Random Most Fascinating Alternate Endings to Famous Movies (16 items)

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  (#11) Fatal Attraction

  • Glenn Close, Michael Douglas, Jane Krakowski, Anne Archer, Fred Gwynne, Jonathan Brandis, Lois Smith, Ellen Foley, Stuart Pankin, Sam Coppola, Anna Thomson, James Eckhouse, Mike Nussbaum, Meg Mundy, J. J. Johnston, Jan Rabson, Tom Brennan, Marilyn Schreffler, Lynnanne Zager, Mary Joy, J. D. Hall, Larry Moss, Justine Johnston, Lillian Garrett-Groag, Barbara Harris, Michael Arkin, David McCharen, Dennis Tufano, Ellen Hamilton Latzen, Thomas Saccio, Judi M. Durand, Vladimir Skomarovsky, Eunice Prewitt, Marc McQue, Faith Geer, Carol Schneider, Christopher Rubin, Greg Scott, Christine Farrell, Alicia Perusse, Chris Manor, Angelo Bruno Krakoff, James 'Packy' Dolan, Mio Polo, David Bates, Reese Golchin, Joe Chapman, Carlo Steven Krakoff, Amy Lyne

  Theatrical Ending
  After two hours of tense psychological intrigue and Michael Douglas/Glenn Close sex scenes, Fatal Attraction finally explodes with Alex (Close) attacking Dan (Douglas) and his wife Beth (Anne Archer) in their home and getting drowned and shot for her trouble.
  
  Alternate Ending
  If you’ve seen the movie, you probably noticed that the new ending is kind of a cop-out: there’s a lot of moral ambiguity here, with the “hero” of our story being a man who cheats on his wife and the “villain” being the woman he sleeps with. Concluding the movie with a scene that makes the evil seductress into a supernatural entity (She can’t drown? What is she, a witch?) that violently attacks someone in their home kinda makes her irredeemable. 
  
  The original ending tackled the ambiguity a little more head-on: Instead of attacking anyone, Alex just kills herself with the knife Dan gave her, and the film ends with Dan being taken away by the police and Beth finding exonerating evidence in the attic. After test audiences were confused by a movie with anything more complicated than a simple good vs. evil dichotomy, the studio reshot the ending – replacing a thoughtful exploration into the destructive nature of emotional manipulation with generic jump-scares.
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  (#7) The Butterfly Effect

  • Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Logan Lerman, Eric Stoltz, Kevin Durand, Callum Keith Rennie, Ethan Suplee, Melora Walters, Cameron Bright, Jesse James, Camille Sullivan, William Lee Scott, Lorena Gale, Elden Henson, John Patrick Amedori, Kevin Schmidt, Nathaniel DeVeaux, Jesse Hutch, Irene Gorovaia, Jake Kaese, Sarah Widdows, Tara Wilson

  Theatrical Ending
  After irresponsibly messing with the space-time for an hour and a half, Evan Treborn (Ashton Kutcher) finally resolves all the problems in his and his true-love’s life by going back to his childhood and threatening to murder her family. It’s kind of a hail-mary, but it works out for him because he’s Ashton Kutcher and everything manages to work out for that guy.

  Alternate Endings
  There are actually three, and they’re all available in that video, but the most interesting has to be the one where he travels back to the moment of his own birth and strangles himself in the womb with his own umbilical cord.
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  (#5) I Am Legend

  • Will Smith, Emma Thompson, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith, Alice Braga, Dash Mihok, Marin Ireland, April Grace, Charlie Tahan, Darrell Foster, James Michael McCauley

  Theatrical Ending
  Vampires invade Will Smith’s house, so he suicide bombs them.

  Alternate Ending
   The original ending filmed for the movie more closely follows the themes of the book on which the story is based: The audience discovers that they have been misled as to the nature of the vampire monsters, and that they’re actually sentient, civilized creatures. The twist is that instead of being a plucky survivor struggling to find a cure, Robert Neville (Will Smith) has been brutally murdering sentient creatures, making him the accidental villain of the story.

