When Harry Met Sally's ending was altered because the director found love?
The T-Rex is Jurassic Park wasn't meant to finish off the show?
What other movies had dramatically changed endings and why? Stay tuned to find out!
Directed and co-written by Shane Black, 2018's The Predator ends with the heroes finding a way
to defeat the invading extraterrestrials, thanks to some alien tech called the "Predator killer."
It's an obvious set-up for a sequel, but the original script ended with a much cooler stinger.
In Black and Fred Dekker's screenplay,
the movie ends shortly after the ragtag crew defeats the Ultimate Predator.
Quinn McKenna, his son Rory, and biologist Casey Brackett have all survived the battle,
but their adventures aren't over quite yet. A helicopter shows up,
and who should step out of the chopper but Dutch Schaefer himself.
The musclebound mercenary played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original film,
Dutch tells the survivors that they need to come with him.
That's when little Rory asks, "Me too?" and Dutch responds, "Especially you." That's
where the film ends, implying that Rory will be essential in the war against the Predators.
Unfortunately, Black couldn't manage to book Schwarzenegger for such a small part.
As the actor explained to Yahoo in 2017:
"They asked me, and I read it, and I didn't like it — whatever they offered. So I'm not going to
do that, no. Except if there's a chance that they rewrite it, or make it a more significant role."
"Stick around!"
One of the all-time great rom-coms, When Harry Met Sally… features Billy Crystal
and Meg Ryan caught in a will-they-won't-they friendship that spans years. They finally get
together on New Year's Eve, making for the perfect ending to a brilliant love story.
But things were originally going to be a lot more melancholy.
In Nora Ephron's screenplay, the two lose touch for a few years, and at the end,
they reunite for a few brief moments, catching up one last time before parting ways again.
That all changed when director Rob Reiner found love. He was dealing with some heavy
personal issues while making the film, and as he explained to PeopleTV in 2018,
"I was single for ten years and making a mess of my personal life,
in and out of relationships and not being able to make anything work."
But then while shooting the film, Reiner met the woman who would become his wife, Michele Singer.
That radically altered his outlook on everything,
including the ending of When Harry Met Sally… Caught in the swells of romance,
Reiner changed the finale during filming, thereby allowing Harry and Sally to wind up together.
"Because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody,
you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."
While the name Rambo has become virtually synonymous with action movie heroes from the 80s,
Sylvester Stallone's one-man army was nearly brought to a definitive end in his debut film.
1982's First Blood followed the Vietnam War veteran as
he was targeted by an overbearing small town sheriff, leading to an escalating
conflict that saw Rambo outmaneuver the National Guard and elude authorities.
This showdown culminated with Rambo using a machine gun to shoot up buildings throughout
town before being confronted by his old commanding officer, Colonel Trautman.
The original ending mirrored the novel by David Morrell,
in which Trautman shoots Rambo dead, though in the film,
it's Rambo who manually forces his old friend to pull the trigger, effectively killing himself.
Though this ending was filmed and included as a deleted scene on the home video release,
director Ted Kotcheff told Entertainment Weekly in 2017 that both he and Stallone felt the original
conclusion was too grim. They then conceived a new ending, with Rambo surrendering to Trautman.
One of the most heartbreaking scenes in Star Trek history is the death of
Mr. Spock at the end of 1982's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
In the film's climax, Spock heroically sacrifices his life to repair the Enterprise's warp drive,
thereby allowing it to escape the Genesis weapon as he's dosed with lethal radiation.
However, the movie ends with strong hints that audiences haven't seen the last of Spock.
How do we know? If you notice, his coffin is seen on the newly formed Genesis planet
while the character narrates the famous Star Trek intro monologue.
"These are the continuing voyages of the Starship Enterprise."
But originally, Wrath of Khan lacked this more hopeful conclusion, with Spock's death appearing
more definitive. But then co-writer Harve Bennett devised the expanded, more uplifting ending.
Post-production included reshoots on the Genesis planet, with Leonard Nimoy recording
the monologue. Director Nicholas Meyer objected to these changes, but ultimately to no avail.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day is one of those rare sequels that outdoes its predecessor,
as director James Cameron reunited with his main cast to make the ultimate sci-fi action movie.
As a teenage John Connor finds himself hunted by an even more advanced killing
machine from the future, his mother Sarah reluctantly teams
up with a repurposed T-800 to protect him and humanity's eventual salvation.
Rather than leave room for seemingly endless sequels to exploit, T2 originally concluded with
a definitive happy ending for the Connor family. In the film, Sarah experiences a nightmare,
where she witnesses a playground full of children get violently incinerated by a nuclear blast.
This scene set up the originally intended ending, with an older Sarah serenely
watching an adult John playing with his daughter at a similar playground.
After the early screening, producer Stephanie Austin revealed to Den of Geek in 2017 that it
was determined this original ending didn't resonate as well as hoped.
So in the spirit of creating something more evocative,
the altered ending with the open road was ultimately used for the final cut instead.
The Danny Boyle-directed zombie thriller 28 Days Later sees
humans infected by pure rage overrunning Great Britain over the course of a month.
Following the widespread social collapse, a young man named Jim awakens alone in a
deserted London hospital, shocked at what has happened to the world while he was in a coma.
