Rambo… dead? And what fate did Marvel really intend for Loki? Here are some
of the biggest changes ever made to movies after a test screening.
Fatal Attraction remains one of the most successful thrillers of the 1980s,
a film that launched Glenn Close into stardom and earned six Academy Award nominations. The film is
still a memorable, tense psychological thrill ride thanks to the incredible lead performances
of Close and Michael Douglas. But according to Close it was actually originally going to end
in an even darker way than it ultimately did. Remember the scene in which Dan goes to Alex's
apartment and they fight over a kitchen knife? Well, Alex was supposed to use that moment to
get Dan's prints on the knife — which she would then kill herself with and use to
frame him for her murder. Test audiences had something else in mind. Close told Movieline,
"The original ending was a gorgeous piece of film noir. She kills herself,
but makes sure that his prints are all over the knife, and he gets arrested. He knows he
didn't do it, but he's going to jail anyway. But audiences wanted some kind of cathartic ending,
so we went back months later and shot the ending that's in the movie now."
A different ending, in which Dan and his wife Beth fight Alex until Beth shoots her, was added.
Test screenings can sway many different aspects of a film's plot, but it's not often that you
hear about a film that comes out of the test screening process with a different title.
That's exactly what happened to the last James Bond film of the
1980s and Timothy Dalton's second and final outing as Bond, Licence To Kill.
The film was originally titled Licence Revoked, because that's exactly what happens in the film.
Bond becomes a rogue agent as he goes on a quest for vengeance against a drug kingpin who killed
his friend's wife shortly after their wedding, and M suspends him and revokes his trademark license
to kill. However, when the film was test-screened for American audiences, they were puzzled by the
title, as they thought of "Licence Revoked" as something that happens to driver's licenses, not a
cool secret agent's license to kill. So the title was altered to avoid any confusion.
"You could have had everything."
"Don't you want to know why?"
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and its source material, the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series
by Bryan Lee O'Malley, developed simultaneously, with O'Malley releasing the final volume of his
story just weeks before Edgar Wright's film hit theaters. That meant Wright and company
did not necessarily have a concrete ending from the source material to go by when they wrote
the film, and that meant an ending that created some trouble at test screenings.
The original ending of the film featured Scott staying with Knives Chau, his girlfriend in
the beginning of the film, rather than being with Ramona Flowers, but according to Wright,
this created arguments during the testing process. Wright told Entertainment Weekly,
"The way that we'd originally written it, which wasn't quite right, is we
were trying to do a 'Graduate' or 'Heartbreak Kid'-style ending. To tell the honest truth,
Ellen Wong [who plays Knives] was so lovely and so charming that it just made me feel horrible
even doing that ending. So the ending we did have was neither here nor there."
When the test screenings didn't go well, Wright, O'Malley, and co-writer Michael Bacall
went back and wrote a new ending in which Knives encourages Scott to be with Ramona.
"I'm too cool for you anyway."
A 1980s teen romcom classic written by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch,
Pretty in Pink is an interesting case of test screening changes in part because
you can still experience the original version of the story if you're willing
to track down the novelization of the film. The book, you see, was already written by the
time the studio requested a new ending from Hughes and Deutch following a test screening
response in which audiences clearly picked a winner in the battle for Andie's heart.
In the film's original ending, Andie actually did come around to falling for her longtime best
friend Duckie, who'd been in love with her the whole time, but test audiences wanted Andie to
end up with Blaine, the upper class guy. Because the novelization is based on the original script,
Duckie still gets the girl in the book, but Hughes and Deutch crafted a new ending in which Blaine
apologizes to Andie and Duckie, feeling they should be together, and Duckie vouches for him.
"You were right. He’s not like the others."
So, if you like that Andie ended up with Blaine, you have early test audiences to thank.
Neil Marshall's brutal subterranean horror flick The Descent is a film that changed not so much
because of traditional test audiences, but because of the test that was its release in the U.K.,
which happened more than a year before the film finally made its way to the States. The Descent
is a relentless, grimy thrill ride full of gore and creature thrills, and its U.K. ending drove
its sense of dread and darkness all the way through to the final moments, as the film ends
with the reveal that Sarah, the last survivor of the cave, only dreamed that she'd escaped, and was
in reality still sitting in the dark, imagining her dead daughter sitting across from her.
By the time the U.S. release was looming, audiences had given enough feedback saying
they found the ending too bleak, and distributor Lionsgate asked for a change.
So Marshall cut the final minute of the film, allowing Sarah to escape the cave for real.
It might be hard to believe now, but First Blood was originally supposed to be a one-and-done
affair, because John Rambo was originally supposed to die. Yes, Sylvester Stallone's tortured Vietnam
veteran who became synonymous with action movie juggernauts in the 1980s was originally going to
get killed at the end of his first and only movie. That's what happens in David Morrell's novel on
which the film is based. It's also what happened in the first version of Ted Kotcheff's film,
which he saw as a suicide mission that would end with Rambo killing himself.
