Early Movie Concept Art Shows How Different Your Favourite Characters Could Have Looked

It turns out that some of cinema’s most iconic characters could have looked very different indeed, judging by the early movie concept art from Star Wars, X-Men, Avatar and more.

Just like the scripts themselves, which go through numerous rewrites before the movies are shot, the character designs also change substantially from how they may have been envisaged at the start of the project.

For instance, an early mock-up of Shrek looks a lot less friendly than the loveable ogre we’d meet in 2001, while Bane in The Dark Knight Rises would probably have been a lot less threatening if he was wearing a full Mexican wrestling style mask.

Yoda, in particular, ended up very different by the time he made it to the big screen in Star Wars. In the initial artwork, he looks like an angry gnome, which may not have been as effective, to be honest.

Check out some of the best examples of how early movie concept art differed from the finished product:

Yoda – Star Wars

Shrek

The Mad Hatter – Alice in Wonderland

Hopper – A Bug’s Life

Absolem, the Caterpillar – Alice in Wonderland

Spider-Man

Neytiri – Avatar

Beast – X-Men

The Kraken – Clash of the Titans