Film is an expensive and complicated medium.
When storytellers suddenly realize that their movie is heading for an unsatisfying conclusion,
it can result in some exhausting and expensive behind-the-scenes headaches for everyone involved.
Thankfully, these beloved movies swapped out their iffy endings just in time… for the
most part.
At the beginning of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, the eponymous hero is caught between
two women: his "too young for him" girlfriend Knives Chau and the mysterious Ramona Flowers.
Early on in the film, he cheats on Knives with Ramona, and then breaks up with Knives
altogether, but his new relationship with Ramona is far from smooth.
"If we're gonna date, you may have to defeat my seven evil exes."
"You have seven evil ex-boyfriends?"
"Seven evil exes, yes."
How does the story end?
Well, when Edgar Wright and Michael Bacall were writing the script for Scott Pilgrim
vs the World, they had a unique problem.
It was based on a six-part comic series by Bryan Lee O'Malley, but only five of the six
books had been released at the time.
There was no ending for them to adapt.
The initial ending they penned had Scott realizing that Ramona wasn't right for him, and so he
and Knives got back together.
This ending was shot and appears as a bonus feature on the Blu-Ray.
"Well, bye and stuff."
"Yeah.
And stuff."
But something about it didn't feel right during filming.
In addition to test audiences not liking it, one of the loudest voices against it was Ellen
Wong, the actor playing Knives, who didn't want her character going back to a man who
cheated on her.
In the final ending, despite their problems, Scott and Ramona decide that they're going
to try to make it work, and Knives learns to stand on her own.
"Bye and stuff."
"Yeah.
And stuff."
"Go get her."
This ended up matching the resolution of the comic series, the last volume of which was
released less than a month before the film hit theaters.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was a project that was constantly shifting around during
all stages of its production.
There was an early version of the script where protagonist Jyn Erso was a Sergeant an enlisted
soldier in the Rebel Alliance instead of a criminal who was pressured into joining the
rebellion.
In some versions of the script, she and Cassian actually survived the battle on Scarif.
This incarnation of Jyn was the one that the filmmakers thought they would be going with
when much of the merchandise was created.
Because of that, some of the packaging for the toys still refers to Jyn as Sergeant Jyn
Erso.
However, there was another key change to the ending that was made very late into the filming
process.
While looking over the footage they had filmed for the climax, director Gareth Edwards and
editor Jabez Olssen realized that Darth Vader, despite being introduced in an early scene,
never really got a chance to do anything cool in the third act.
They decided he needed an action scene of his own, and so the now-iconic Darth Vader
hallway fight scene was shot just four months before the film was released.
As a filmmaker, Terry Gilliam is known for two things: making amazing, surreal movies
and having terrible luck while trying to make amazing, surreal movies.
The story of his 1985 film Brazil showcases both of these traits.
Brazil tells the story of Sam Lowry, who lives in a totalitarian futuristic bureaucracy but
dreams of being a winged hero who fights monsters and rescues damsels.
After a series of misadventures, Sam is captured by the authorities for associating with criminal
revolutionaries.
In the original ending, he seemingly breaks out of captivity and flees the city to an
idyllic countryside.
But then, there is a sudden reveal that he hasn't fled at all.
He is still in prison, merely dreaming of escape after being lobotomized.
The Criterion documentary The Battle of Brazil tells the story of what happened next.
Distributors felt that U.S. audiences would want a happier ending.
"I would get calls from the editor occasionally wanting my input.
What do you mean, you want my input?
'You know, but we're saving your film.'
No, no, no — you're killing my film."
Against Gilliam's wishes, an editing team created an alternate cut that ended with Sam
actually escaping, forgoing the reveal that it was just a hallucination.
This was the version of Brazil that originally premiered in the United States.
Fortunately, this is not the end of the story.
Gilliam, unhappy with this result, starting hosting private screenings of his version
of the film.
His cut started getting positive critical attention, eventually winning the Los Angeles
Film Critics Award for Best Picture.
This made the studio finally cave and release the original version to American audiences.
When Sean Harris was cast in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation as the villainous Solomon Lane,
he had only one request, without which he would not agree to do the film.
He said, quote, "Promise me you'll kill him…
I don't want to be in five of these movies."
Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie agreed.
By the end of the film, protagonist Ethan Hunt would kill Solomon Lane.
The problem?
Late into process of filming, McQuarrie made an upsetting discovery.
IndieWire reports that the writer/director admitted, quote, "I [didn't] have the event
in the movie that [made] me want Ethan to kill him."
In fact, McQuarrie felt it would be more satisfying if Ethan tricked Lane, defeating him without
violence, and brought him into custody alive.
After some pleading, McQuarrie eventually got Harris to agree to a script change.
In the end, Harris, like his character, was trapped.
It hasn't been five films yet, but Solomon Lane did indeed have to return in Mission:
Impossible - Fallout.
Pretty in Pink tells the story of Andie Walsh played by Molly Ringwald a highschooler caught
between two love interests: the preppy hunk Blaine and Duckie, the boy next door.
Originally, the plan was for Andie to learn that people who are rich and attractive like
Blaine can sometimes be shallow, and people who don't look like much are often the real
treasure.
That's, of course, Duckie we're talking about.
However, once filming began, Ringwald and McCarthy ended up having undeniable chemistry.
