A bad ending can be a dealbreaker for some filmgoers, which is why studios often shoot
alternate endings, many better than the ones we end up seeing.
Here are some of the very best.
In The Butterfly Effect, Ashton Kutcher plays a man who can return to different points in
his life as long as there's a record of them, like a journal entry.
He constantly tries to go back and make his life better, but he keeps messing up.
Finally, he realizes what he must do: he has to go back in time and upset a girl he knew,
so she'll never know him in the future.
This rather lame conclusion was not the director's original idea.
Originally, in a kind of reverse-It's a Wonderful Life, Kutcher's character realizes the only
way to avoid causing immense pain to all of his loved ones is to never be born in the
first place.
"You have no lifeline, no soul.
You were never meant to be.”
“He's choking himself."
"NO!"
Surprisingly, the studio wasn't down with an ending that involved fetal death, so it
was changed to the slightly more feel-good ending.
The American version of Army of Darkness, the third Evil Dead movie, ends with Ash fighting
off a Deadite who's invaded his store because everything that happens to Ash must be totally
ridiculous.
But some fans overseas got to see the original ending, one that truly puts a capper on Ash's
terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
While Ash was stuck in medieval times, some alchemists give him a potion and told him
to drink six drops if he wants to wake up in his own, modern era.
He retreats to a nearby cave, caves in the entrance so nobody can disturb his sleep,
and then drinks the drops.
But a mini-landslide distracts him and screws up his counting, and he drinks seven drops
instead of six.
Then he drifts off, only to wake up 100 years later than he intended.
"Oh!
Oh, God.
No!
I slept too long!"
Sucker Punch is a weird and confusing movie about girls attempting to break out of an
insane asylum before they're all lobotomized.
Their struggle to escape is represented by a bunch of different film genres, like samurai
and gangster flicks.
At the end, the main character, Baby Doll, tells her friend to run off while she confronts
the guards, who knock her out and then give her a lobotomy.
However, there's an alternate ending that's much better.
In it, Baby Doll gives herself to the High Roller, in exchange for her freedom via lobotomy.
It's a really sad and depressing ending.
But it's also completely natural, and it helps explain that Baby Doll knew what was happening
the whole time.
"Freedom to love."
Salt stars Angelina Jolie as Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent accused of colluding with Russia.
The ending that theatergoers saw features Evelyn captured by the CIA and revealed as
a Russian sleeper agent who was trained from childhood.
However, she wants nothing to do with her home country now that she's all grown up.
So Peabody, the CIA agent in charge of her, gives her the go-ahead to escape, invade Russia,
and go after the other agents there.
The extended ending, however, actually features Angelina Jolie coldly killing everyone for
a couple minutes.
After an alternate escape scene in which she pretends to swallow cyanide in order to escape
a CIA-filled hospital, Evelyn ventures to Russia, finds Orlov the lead agent, shoots
him, ties him to a rock, and tosses him underwater to drown.
Then, as we pan away from Salt looking down at the water, we see Orlov's entire facility
begin to explode.
Interestingly enough, in the theatrical cut, Salt kills Orlov halfway through the film,
so this version had to remove that moment so it could happen later.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is basically a video gamer's fantasy come to life: Scott
has a crush on Ramona, and to win her heart he must defeat all seven of her ex-lovers.
But all of them have evil superpowers.
Obviously, once he defeats all the exes, he wins Ramona's heart, and he even gets the
blessing of the girl he was dating before falling for Ramona.
But there's an alternate ending, one in which Ramona is basically unimpressed after Scott
defeats her exes.
She dumps him, and then he gets back together with his previous girlfriend and they live
happily ever after.
"Well, bye and stuff."
“Yeah.
And stuff.”
It's a slightly messier ending, but it shows that the love you want isn't always the love
you need.
Die Hard With a Vengeance's alternate ending is basically the same as the actual one: John
McClane still kills Simon Gruber, because how could he not?
But it takes a different, far more interesting route to get there.
Initially, Gruber gets away, and the NYPD fires McClane, despite his stellar, terrorist-killing
track record.
With vengeance on his mind, he travels to Europe to track down Gruber.
He eventually finds him in a cafe and offers him a "Christmas present": a Chinese rocket
launcher.
He then challenges Gruber to a game of "McClane Says" in which one wrong answer means Gruber
has to turn the launcher on himself.
"Make up your mind and press the trigger, Simon.
You sure?”
“Oh yes.”
It may be less noble and darker than the theatrical ending, but that extra dimension makes McClane
more flawed, more human, and more relatable.