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Every good story needs a good ending, but sometimes the original vision gets lost. This video explores the alternate endings of famous films that were cut due to studio interference, test screenings, or tragic real-world events.
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00:00Every good story needs a good ending and if you trip up when bowing out you can
00:04be rest assured that people will remember that more than anything else you
00:08actually accomplished. As a result endings in film are stressed over, often
00:12changing between scripts and production, on set, or after showing a group of
00:15people and asking them, what do you think? Whatever the reason though, the films
00:19we're talking about today have gone through changes that very few people can
00:22say they've seen both sides of. These movie endings you can no longer see.
00:26Book of Shadows Blair Witch 2. Whilst everyone remembers the Blair Witch
00:31project as the film that popularized the found footage idea, one thing that
00:35remains unappreciated is the ambiguity of its ending. Whilst its sequel largely
00:39forwent the shaky camera of the original, director Joe Berlinger intended to keep a
00:43similar tone in Book of Shadows Blair Witch 2. After visiting the site of the
00:47original mysteries, a teenage group of ragtag Blair Witch fans find themselves
00:51accused of murdering a group of tourists that they'd encountered on the way. The
00:54planned conclusion saw the main cast plead not guilty but have found videotape
00:58shows otherwise, twisting the narrative that the film had shown us and leaving
01:01the audience questioning the truth. Furthermore, the film was given a
01:05purposeful linear narrative to give the story a descent into madness feeling. After
01:09Berlinger showed his film to the studio however, it seems as though they went
01:13about changing just as much as they could muster. In order to make it more
01:16contemporary, they requested more violence in the final act and additional
01:19shots were filmed that sapped the intended ambiguity of the tourists deaths. The
01:23studio also cut the film's final scene into pieces and interspersed it throughout
01:27the story, changing the film's linear descent into, well, a mess. Thankfully,
01:31hardcore Blair Witch fans have done the best they can to restore Berlinger's
01:35vision to decent results, but hindsight editing can't help the film's critical
01:39admonishment. Will dies. Rise of the planet of the apes. Rise of the planet of the apes
01:44concludes memorably with the ape leader Caesar bidding his human companion Will an
01:49emotional farewell and disappearing into the forest. But the originally filmed ending was
01:54considerably more dramatic, with Will attempting to protect Caesar from the owner of the primate
01:59shelter, John, and getting fatally shot as a result. This then led to the apes massacring
02:04the armed humans who pursued them into the forest. Yet, producer Dylan Clark felt that this scene was
02:09idiotic, even when it was being filmed. He said,
02:12We were shooting and I remember saying, You know what? This is just gonna be a bummer. People are
02:16gonna be like, Oh, it was a dumb scene is the truth. We had Brian Cox coming out of nowhere
02:21and
02:21shooting James Franco. The scene, dramatically, was idiotic. And worse, it just made you feel bad.
02:27It was just like, Oh my God, this is the worst movie ever. And so, just a month before the
02:31film was
02:32due to release, the decision was made to reshoot the ending. And given how much disdain Clark clearly
02:37had for that original ending, it's sadly unlikely that it'll ever be screened outside of those who
02:42worked on it. The Twin Towers in Men in Black 2. The original Men in Black movie was loosely based
02:48on a comic book series called The Men in Black. That series changed ownership a bunch of times before
02:53eventually ending up in the hands of Marvel. The second Men in Black movie ends with the good guys
02:58launching an alien princess back into space via a giant UFO and then neuralising the entirety of New York
03:05City with the Statue of Liberty. It definitely makes more sense once you've seen it. The film
03:09almost made use of another famous New York landmark, although one with a much darker history than Lady
03:15Liberty. The film's ending was originally set against the backdrop of the Twin Towers, but the events of
03:219-11 understandably changed that. Men in Black 2 was actually still filming when the towers fell and
03:27production was suspended whilst America dealt with the tragedy. Again, this probably didn't change things
03:32too much in the grand scheme of things, but it's weird to think that this film is linked to one
03:35of the
03:36biggest disasters of the 21st century. Doctor Strangelove. Doctor Strangelove has one of cinema's most
03:42striking conclusions. Faced with the looming reality of worldwide nuclear war, eccentric scientist
03:47Doctor Strangelove rises unexpectedly from his wheelchair with a plan to stop the destruction
03:51and explosions suddenly go off around the world. Audiences were left with a sarcastic laugh of despair
03:57that no other film in its era could achieve. It also has one of the industry's most discussed
04:02alternative endings that is nearly too balmy to be believed. In the original script, the film continued
04:07with a pie fight in the Pentagon's war room. This 1960s classic originally closed by parodying the warfront
04:14with a battle of cream and pastry. So close was this to being the case that not only was it
04:18shot,
04:18it was also shown to test audiences that included critics. Director Kubrick felt that the final scene
04:23became too farcical and worse yet his actors had lost focus in the fun of the pie throwing and had
04:28actually started laughing on camera. The final nail came when a preview of the film was due to land on
04:32the same day as the real-life assassination of John F Kennedy. The line in the scene that exclaimed,
04:37our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime, suddenly felt too close to the bone.
