Not every movie needs a twist ending to drive its point home, or even tries to stun audiences
before they leave the theatre.
But just because a movie lacks a jaw-dropping twist, it doesn't mean that was never the
plan.
You'd be surprised to learn just how many movies could have turned out completely different
if their original twists made it to the finished film.
Here are Screenrant's 10 Amazing Movie Twists You've Never Seen.
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (New Line Cinema)
The hours of extra footage released in the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions show that
plenty of key scenes had to be cut before release, but one scene in the final movie
seems too incredible to have left out.
When Aragorn and his assemble outside the Black Gate for one last battle, the original
version of the scene saw Sauron himself take a physical form, and fight the new king.
It was an amazing twist, and in the end, too amazing, since it made Frodo and Sam's ring
drama seem less important.
Sauron was replaced by a massive troll instead.
The Avengers: Age of Ultron (Marvel/Disney)
The second team up of Marvel's biggest stars ended on a bittersweet note, with speedster
Quicksilver dead, and a batch of new heroes set to become the *New* Avengers.
But the hero's death wasn't always a sure thing: director Joss Whedon admitted that
the final scene was filmed with Quicksilver included, in a new costume to boot.
To add insult to injury, Marvel taking longer than expected to get a new Spider-Man and
Captain Marvel off the ground meant Whedon couldn't include them in the closing scene,
as he'd planned.
Spider-Man would have had fans cheering, but Whedon thought it would just be funny to include
Captain Marvel without any explanation.
In the end, the bombshell, and the joke, were nowhere to be found.
World War Z (Paramount)
Seeing Brad Pitt battle zombies in a blockbuster movie seemed like a dream come true, but his
character Gerry's story didn't always end so happily.
Instead of a third act that saw Gerry discover how to solve the zombie crisis, and return
back safely to his family, the original ending told a completely different story.
Gerry's plane would have landed in Moscow, where he was forced to join a zombie death
squad for months, eventually taking part in a massive battle in Red Square.
And why did Lost Star Matthew Fox play such a tiny role?
He had claimed Gerry's family as his own, driving the lost father and husband to cross
an ocean back to America, storming the beach in a storm of zombie carnage.
Then the credits rolled, setting up an even more intense sequel.
Oh well.
Happy endings are fun too.
Alien (20th Century Fox)
With Ridley Scott's alien horror, Hollywood didn't just get one its most successful movie
monsters, but one of its greatest sci-fi icons, and a badass woman for the ages.
But it wasn't always going to play out that way.
The original script ended with more horror than victory, with Ripley being ambushed by
the Xenomorph, biting her head clean off before sending a message to Earth using her own voice.
It's definitely a creepy ending and a shocking twist, but considering the franchise that
developed around Ripley, it was probably the way to go.
Rocky Balboa (MGM/Columbia)
Sylvester Stallone blurred the line between fiction and reality with the 2006 return to
the role of Rocky, playing an old champion whose best days are behind him, but refuses
to be forgotten.
The movie sent a good message though, since Rocky proved that youth isn't everything,
losing to a younger, faster boxer, but not really caring since he put up a good fight.
If that sounds cheesy to you, the original ending actually had Rocky win the fight, and
remaining as potent a fighter at an old age as he was in his prime.
In the end, they decided to keep it at least somewhat believable.
Se7en (New Line Cinema)
Sometimes, it's the idea of a studio NOT going with a twist ending that seems insane in hindsight.
In the case of the dark serial killer thriller Seven, director David Fincher and star Brad
Pitt were set on keeping the movie's "what's in the box" ending, no matter how hard the
studio pushed.
The serial killer John Doe pushing Pitt’s character to kill him meant the villain won,
with an innocent woman killed in the process.
The studio tried to come up with a different ending, from having the plan foiled to it
only be a dog's head in the box.
But the strangest idea was to have Morgan Freeman's soon-to-be-retiring cop gun down
the killer instead, sacrificing his own freedom just to keep evil from winning the day.
Fincher stuck to his guns, and the darkest, and most disturbing ending possible guaranteed
the movie's place in Noir history.
Terminator Salvation (Warner Bros.)
It's no secret that more Terminator sequels have been disappointing than cult classics,
but the original version of Terminator Salvation at least wanted to try something interesting.
In the finished movie, John Connor's heart was injured in a battle with a T-800, so a
Terminator/Human hybrid named Marcus sacrificed his own to keep the resistance leader alive.
But the original ending had Connor die, and his inner circle decide to attach his face
to Marcus, letting the Terminator lead humanity to victory in disguise.
If that wasn't dark enough, the director claimed that HIS ending would have seen the operation
succeed....
before Marcus murdered everybody.
So Salvation could've been a lot worse.
Superman II (Warner Bros.)
When Man of Steel ended with the controversial death of General Zod, and some fans claimed
that showing Superman commit murder was heresy, their opponents pointed to Superman 2.
The movie where Superman stripped Zod and his partners of their powers, then beat them
to a pulp and watched them fall to their deaths.
It's a fair defence of Zack Snyder's reboot, but the original cut of the movie showed the
Kryptonians didn't die after all.
Instead they were arrested by - we're not joking - Arctic police.
The trip wound up serving hard time for their crimes, which means the Man of Steel debate
will probably never end.
Dawn of the Planet of The Apes (20th Century Fox)
The second film in the rebooted Planet of the Apes series took audiences by storm, with
most of the credit given to the cast underneath the cg makeup of the Apes.
But the original ending of the movie set the stage for an even bigger thriller.
When the human forces are dealt with, the apes' leader Caesar learns that reinforcements
are already in the way.
The final shot shows Caesar's eyes preparing for the war ahead, but the movie was originally
planned to show the Navy arriving, and the Apes squaring off on the Golden Gate bridge.
It achieved the same goal, but the director thought it only tied his hands for any sequel.
Hancock (Columbia Pictures)
Will Smith's turn as a super powered super slacker was a strange mix of action, comedy,
superhero origin and mythical love story - but while the original script and the finished
movie were pretty weird, it almost went to a very, very dark place.
Instead of learning that his friend's wife was his super powered soul mate (Charlize
Theron clips from movie's second half), the original script had Hancock kidnap and try
to force himself on her before slaughtering the horde of police officers who arrive to
rescue her.
Just to guarantee audiences left the theatre with their jaws dropped, he would then try
to kill himself with one of the cop's guns.
The bullet didn't leave a mark, but it shocked the studio into changing the film's direction
completely.
So what do you think of our list?
Did we miss any of your favorite twist endings or game-changing deleted scenes in hit movies?
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