In the theatrical ending, he and his fellow survivors are able to flag a passing aircraft,
suggesting that they may have lived long enough to escape this post-apocalyptic hellscape.
"Do you think he saw us this time?"
However, Jim wasn't always intended to survive the events of the film, with several different
planned endings featuring his untimely demise. One version that was shot saw him succumb to gunshot
wounds that he endured in the climax, with his friends Selena and Hannah leaving him behind.
Another ending, which didn't progress beyond the animatic stage,
featured Jim sacrificing himself by offering a complete blood transfusion
to Hannah's infected father in order to cleanse him of the contagion.
One of the biggest action blockbusters of all time, Jurassic Park opened to rave reviews and
earned well over $900 million at the worldwide box office during its initial theatrical run in 1993.
Based on the bestselling Michael Crichton novel of the same name,
the film is set on a theme park populated by cloned dinosaurs that descends into
chaos after it gets overrun by its own prehistoric attractions.
As paleontologists Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler lead two children to safety,
they're rescued in the nick of time by a T-Rex who attacks the velociraptors that are menacing them.
But in the original ending, instead of being conveniently saved by a T-Rex
seemingly out of nowhere, the humans were forced to fend for themselves.
Storyboards from the scrapped version had the survivors maneuvering the raptors into dinosaur
skeletons displayed in the visitor center and killing them with the sharp, heavy bones.
Ultimately, the filmmakers decided to give the T-Rex the big moment instead
after being impressed by just how powerful the creature's depiction became during production.
Titanic was a phenomenal box office success, but it was also a major change of pace for director
James Cameron, as he eschewed his penchant for action in favor of a tragic period piece romance.
The plot is framed by a treasure hunter named Brock Lovett
who explores the wreckage of the title ship, with one of the few surviving passengers,
Rose Calvert. Rose recounts a whirlwind love story she had before the ill-fated ocean liner sank.
After recalling her experience, Rose drops the priceless diamond that Brock
was searching for into the ocean, leaving him unaware that she had it the whole time.
Cameron had originally written and filmed an ending scene in
which Rose's granddaughter Lizzy and Brock witnessed Rose disposing
of the diamond as a way to resolve the fortune seeker's character arc.
In this alternate version, Rose allows Brock to hold the diamond before tossing it into the ocean,
as he admits the treasure doesn't matter in the grand scheme of life.
But Cameron ultimately felt the audience wouldn't be invested in Brock's character arc following
the extended flashback. And Bill Paxton, who played Brock, agreed with the decision.
"Three years, I've thought of nothing except Titanic. But I never got it."
Steven Spielberg returned to the blockbuster world of dinosaurs with the 1997 sequel The Lost World:
Jurassic Park. The movie features the nefarious InGen Corporation deciding
to take dinosaurs from Isla Sorna to a planned theme park in California.
The survivors of this expedition narrowly escape Isla Sorna with their lives, but then they must
contend with a T-Rex rampaging through the streets of San Diego upon their return.
This version of the finale was suggested by Spielberg five weeks before the start of
principal photography, which necessitated a rewrite from the original ending.
The original conclusion featured the survivors escaping the island only to face a pterodactyl
in a high-flying fight. As Spielberg told Time Magazine, he envisioned dinosaurs invading the
mainland for an eventual third Jurassic Park film. However, when he realized that he was
unlikely to helm such a project, he decided to have some fun while directing the changed ending.
2016's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story explored the events that set the original Star Wars trilogy in
motion. An outgunned Rebel Alliance makes a daring raid on the remote Imperial planet of Scarif,
as they obtain the plans to the Galactic Empire's secret weapon: the Death Star.
Though successful in transmitting the data to the rest of the Alliance,
the intrepid squad is wiped out when the Death Star fires on their location on Scarif.
While the creative team always envisioned protagonists Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor heroically
sacrificing themselves for the Alliance's greater victory, another ending was actually planned.
As screenwriter Gary Whitta revealed to Entertainment Weekly, a version sparing
Jyn and Cassian was written in case Disney thought
that killing off both of the film's lead characters would be considered too dark.
Fortunately, Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy decided to stick with the original plan.
Ultimately, the team agreed with the decision to leave the entire
squad to their pyrrhic victory on Scarif.
The 2017 horror flick Get Out marked Jordan Peele's shift from TV sketch
comedy to cinematic thrills with Academy Award-winning success.
The plot follows a young man named Chris who visits his girlfriend
Rose's parents for the first time in a remote Upstate New York town,
only to discover that this community has a twisted secret. As it turns out,
Rose's family and their neighbors take control of Black people's bodies in a bid for immortality.
In the version of the ending that played in theaters,
Chris kills Rose's family and successfully escapes as he's picked up by his friend Rod,
a TSA agent. But in another version that was filmed, Chris is discovered by the
police instead, who arrest him on the spot for murdering Rose in apparent cold blood.
In an oral history published by Vulture, Peele noted that test audiences reacted poorly to
that version, so he decided to give Get Out a happier conclusion instead. As he put it,
"When I realized the original, downer ending wasn’t working, I didn’t freak out.
I looked at it as an opportunity to come up with a better ending."
"I mean, I told you not to go in the house."
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