04:42Thus Kubrick found the right point to cut the final scenes off of Strangelove, and they haven't
04:46ever been seen since. Jyn and Cassian run across Scarif's beach. Rogue One, a Star Wars story.
04:53Now it's no secret that Rogue One was massively overhauled during post-production, with Disney
04:58splashing out on five weeks worth of reshoots in order to fix major sequences in the movie,
05:02especially in its third act. As a result, numerous scenes from the trailers ended up not appearing in
05:08the final film, including a thrilling-looking climax in which Jyn and Cassian sprint across
05:13a Scarif beach whilst being fired upon by ATATs. Ultimately, director Gareth Edwards confirmed that
05:18the ending was retooled primarily for pacing reasons. Originally, Jyn and Cassian had to run across the
05:24beach in order to reach the communications tower where they could transmit the Death Star plans to the
05:28Rebels. But to compress the finale, the tower was moved into the Empire's main base, negating the
05:34need for the Mad Dash. In Edwards' own words, he said,
05:37In cutting the film, it just felt too long. We had to find ways to compress the third act,
05:41which was quite long as it was. And one real, fast, brutal solution was to put the tower in the
05:47base,
05:47so they don't have to run across the beach and do all that stuff to get there. That became a
05:51decision
05:52that eliminated the shots you see in the trailer of the backs of Cassian and Jyn. While Edwards' rationale
05:57seems reasonable, it's a shame that the more elongated alternate ending has never been shown
06:01outside of the Lucasfilm brain trust because, let's face it, it looked terrific.
06:06Ash's Curse in The Crow City of Angels
06:10Sticking with tragedy, let's move on to The Crow, a film more famous for its backstory than its plot.
06:16Actor Brandon Lee was shot and killed on the set of the movie after a prop gun was incorrectly loaded.
06:22The accident sent shockwaves around the industry and has tainted the film ever since. This is why
06:28when a sequel to The Crow was announced, people were a little bit sceptical. Still, Hollywood got
06:34a Hollywood and The Crow City of Angels was made. Vincent Perez took on the titular superhero mantle,
06:40playing a resurrected version of Ash Corvin. The film ends with the vigilante mourning the loss of
06:45his new love interest before heading off into the afterlife to be reunited with her and his son.
06:50The original ending, as conceived by director Tim Pope, saw Ash curse to walk the earth forever,
06:56never to see his lover or his son ever again. This proved too bleak for the studio, who forced
07:02Pope to change it to a more hopeful one. More hopeful? The guy still dies at the end of it.
07:07Brazil
07:09According to Universal, who was set to handle the US release of Terry Gilliam's Brazil,
07:13the reactions from international and European audiences to the dystopian black comedy were
07:19unsatisfactory. Brazil's lead character Sam, who has spent the film struggling against a bureaucracy
07:23that has pinned a string of terrorist attacks on him, ends the story thinking that he's evaded
07:27his captors and avoided torture. However, it's all revealed to be an illusion in his head as he
07:32stares, smiling madly into the middle distance and humming to himself. Studio head Sid Scheinberg
07:37demanded that the film be given a happier ending, cutting around the story and reusing footage where
07:42possible, so that love interest Jill survives and Sam makes it out of the city to start a new life.
07:47But the egg landed firmly on the face of Universal when, having screened his version to critics in
07:52secret, Gilliam's Brazil won a plethora of awards. It forced the studio's hand and they released it in
07:58its original edited format. Ergo, the version of this film that you would struggle to see today
08:03is the Sid Scheinberg cut. It did appear on a Criterion DVD and laser disc of all things,
08:08but with technology moving forward, and not always so well preserved, it may be a matter
08:13of time before this version, and its sappier ending goes from hard to find to totally lost.
08:19Ava's Point of View Reveal – Ex Machina Alex Garland's terrific sci-fi thriller Ex Machina
08:26almost wrapped up with an even more provocative ending. In the final cut of the movie,
08:30android Ava escapes Nathan's secure facility, leaves poor Caleb trapped inside and rides a helicopter to
08:36civilization where she's able to effortlessly blend in. The original cut offered a slight tweak
08:42on this grim finale though, by presenting greater insight into precisely how Ava views the world.
