Rocky Balboa dead? Luke Skywalker embracing the dark side? Some of your favorite movies were
planned to end in pretty dark and dismal ways. An impromptu dance-off to the song "Jump in the
Line" was an appropriately strange way to end the movie that rocket-launched Tim
Burton's directorial career. Beetlejuice ends on a surprisingly positive note, with Lydia and her
parents deciding to coexist in the house haunted by its former owners, Barbara and Adam. Meanwhile,
Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice is forced to pay his dues by spending the foreseeable future
in waiting room purgatory. However, the movie could have easily ended with a much darker spin.
Larry Wilson, the movie's co-writer, celebrated the 30th anniversary of the film in 2018 by
revealing the initial concept for the film's ending to Yahoo! Entertainment. He elaborated —
"Our first ending was Lydia — she died in a fire and was able to join Barbara
and Adam in the afterlife. A couple of people said to us,
'Do you really think that's a good idea? Is that really the message you want to be
sending to the teenagers of the world? Die in a fire?' So, yeah, it probably was darker."
Understandably, the version in the finished product is a fitting end that leaves the
characters open for a sequel. Pixar went surprisingly deep into
the metaphysical for its 2020 release Soul. The film centers around a grim theme that
most animated children's movies desperately shy away from — death. The cartoon manages to
kill off its main character, jazz musician Joe Gardner, at the beginning of the film,
spiraling him through the afterlife in search of an answer to the ultimate question:
What is the meaning of life? Through a series of events involving the young spirit 22,
Joe returns to Earth with a bigger purpose and a fresh zest for life.
"I'm going to live every minute of it." (deep breath)
Unsurprisingly, there was much debate among the Pixar story team as to whether this was
the right way to conclude the film. Producer Dana Murray told ET Online,
"We went back and forth on the ending up until the last screening. For a long time,
Joe did go to The Great Beyond."
Co-director Kemp Powers admitted there were multiple endings, saying,
"We have versions of the ending where Joe does not go back to his body, where he actually
stays dead. We have versions of the ending where you see Joe on Earth a year later."
Ultimately, they decided that it made sense for Joe Gardner to get another chance at living his
best life — but they did have grand plans for the character in the afterlife. Powers explained,
"He stayed and ended up being, like, the best mentor ever,
and he introduced lots of new ideas to the You Seminar."
The Rocky franchise is built on the back of an all-American hero who triumphs regardless
of the odds stacked against him. Fittingly, Sylvester Stallone has championed his Rocky
Balboa character through eight movies spanning five decades. However, it was the franchise's
most polarizing film, Rocky V, that could have changed the entire direction of the boxing series.
Rocky V ends on the uplifting note of Balboa winning his climactic fight and coming out
the hero. But according to The Independent, the original script written by Stallone had
the Hollywood tough guy in tears, as he intended for his character to die in the climactic street
fight. The opportunity to create a thoughtful end for the beloved character was enough to
get the original Rocky director John G. Avildsen to reunite with Stallone for the
project. Unfortunately, though, the studio had other plans. Avildsen told CBS News,
"A couple of weeks into the shooting I get a call from the head of the studio. They said,
'Oh by the way Rocky's not going to die. Batman doesn't die, Superman, James Bond,
these people don't die.' So Rocky didn't die, but the movie died because that was the point."
The fifth "Rocky" installment inevitably grossed less than any other installment in the franchise.
"Sue me for what?" When Eternals was released in 2021,
it was a significant shake-up for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The movie
introduced a slew of new superbeings involved in a mythology that has implications stretching
across the entire franchise. While not every fan was won over by this new team of heroes,
their introduction undeniably changed the landscape of the MCU. The theatrical
version of Eternals offers a darker conclusion than is standard for Marvel,
with the team split on their loyalties to the Celestial Arishem.
It has since been revealed that the film's director, Chloe Zhao, had a more unified,
but tonally darker conclusion in mind for the cosmic super squad. She told Empire,
"We actually had another ending that is really bleak. It used to end with everybody back on the
ship, minds erased and just going on to another planet, like The Twilight Zone."
The final twist reportedly went too dark for test audiences. Zhao went on,
"I remember when it goes to black, everyone was like,
'I don't know what to do.' It's the MCU, and you want to be excited for what's next."
A groundbreaking work of modern sci-fi, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar boldly adapts
concepts such as wormholes and time dilation into an affecting narrative. Audiences appreciated the
high concepts and original plot that were a wide step away from the typical Hollywood blockbuster.
One element that didn't buck tradition, though, was the happy ending, which reunites Joseph Cooper
with his daughter Murph as they save humanity in the process. It's a standard cinematic
heartfelt conclusion that seems impossible in the context of the film. Understandably,
the filmmakers didn't arrive at this finale until after they'd considered a much darker ending.
Interstellar co-writer Jonathan Nolan admitted in an interview with Nerdist,
"[The original ending] had the Einstein-Rosen bridge [wormhole]
collapse when Cooper tries to send the data back."
Without further explanation, we can assume that this ending would have assured Cooper could have
never made the return journey home, as it's the wormhole that helps him come back in the
finished film. Nolan also didn’t divulge whether or not the data that essentially
saves his daughter and all of humanity made it through in the original script either. That means
that, in this alternate version, Cooper's mission could have been a complete failure.
"It was me, Mur. I was your ghost."