From the moment he joined the production, Stallone felt the suicide ending for Rambo
was too excessive, and pitched an alternate ending that Kotcheff ultimately shot on
the same day as his original ending. By the time the film ended up with Orion Pictures,
the distributor had the idea to run a test screening with the original ending,
just to see what would happen. Kotcheff told Entertainment Weekly,
"[The test audience] were all unanimous. They all said, in different words:
'This is the best action film I've ever seen. But the ending is horrible!'"
Rollerball sounds like the kind of film that might work well now. Director John McTiernan,
who helped give birth to the action movie as we know it, set out to remake a cult classic
from director Norman Jewison about an ultra-brutal futuristic sport.
"The whole world will be watching because this is your year."
The 2001 remake of Rollerball seemed to be in trouble from the beginning, when McTiernan drew
internet ire for opting to change the futuristic setting of the original film and ditching the
first script. Then came test screenings in the spring of 2001. The response was terrible, thanks
in no small part to an extremely negative review from Ain't It Cool News, and the studio went into
damage control mode. The release date was pushed to 2002, McTiernan conducted two weeks of reshoots
to refine certain scenes, and the studio mandated that the film be cut to make a PG-13 rating,
hoping younger audiences would respond to it. This meant all of the nudity and a good deal
of the violence were toned down. Rollerball was ultimately a critical and commercial failure.
Sometimes test audiences
are extremely specific with what they want. This was the case with The Lovely Bones,
Peter Jackson's 2009 adaptation of Alice Sebold's bestselling novel.
Jackson told Reuters that test audiences had a lot to say about one of the film's key ending points.
The specific complaint was regarding the death of the child killer Mr. Harvey, who is killed,
as he is in Sebold's novel, when an icicle hits him on the shoulder and causes him to fall down
into a ravine. Audiences were happy to see Harvey die, but they felt his death was too quick.
So Jackson went back to the cutting room and added more "suffering." In the final film, we
see Harvey's full fall to his death, complete with bone-crunching bounces and facial lacerations.
It's now considered one of Martin Scorsese's best, but members of the original test
screening audience for Goodfellas walked out in disgust. The reactions were instant and visceral,
with several people leaving in the opening moments of the film as Tommy DeVito violently
stabs Billy Batts to death. Studio executives were rattled. Speaking with Entertainment
Weekly in 2019, Scorsese reflected on the test screening process, saying,
"I'm in the process of making the film. I screen it for some people,
they go 'maybe you don't need that,' and maybe I do things, or maybe not."
Following the Goodfellas screening, Scorsese began tweaking the movie's
edit. Working directly with editor Thelma Schoonmaker, the two determined precisely
how many stab wounds the Batts character could sustain on film before it became gratuitous.
Not all screening comment cards resulted in cuts to the film, however. Scorsese revealed that while
the violence was too much for viewers, they loved Scorsese's real-life mother in the role of Mrs.
DeVito, Tommy's mother. Their feedback saved the heartwarming sequence from the cutting room floor,
and the final result is one of the greatest gangster movies of all time.
"I settle down almost every night,
but in the morning I'm free. I love you, Mom. I want to be with you."
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy has become a modern comedy classic, but the original plot
was received so poorly by test audiences that it had to be completely reshot. The retooling left
several big name comic actors on the cutting room floor, like Maya Rudolph, Stephen Root,
Amy Poehler and Justin Long. There was even a role for rap legend Chuck D that had to be abandoned.
Will Ferrell superfans need not fret, however, as all the unused footage from the feature
film — mostly involving a terrorist group called The Alarm Clock — was repurposed into a so-called
"lost film" called Wake Up, Ron Burgundy. Initially released as its own direct-to-DVD
feature, it's now included as an extra on the "Unrated Rich Mahogany Edition" Blu-ray.
The theatrical release, of course, became a huge hit. Anchorman earned over $90 million
at the box office and has a rating of 86% with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes,
but beyond the numbers it became what its titular character is known as: a legend.
"If you want to throw down, it's fine. I've got Jack Johnson and Tom O'Leary waiting for you."
Thor may be the star of his own series of movies in the MCU, but Loki is just as beloved. In fact,
Loki is easily the most popular villain-slash-antihero of the multiverse,
with a redemption arc in Thor: Ragnarok and his own extremely popular series on Disney+. Imagine,
then, if Loki had truly died at the end of Thor: The Dark World as originally intended.
Tom Hiddleston revealed on the Empire film podcast that Loki's death in Thor:
The Dark World was meant to stick, but that test screening audiences rejected the idea. Naturally
it makes sense that fans wouldn't trust any Loki death scene, as the notorious trickster
character is known for his misleading illusions. Indeed, moments earlier in Thor: The Dark World,
the character makes it look like he cuts off his brother's hand in a moment of betrayal. Plus,
Loki's no stranger to faking his death, as he does at the end of the first Thor.
It's therefore fitting that the sly adopted Asgardian pulls another fast one. Loki's The Dark
World death was meant to serve as a redemption arc for the mischievous villain. While it can be said
that undermining that intention in The Dark World leaves the middle of the film with no real stakes,
it ultimately allows Loki to serve a much greater purpose — and enjoy
a much more satisfying redemption — in Thor: Ragnarok and beyond.