My eldest daughter sat in the junk room with me this evening - at my work desk - and helped me build a LEGO kit I got for Christmas - of “Groot” from Guardians of the Galaxy.
I can’t imagine how talented the kit designers are at LEGO - for quite some time we couldn’t make head or tail of what we were building - and then, about half-way through the build, the unmistakeable character started to appear. It’s the version of Groot from the second movie - just as he starts to re-grow - in a flower pot. What’s more, you can wind a handle that makes him dance.
I was just starting to build it when she wandered in and took an interest - we all love LEGO - and I let her take over for the middle part of the build.
While she followed the instructions I put some music on, and probably bored her to death with movie trailers and inane memories after discovering that Molly Ringwald had joined Substack. I told her the whole story about “Some Kind of Wonderful” being a sort-of-reboot of “Pretty in Pink”, with the roles reversed.
She said the same thing I’ve always thought - if they re-made Pretty in Pink now, Duckie would have ended up with Andie.
I’m sure there are numerous instances throughout movie history where test audiences have caused writers to mangle scenes, plots, or entire movies - going against their better instincts, and ruining what might have been quite wonderful.