James Gunn's vision for Guardians of the Galaxy was a welcome injection of colorful humor in a
modern science fiction landscape that has so often doubled down on grim seriousness. The
first Guardians movie brings a ragtag group of criminals together in a battle to protect
the cosmos. Despite some family drama and high stakes, the movie is an optimistic romp through
a bright universe. Still, though, Gunn was tempted to end the beloved Marvel feature on
a gloomy note that may have left viewers feeling less positive when they left theaters in 2014.
The finished film concludes with a montage of characters living out the conclusions of their
individual arcs. However, Gunn has since revealed that three moments were shot that
didn't make the final montage, including scenes with The Collector and Nebula. Most notably,
one featured Peter Quill's Earthbound grandfather in a bit that could have
brought down an otherwise optimistic feature. Gunn said at a press event,
"He has this photograph of Meredith [Quill's mother] and Peter as a little boy and he looks
up at the stars and we go up to the stars and it was really sweet. It means that he must have seen
Quill getting abducted at the end of that day and is still waiting for him to return. But it
was freaking sad, so we took it out." Of all the movies on this list, Ridley
Scott's 1979 sci-fi horror masterpiece Alien is undoubtedly the darkest. The film features
the death of nearly every character onboard the spaceship Nostromo as an extraterrestrial
effectively picks them off one by one. The movie was a huge success when it debuted in theaters,
and the disturbing visual effects were enough to earn an Academy Award. Still,
the notoriously scary film could have ended on an even darker note that would have
changed the entire face of the franchise, which eventually spawned seven subsequent features.
It was not until decades later that Scott revealed his original plan for the Xenomorph
and Ripley in the final moments of the film. Famously, the finished film ends with Ripley
overcoming the monster, leaving her to face the demon again in multiple sequels.
"This is Ripley. Last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off."
However, Scott didn’t intend for Ripley to make it out alive at first. He told Entertainment Weekly,
"I thought that the alien should come in, and Ripley harpoons it
and it makes no difference, so it slams through her mask and rips her head off."
This terrifying conclusion would have left the alien the victor — and the
movie without any surviving human characters. Filmmaker James Gunn is now the co-head at DC
Studios, a job he clearly earned on the strength of his previous work with the company. In 2021,
Gunn spearheaded a relaunch of The Suicide Squad after the franchise's lackluster first attempt
in 2016. Reportedly, the director of darker and gorier films like Slither was given free
rein to effectively kill off any character he wished from the DC roster. Putting the studio
to their word, The Suicide Squad offers a significant amount of character deaths,
including more than one star player. Surprisingly, Gunn originally wanted to take out one more of
his characters — but it proved to be too dark for even him. He told Cinema Blend,
"At the very end of the movie, Ratcatcher 2 had
taken the information about Jotunheim [...] and Waller blew up her head."
Ultimately, the director opted for a slightly more optimistic conclusion. Gunn went on,
"It was really just too dark. It didn't really work for me. It didn't really tell the story
that I wanted to tell, which is much more about the characters' different journeys,
emotionally. And for me, really, the ending with Bloodsport petting the rat, [...] that,
to me, was the perfect ending for the movie." Even when they've dabbled in scary or bittersweet
scenes, happy endings have always been an essential part of the formula for Disney's
animated features. Still, 1994's Lion King carried some heavy themes — Millennials are
still recovering from the tragic death of Mufasa. With the movie heavily inspired
by the Shakespearean classic Hamlet, tragedy and murder are integral to the plot. As such,
the final battle between Scar and Simba was destined to have a harrowing conclusion. The
movie delivers, with Scar ultimately being devoured by his not-so-loyal gang of hyenas.
"Friends? I thought he said we were the enemy."
"Yeah! That's what I heard."
While that's pretty gruesome,
the filmmakers originally planned a much darker fate for the villainous lion.
Original storyboards for the film's climax can now be found on YouTube, and it's easy to see why the
action was reworked before the theatrical release. The momentous battle remains relatively unchanged
until Simba is left clinging for his life begging for his uncle's empathy. Upon revealing that he
was the one who caused the death of Mufasa, Scar delivers the quote "Goodnight, sweet prince,"
lifted directly from Hamlet. Subsequently, it's Simba who makes the tumble from Pride Rock,
lucky to survive. Meanwhile, Scar is engulfed in the fire that has overtaken the scene,
laughing maniacally as he burns to death. The conclusion of the original Star Wars trilogy
needs no introduction. Return of the Jedi sees hope restored to the galaxy. Given the stakes
and the long journey, the final celebratory moments were designed as a rousing celebration
for the franchise's devoted fanbase. But while the years since its 1983 premiere have seen several
alterations to the ending via George Lucas' various "Special Edition" releases, there is
one possible conclusion that fans never got to see — and thank goodness it never made the final cut.
In the early days of writing Return of the Jedi, George Lucas met with co-writer Lawrence Kasdan
to discuss the fateful end of the trilogy. According to transcripts of that meeting,
Lucas had some pretty dark intentions for the fate of Luke Skywalker. After the climactic
battle and the Emperor's defeat, Luke finally gets to meet his father under the mask. However,
the pair briefly considered that Luke would have put on the black helmet himself, saying,
"Now I am Vader. Now I will go and kill the [Rebel] fleet and I will rule the universe."
Undeniably, this one decision would have changed the course of the entire franchise. Instead,
they opted for a family-friendly affair full of teddy bear Ewoks and happy endings.