  Basically, it’s a nuanced, intelligent, and thought-provoking conclusion... so of course they didn’t use it.
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  (#10) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

  • Anna Kendrick, Chris Evans, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aubrey Plaza, Michael Cera, Bill Hader, Thomas Jane, Jason Schwartzman, Alison Pill, Brie Larson, Brandon Routh, Mae Whitman, Clifton Collins, Jr., Ellen Wong, Kieran Culkin, Johnny Simmons, Mark Webber, Ingrid Haas, Erik Knudsen, Don McKellar, John Patrick Amedori, Joe Dinicol, Matt Watts, Will Seatle Bowes, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Tara Mason, Satya Bhabha, Chantelle Chung, Nelson Franklin, Hope Larson, Joe Vercillo, Dan Cristofori, Kristina Pesic, Alexander Narizini, Kerr Hewitt, Abigail Chu, Michael Lazarovitch, Marlee Otto, Jung-Yul Kim, Ben Lewis, Ryan Allen, Tennessee Thomas, Joshua William James, Keita Saitou, Shôta Saitô, Walter Gasparovic, Mark LeRoy, Chuck Little, Maurie W. Kaufmann, Christine Watson, Celine Lepage, Craig Stickland, Emily Kassie, Jessica Martins

  Theatrical Ending
  Scott becomes friends with Nega-Scott, ditches Knives, and hooks up with Ramona Flowers, and they walk into the romantic Canadian evening together.
  
  Alternate Ending
  The problem with that ending is that it doesn’t really make any sense. Scott’s relationship with Ramona is super unhealthy, being built entirely off of insecurities instead of common interests or experience. His relationship with Knives isn’t super healthy either, but it does make a lot more sense that he’d end up with her, narratively, because his character arc involves rearranging his priorities. Ending up with Ramona shows that he hasn’t really learned anything, whereas hooking up Knives again in this alternate ending shows that he... um, kinda learned something?
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  (#4) Brazil

  • Robert De Niro, Bob Hoskins, Ian Holm, Jim Broadbent, Michael Palin, Katherine Helmond, Jonathan Pryce, Ian Richardson, Peter Vaughan, Charles McKeown, Sheila Reid, Barbara Hicks, Derrick O'Connor, Bryan Pringle, Kathryn Pogson, Kim Greist

  Theatrical Ending
  As is rarely the case, the theatrical ending of Brazil is actually the superior one, due to director Terry Gilliam’s steadfast refusal to accommodate the studio’s wishes. The ending of Brazil that most people have seen is the dark, tragic version where hero Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is driven insane after being tortured to near-death by an insanely bureaucratic dystopian future government.
  
  Alternate Ending
  The ending the studio wanted was a little different: instead of slipping into an escapist fantasy to avoid the tragic situation he’s found himself trapped in, Lowry slips into an escapist fantasy for no reason: his life is actually OK, and love has conquered all evil, and he can live happily ever after. Not only is this unbelievably corny, but it makes absolutely no sense in the context of the story.
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  (#3) Blade Runner

  • Harrison Ford, Daryl Hannah, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, Joanna Cassidy, James Hong, William Sanderson, Brion James, Joe Turkel, Morgan Paull, Monty Pyke, Kevin Thompson, John Edward Allen

  Theatrical Ending
  It’s worth noting that there are eight different versions of Ridley Scott’s neo-noir film Blade Runner. But the ending originally shown in theaters is also pretty universally considered one of the worst: After defeating the rogue replicant and escaping with his replicant girlfriend, Deckard drives through a forest strikingly similar to the one seen at the beginning of The Shining and casually tells the audience in a voice-over that even though Replicants have a four-year lifespan, Rachael (Sean Young) is “special” and will live an indeterminate length of time.
  
  Alternate Ending
  There are two others that are worth talking about. One includes a terrible voice-over that ruins the message of the film, and one that actually fits with the tone and direction of the film. While the theatrical version is annoyingly sappy and the voice-over makes Deckard seem like kind of an idiot (what do you mean you “don’t know why” Roy let you live? He literally just told you!) this ending keeps things uncertain and tragic without insulting the audience’s intelligence.

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