08:47When Ava speaks with the helicopter pilot before boarding, we briefly see the events from Ava's
08:51perspective, revealing that she interprets the pilot's words as nothing more than
08:55sounds and pulses. Basically, Ava wasn't approximating traditional human interaction nearly as
09:01close as Nathan and Caleb and we, the audience, actually assumed. Her interpretation of the
09:07world around her was totally abstract and unique, and whether that qualifies as consciousness or not
09:12is there for the viewer to decide. Garland has never confirmed why the ending was changed,
09:17though Oscar Isaac theorized that maybe it just didn't work in the cut. Either way,
09:20it's clearly something that fans would love to see one day.
09:23The Clones Attack in Judge Dredd
09:26The original movie's plot revolves around Dredd's evil half-brother Riko and the army of clones he
09:31plans to use to take over Mega City 1. Brothers, what are they like? In the theatrical cut of the
09:37movie, the Clones are shown waking up and that's it. They just sort of wither away and die, taking
09:43Riko's lab with them. It's a bit of an anti-climax, really. This might be because scenes were originally
09:48filmed of Dredd blasting his way through the Clones in a goo-filled rampage. However, Big Sly wanted the
09:54film to be more family-friendly and so the violent sequence was cut. Um, he wanted a Judge Dredd film
10:00to be more family-friendly. Had he even read the comic books? The guy's name is literally Dredd.
10:07Misery. A difference between the Stephen King novel Misery and the 1990 Rob Rayner-directed
10:13movie adaption became its most iconic moment. In the book, crazed superfan Annie tries to stop the
10:19escape of her captured favourite writer Paul Sheldon by removing his foot with an axe. In order for Paul to
10:24come out of the motion picture version in a more triumphant way, Rayner and company decided
10:28it might be best for Annie to simply smash Paul's ankle in with a hammer. Seems like Paul can't
10:33catch a break either way. Almost certainly the smallest, most amusing, but keen-eyed change to
10:38ever come from a test audience preview was the suggestion to reshoot the ending of Misery,
10:42where Paul, months later, is haunted by his experiences. Why? Because, and I quote,
10:48he needs to walk with a cane. Paul was too healthy after his experiences and it was too much of
10:54a
10:54suspension of disbelief. In all fairness, it's a good point, but it makes you wonder how many people
10:58called this out, because apparently it was enough of a pressing issue to fire up the production trucks
11:02again, as the scene was indeed reshot. It's presumably almost identical, except this time Paul
11:08gets a walking stick to lean on. The caneless ending of Misery is not really something we particularly need,
11:14and as such, it's something that has either been destroyed or locked away in a vault. Regardless,
11:18it's a fun story and an anomaly in an otherwise drama-free production.
11:23John Connor dies, becomes a Terminator. Terminator Salvation. When Terminator Salvation director MCG
11:30was recently asked if there was anything he wished he could have done differently with the movie,
11:34he offered up a simple response. I would have stuck with the dark ending that we photographed
11:38that got cut. Now, MCG is referring to the film's stunning original ending, which would have
11:43seen John Connor die after being mortally wounded in the climax. But human-Terminator hybrid Marcus
11:48then volunteers to have John's skin fitted over his own body, effectively allowing John Connor to
11:54live on as a mythic, hopeful figure for humanity despite his actual death. The dramatic irony of
11:59Connor becoming a Terminator speaks for itself. Yet this ending ultimately received pushback from
12:05both test audiences and the studio, with the latter feeling it was way too dark. And so, a new ending
12:10was shot in which Connor survives his grim injuries after Marcus offers up his own heart for a
12:14transplant, making the ultimate sacrifice for the cause. Not a bad ending in of itself, but not nearly
12:20as interesting as what was originally planned, nor a scripted yet unfilmed version where the Terminator
12:25John Connor gets taken over by Skynet and murders all the key members of the human resistance.
12:30Jane Waits in Thor
12:32After bonding with Natalie Portman's Jane Foster, Chris Hemsworth's Thor is heartbroken when he has to
12:38sever the connection between his world and hers. Unbeknownst to him, Jane waits for Thor on Earth.
12:44In fact, she almost did a whole lot more waiting. In a deleted ending, Jane and her colleagues Darcy
12:50and Dr. Erik Selvig devise a beacon to attract Thor's attention. There's also a mention of Sword from
12:56Selvig, a branch of S.H.I.E.L.D. that wouldn't make its official MCU debut until WandaVision. If
13:02this
13:02scene had been included, it might have made audiences care just that little bit more about Thor and Jane's
13:07relationship. Still, considering Natalie Portman vanishes between Thor 2 and Thor 4, maybe it
13:12wasn't worth it. And no, the archival footage from Endgame does not count.