Duckie, meanwhile, came off as a deeply weird dude with strange fashion sense, odd mannerisms,
and an almost stalker-esque obsession with Andie.
The film was shot as originally written, with Andie ending up with Duckie, but audiences
who were shown early cuts of the film just about lost their minds.
As director Howard Deutch put it:
"The girls in the test screening didn't go for that… they wanted her to get the cute
boy.
And that was it.
So we had to reshoot the ending."
The final version of the film did indeed have Andie ending up with Blaine, but the change
happened so late into the process that the novelization of the film still has the original
ending.
This change never sat well with writer John Hughes.
Wanting another chance to properly execute this story, he wrote Some Kind of Wonderful,
which has a very similar setup to Pretty in Pink, but this time ends with the lead choosing
the normie over the hottie.
Realism be damned!
World War Z's original ending, which was actually filmed, was an enormous and expensive action
set piece, with protagonist Gerry Lane played by Brad Pitt fighting his way through hundreds
of zombies in Moscow's Red Square.
However, when watching it back, the filmmakers felt that it just wasn't working.
The story began with a strong focus on Gerry's desire to reunite with his family, but it
ended with a meaningless bloodbath and no resolution to his main goal.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, second unit director Simon Crane said that the biggest
problem was that, quote, "it wasn't character-driven anymore."
Writer Damon Lindelof was brought on to take things back to the drawing board and do something
that had never been done before on a film of this scale: write a completely new final
40 minutes to an already finished film.
In the version that hit theaters, the new climax is confined to an abandoned hospital.
The action is small, with Gerry as a frightened everyman, rather than a swaggering badass.
Most importantly, in the end, he's finally reunited with his family.
Even though Ridley Scott's Blade Runner is considered a classic nowadays, it was not
always a favorite of sci fi cinephiles.
When it premiered, reviews were lukewarm, and some last minute studio meddling may have
been to blame.
In Scott's initial cut, the storytelling was gloomy and mysterious, especially the last
shot of the film, which showed our protagonists on the run from the law, boarding an elevator
to an uncertain fate.
According to the making-of documentary On the Edge of Blade Runner, initial test screenings
indicated that this highly ambiguous plot did its job a little too well, because everyone
who saw it felt highly confused.
"What the f--- am I watching here?"
The studio pressured Scott to add not only a voiceover narration to make things clearer,
but also a new ending that showed the heroes driving through the sunny countryside, indicating
that they'd found some semblance of happiness.
The production was out of money, but Scott was suddenly in need of some idyllic landscape
footage.
He turned to his friend, Stanley Kubrick, who happened to have 17 hours of beautiful
unused b-roll that he originally shot for the opening titles of The Shining.
Despite everyone's best efforts, the fix ended up pleasing exactly nobody.
Some still thought the movie was confusing, while others thought the new voiceover and
ending were too corny.
It wasn't until 1992 that Ridley Scott released a version of the film more in line with his
initial vision, and lovers of confusing gloom finally got the flick they'd been dreaming
of.
Speaking of Stanley Kubrick, the notoriously intense director is no stranger to switching
things up at the last possible minute.
How "last minute" are we talking, exactly?
Well, he changed the ending to The Shining a week after it came out!
The initial ending of the film featured an additional scene between the two now-famous
final beats of Jack freezing to death in the hedge maze and the closing shot of that spooky
group photo back in the Overlook.
This diversion showed Wendy and Danny recovering in a hospital and talking to the police about
what they experienced.
This scene was actually shown at the premiere and in the film's initial limited run in Los
Angeles and New York.
Then, before the wider release of the film, Kubrick decided the scene was superfluous
and sent out assistants to actually travel around to dozens of theaters and physically
cut out the scene, re-editing the film reels that the theaters had been showing.
The scene is not currently available anywhere, since all copies of it were theoretically
destroyed.
Only a few set photos still exist, but the evidence of how late this change occurred
can be seen in that two characters from that scene, a "Policeman" and a "Nurse," still
appear in the final credits, despite no longer being in the movie.
So, in summation: Blade Runner's team took footage from The Shining to create a new ending,
while The Shining crew also crafted a new ending for the horror film by racing around
the country and taking razor blades to films, effectively becoming — pardon the pun — "blade
runners."
"Oh!
I get it."
The classic '90s slacker comedy Clerks tells the story of a day in the life of sad sack
convenience store clerk Dante Hicks.
Even though the film garnered critical acclaim, jump-started the career of director Kevin
Smith, and introduced the world to Jay and Silent Bob, the original ending told a drastically
different story.
In its first public screening at the Independent Feature Film Market, Clerks ended with one
last customer entering the store as Dante was closing up for the night.
He was an armed robber who, without warning or fanfare, shot Dante dead, emptied the register,
and walked away.
Talk about a dead end job!
In the making-of documentary Snowball Effect: The Story of Clerks, Smith admits that he
did this because he didn't know how else to close the film, and because he was copying
the structure of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing, which also takes place entirely in
one day and ends in tragedy.
Brian O'Halloran, the actor who played Dante, hated this ending, as did Smith's mentor,
filmmaker John Pierson.
Pierson suggested simply cutting that scene and ending on the happy note that preceded
it.
That's exactly what Smith did, and so all future screenings ended in a way that better
fit the tone of the rest of the film, and left the door open for a sequel.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Looper videos about your favorite films are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.