off, they can do something with her Elvira character there in the mix.

[–] HellFire (561) 2 months ago

I never felt it needed a sequel but if there had to be one, and Adam and Barbara couldn't be around because in Tim Burton's words "We couldnt de-age them in a convincing way", I would've made Beetlejuice and Lydia the main focus.

Lydia would've stopped seeing ghosts because she would've become an everyday suburban mum. She was already looking more "normal" at the end of the original and more outgoing. So she's turned into someone like Delia, and she has to get her uniqueness back to summon Beetlejuice to help her out in some way. Let's go along with saving her daughter. Her gradually going back to believing would've been a way to slowly ease us back into that crazy world in the same way Adam and Barbara did in the original.

[–] DevonteHuntley (228) 2 months ago

Um, lots of movies have de-aged actors rather well after 20 and 30+ years so doing so here with Adam and Geena could have worked. Heck, put some makeup on them and explain why they would look a little older. This is the afterlife after all with all sorts of chaotic stuff so something could explain this away. Ghosts don't necessarily have to always look the same and many movies and TV shows showcase them aging on account of the actors' aging in real time.

I also don't mind Lydia not seeing ghosts anymore, but maybe Astrid can as a genetic inheritance, maybe more-so from her father who could have the ability to do so.

[–] sebasarena (27) 2 months ago

I fully agree with the second message of HellFire.

[–] AmeriGirl26 (14381) 2 months ago

I would have loved seeing that script instead. You could also have put in there that we didn't see the Maitlands at first in your story because they too were captured by Beetlejuice and they found a way to escape him to help Lydia.

When I saw the commercials, I too had just assumed the story would be different than what I heard we got.

I thought BJ's ex-wife would have been the main villain in this one. Jeremy would have been her son, and she could have used him to trick Astrid into coming into the Netherworld to marry him so he could re-enter the mortal plane and go back on a killing spree again, and she could hold Astrid hostage. Lydia would go to BJ for help to get her daughter back, chaos and hilarity ensue with their crazy adventure, and in this version, BJ could learn to be less of a bad guy and a better person, as well as learning to think about someone other than himself. We then find out at the climax that BJ's ex-wife was angry and jealous that Lydia caught her ex-husband's eye and wanted revenge, and used this entire thing to lure them back so she could destroy both of them using Astrid as bait. Of course, our motley crew find a way to stop her and rescue Astrid, and things go back to normal. BJ would still try to talk Lydia into marrying him, but she'd still turn him down, but this time he wouldn't get nasty about the rejection.

Sadly, we got neither plot :(

[–] DevonteHuntley (228) 2 months ago

Your story idea works too. Amazing what amateur people/fans can come up with better than these so-called "professionals". Ugh, we ought to be pitching and writing stuff.

[–] AmeriGirl26 (14381) 2 months ago

Go for it! If it's something you love, keep up with it and hone your gift :) I don't think you would be able to publish your Beetlejuice story anywhere outside of fanfiction.net, but at least someone would see that there are better, more creative writers out there than the hacks Hollyweird keeps making the mistake of employing.

[–] HellFire (561) 2 months ago

And another thing. Why when we first see Beetlejuice wasn't he in the waiting area like he was at the end of the original? Time's different in the afterlife. In the original, Adam and Barbara were in the waiting area for seemingly a few minutes, and three months had passed when they returned home and met Juno. So 36 years for the human characters in this would've been just a week or two at most for Beetlejuice. It would've been good gag to introduce him with.

If Tim Burton didn't want to introduce him with a shrunken head he didn't have to. We know from the original he can change his form. Speaking of that, he didn't actually transform into anything this time did he?

[–] DevonteHuntley (228) 2 months ago

Hmm, let's do the math. It's been a while since I've seen the original but let's say Adam and Barbara were there for four minutes. Four minutes would equal three months. Twelve months in a year divided by three months in a year would be four, so we have four sections of three months in a year. Four minutes times four sections of three months is sixteen, leading to sixteen minutes of waiting room time that would amount to a whole year. Now multiply that times thirty-six years would give you 576 minutes. Now equal that to the number of hours and you end up with 9.6.

That means Betelgeuse would have to have been in the waiting room for 9.6 hours to accommodate him still being there now. I can imagine he wasn't there for THAT long or even an hour if Adam and Barbara can least mere minutes. But let's say he was there for an hour given the person he was and thus would require a longer wait, nothing insane but surely much longer than a few minutes so a hour seems fair at the very least. Sixty minutes divided by sixteen minutes is 3.75. That's equals three full years and three-fourths of the fourth year following, meaning he would have been out by 1992 at the latest in real time.

So to answer your question, Betelgeuse would not have needed to still be there given what we see in this movie and understanding the time difference between the afterlife and reality. He could have been out at any point during the thirty-six years depending on how long you think he was in the waiting room that could be between 0-9 hours at the most since he's already out when the events of this movie kicks off. I don't see his actions in the first movie being that severe to where he has to wait several hours so him being out now is no issue.

[–] HellFire (561) 2 months ago

Thanks that gave me an headache trying to take all that in.

Did he transform himself into anything like he did in the original? I've pretty much forgotten most of this already and I've seen it twice.

[–] DevonteHuntley (228) 2 months ago

Sorry, haha. It was a lot of math that even I had to take in myself.

As someone who didn't quite see the movie other than recaps and bootlegs clips that surfaced on YouTube, I couldn't tell you. I want to say he did or else it would be a real bummer if he didn't given that's what he can do and it's like, why NOT have him change form?