13:16Somewhere in Time
13:191980s romance fantasy flick Somewhere in Time is, by general consensus, a fine if not fairly middle
13:24of the road film. It explores time travel as obtained by Hypnosis so that our lead character
13:29Richard Coulier, portrayed by Christopher Reeve, can meet his otherwise unobtainable girl of his dreams that
13:34he sees in an old photograph. Something else that appears to be unobtainable is the original cut of
13:39the film. Somewhere in Time ends with the death of its protagonist and through the point of view of
13:43the lens, we see Coulier's spirit finally reunited with the woman he loves. It's a fine ending,
13:48but according to Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells, it was much better the way that he remembers it.
13:53Executing a technique that was rare in those days, Somewhere in Time originally ended with an
13:57extraordinary and extra long tracking shot that led us through the halls of the hospital and into the
14:02arms of Coulier's love, very slowly and very deliberately. In the 1980s, with very little
14:08trickery available, the shot would have been incredibly hard to capture. According to the
14:11film's cinematographer Isadore Mankowski, Universal Studios thought that it was too long and trimmed it
14:16down to a few edits, fading parts of the shot together to get the point across quicker. And then?
14:21Well, it appears they threw the reel in the bin, since as far as Mankowski knows,
14:25the original version no longer exists.
14:278. Kate Finds the Aliens – The Thing – 2011
14:31It's not much of a secret that 2011's The Thing prequel was significantly reworked during
14:35post-production, with the studio ultimately mandating that the extensive practical effects
14:40be effectively painted over with CGI. Smart move. Much of the third act was also reshot,
14:46with the director revealing that the film's original ending had protagonist Kate entering the
14:50alien spacecraft and discovering the bodies of the original alien pilots, which had been killed by The
14:56Thing. This ending would have implied that the aliens attempted to crash the ship in order to
15:00kill The Thing, which they had collected from another planet before it managed to escape confinement
15:04aboard their spacecraft. The Thing then assimilated one of the aliens in an attempt to fly the ship
15:09away from Earth. But ultimately, following test screenings, it was decided that this ending had
15:13got too much going on, and so it was ultimately reshot to remove the aliens entirely, replacing them
15:18instead with an animatronic pilot with a glowing hologram.
15:22Peter's grandfather in Guardians of the Galaxy
15:25Now, there are plenty of unanswered questions in the MCU. Another query surrounds Peter Quill and
15:31his extended family. We see a big group of them gathered around Quill's mother's bedside
15:36right at the start of Guardians of the Galaxy, presumably to take Peter in after his mother passes
15:41away. We all know that never happens. Instead, the young boy runs away, gets abducted by ravagers,
15:46and becomes one of the universe's greatest heroes. But what about his family? What became of them?
15:52That question was nearly answered in the film's ending, according to director James Gunn.
15:58The man behind the Guardians explained that the film's original ending would have seen
16:02Peter's grandfather still waiting for him back on Earth. This was removed, however, as Gunn believed
16:08this ending would be too freaking sad. Well, yeah, of course it would. You really wanted to go straight
16:14from Ain't No Mountain High enough right into an old man waiting for his kidnapped grandson?
16:18Dawn of the Dead
16:20After being held up in a shopping mall for months following the end of the world,
16:24Dawn of the Dead's surviving duo of Peter and Fran find themselves in jeopardy as raiding bikers
16:28cause their safe haven to become suddenly far less safe. With barriers and defences now down,
16:33hordes of zombies begin to pour up into the shopping mall's offices. There once bunker and now home
16:38under attack, the two race to the roof to get aboard their helicopter to make their uncertain journey
16:43onwards. Whilst the version we've all seen ends ambiguously, the original script was a lot darker
16:48and more definitive about things. According to special effects guru Tom Savini, the suicide ending
16:53was indeed shot. George A. Romero spent some years denying this before admitting in a DVD commentary
16:58that some work had been done on it. Evidence of it still exists in the film, making this the only
17:03entry on a list that you still kind of see. Peter puts a gun to his head for a moment,
17:07and Fran's way out was to include deliberately decapitating herself on the helicopter's blades,
17:12a chilling callback to an earlier scene with an unfortunate zombie. At the very least,
17:16knowing that the script called for Peter and Fran to commit suicide makes the final scenes of Dawn
17:20make a lot more sense. Jean Grey battles a Skrull armada in space, Dark Phoenix. The final major movie
17:27in Fox's X-Men universe was put through the post-production Mangle, with a large portion of the third act
17:32ultimately being reshot. Originally, Dark Phoenix saw the X-Men battling the Skrulls rather than the
17:37lesser-known Dabari, and the movie concluded with an epic space battle in which Jean Grey reached her
17:42final Phoenix form before obliterating a Skrull armada. And as for antagonist Vuck? Well,
17:47she would have faced off against Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Professor X in a more intimate fight set at the
17:52United Nations. However, this ending was scrapped in favour of a climactic set piece that takes place
17:58primarily on a bloody train. As for the original ending that was nixed? Well, James McAvoy suggested
18:03it was because the filmmakers realised that it had excessive similarities to a recently released
18:07superhero movie, believed to be either Captain Marvel with its space-set final battle or Captain
18:12America Civil War, which similarly had a more low-key fight. Even so, it sounds way more interesting
18:17than the relatively tepid ending that we got. Slattery explodes in Iron Man 3.
18:22It's safe to say that long-time Iron Man fans were less than thrilled when legendary villain
18:27the Mandarin was revealed to be nothing more than a dingy British actor in Iron Man 3.
18:33The fact that the Mandarin, one of Iron Man's greatest ever foes, was reduced to a punchline
18:38upset a lot of people. They probably would have killed Slattery if they had the chance. Well,
18:43their wish almost came true. An unused ending would have seen Slattery accidentally inject himself
18:49with the extremist virus that gives Killian his powers in the movie. Except in this case,
18:55Trev doesn't get fantastical strength or the ability to breathe fire, he blows up. Slattery
19:00wasn't the best character in the world, but did he really deserve this? The Roaches infiltrate humanity,
19:06Mimic. Now, Mimic is far from director Gilmo del Toro's finest work, though the production was marred
19:11by the constant meddling of producer Bob Weinstein, who felt that the film wasn't scary enough and
19:16even tried to get del Toro fired during shooting. Del Toro, for his part, called it one of the worst
19:21experiences of his life. Okay then, good. The director's original ending, though,
19:25was considered way more provocative than the one that was actually released. You see,
19:29Dr. Susan Tyler and Dr. Peter Mann still meet up at the Grand Central Station, but hear the sound of
19:35cockroaches around them, implying that the man-sized Judas-breed cockroaches have managed to
19:40successfully infiltrate humanity. But test audiences reportedly hated this ending, and so a new,
19:45happier ending was shot, which categorically saw the Judas-breed wiped out and humanity prevail.
19:50Though a grotty video clip of the original ending was posted online back in 2011,
19:55it sadly disappeared off the internet since, seemingly without a trace.
19:58Rogue doesn't take the cure in X- The Last Stand
20:02The third instalment in the original X-Men film trilogy, The Last Stand tries and fails to
20:07mush together about four different huge storylines from the comics.
20:11The Dark Phoenix Saga, The X-Men vs. The Brotherhood of Mutants, Xavier's death,
20:16it's all here, and it's all lost in the shuffle of a bogged-down, bloated movie.
20:21Another story that somehow found its way into the mix was the invention of a cure for mutation.
20:26This appeals particularly to Rogue, whose energy-draining powers prevent her from establishing any sort of
20:32physical relationship. In the actual ending to the film, it's revealed that Rogue took the cure
20:36to be with her boyfriend Iceman. The misogynistic undertones of a woman sacrificing something unique
20:42about her to be with a man are plain to see, and could easily have been avoided.
20:46A scene was filmed where Rogue returned to the mansion with her powers still intact.
20:50This would have been a much more powerful ending, showing the young woman controlling
20:54her mutation rather than the other way round. Quicksilver lives in Avengers Age of Ultron.
20:59One of the biggest swerves in MCU history came at the end of Avengers Age of Ultron.
21:05Everyone and their dogs thought Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye was going to die. They'd spent the entire
21:10film trying to make him interesting, even giving him a secret family to really crank up that sadness
21:15factor when he eventually snuffed it. And yet he didn't. Instead, Aaron Taylor-Johnson's Quicksilver
21:22got axed instead, actually sacrificing himself to save Hawkeye. What a waste of time that was.
21:28Director Joss Whedon actually shot a version of the film's final battle where Quicksilver did not die,
21:33just in case Marvel didn't like his idea of killing him off. There also exists out there
21:38footage of him joining the Avengers in the final scene, fully suited and booted. However,
21:44none of this footage was ever used as Whedon got his way. Yet another example of Joss Whedon ruining somebody's
21:50life.
21:50Part of this footage was still in the final scene of
21:50which has overall V