Reading the Irene Adler thread, with its continuations of characters created by Doyle, made me think of all those movies and plays with Happy Endings, in which characters get to survive and go on with their lives, but who had in the original works died or gone on to unhappy endings. I know there’s a lot of these, but only a couple came to mind at the moment. I’m sure Dopers can significantly add to this list
Fagin and The Artful Dodger – in the musical (and the movie) Oliver! they both get to go on with their lives uninterrupted in London. In Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist Fagin is executed, and The Artful Dodger gets transported to Australia
Weena in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine – in the 1960 movie, Yvette Mimieux’s character and a lot of the Eloi are rescued by a whip-wielding Rod Taylor (as Herbert Wells). In the novel, she gets torn away from the un-named Time Traveler in the fight in the forest, and presumably gets eaten. So, in all probability, do the rest of the Eloi.
Quasimodo – In the Charles Laughton version and the Disney cartoon of The Hunchback of Notre Dame he survives and goes on to a lonely existence (although a Disney sequel gets him a girlfriend). He dies in the Lon Chaney version. I have to admit that I haven’t seen the other version, but I don’t think any of them have the story end as the novel does, with the eventual discovery of Quasimodo’s and Esmeralda’s skeletons in the cathedral.
Chance Wayne in Sweet Bird of Youth. He gets beaten up. In the 1962 film, he escapes and runs away with the girl. In the stage play, and the 1989 film, his fate is not shown onstage/onscreen, but it is strongly implied that he gets castrated.
Tennessee Williams wrote four different endings for the play. He gave theater companies a choice in how much doom and despair they wanted to inflict on an audience. Hollywood still re-wrote it. That annoyed me, and I don’t even like Tennessee Williams.
I’m looking for cases where the original characters came to bad ends, but they prettified it up for the movies.
A counterexample would the the 1925 Phantom of the Opera, when Lon Chaney’s Phantom ends up being lynched by the crowd and thrown in the river. In the novel, he survives (and does so in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, and its movie, too). In 1925, though, they apparently couldn’t figure out a satisfying way to end it.
By the way, can a mod fix the title? It ought to be “spoilers”, not “Spilers”. We’re not including fluid taps here.
Jurassic Park - the Ian Malcolm character, played by Jeff Goldblum in the movie, who acts as The Voice of Reason.
Novel: death by dino.
Movie: lives to see a sequel.
Addendum: after reading a Wiki summary, I see it’s a bit more complicated than I remember. Malcolm is declared or presumed dead at the end of the first novel, but due to the popularity of Goldblum’s character in the first movie, in which he definitely lives, Crichton had Malcolm’s death turn out to be greatly exaggerated in ‘The Lost World’ sequel novel.
At the end of the novel “Hannibal”, Clarice (who is being fed psychotropic drugs by Lecter) and Lecter feast on Krendler’s brain, become lovers, and spend years travelling the world together. In the movie only Lecter eats Ray Liotta’s brain, Clarice resists the drugs, and nearly captures Lecter, but he does manage to escape. But Clarice definitely gets a much better ending.
I’m convinced that Hollywood spent years inducing/harassing Thomas Harris into writing a sequel to “Silence of the Lambs” that they could make into a movie, and he put that ending in as a giant middle finger to them.
In Alistair MacLean’s novel The Guns of Navarone Lt. Andrew Stevens slips and breaks his leg climbing the cliff to get on the island and it ends up gangrenous. He knows he’s dying, so he ends up fighting a suicidal rear0guard action to let the test of the team escape.
In the movie, Roy Franklin (played by Anthony Quayle) similarly breaks his leg, but he’s left in a German hospital to have his leg amputated, and he survives (at least until the fortress finally blows up). They do use this to dramatic and purposeful effect in the movie, where he gives the Germans false information, but it’s still a pretty happy ending.
In Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserables, Madame Thenardier dies in prison. In the musical (and its motion picture adaptation), she survives and goes on living in Paris.
In the novel, M. Thenardier survives, but under threat of Marius’ exposing his crimes he emigrates to America with his surviving daughter (who never shows up in the musical) and becomes a slave trader, rather than apparently staying in Paris. Not sure hoe happy an ending that is, but I’m sure he’d rather have stayed in Paris conning the rich.
This one bit my daughter recently – she went to see Swan Lake. At the end of the ballet Odette (the one transformed into the sawn) nd her lover Siegfried commit suicide by drowning in the lake, breaking the spell and killing the sorcerer who transformed her. My daughter only knew the story from the Barbie’s Swan Lake she’d watched growing up, in which Odette and Siegfried survive to be married, and the sorcerer is transformed into a clock.
The musical Wicked (and presumably the films based on it, though we haven’t seen the second part) changes things from Gregory Maguire’s book so that Professor Dillamund is fired instead of being murdered, and Madame Morrible goes to prison instead of dying. And, of course, Elphaba doesn’t dissolve in water (as, of course, she does in the 1939 film and in Baum’s book), but survives.
I thought he held a very low opinion of the FBI, despite writing them as very good in Red Dragon.
My entry is Rooster Cogburn from True Grit. He is alive and well in the 1969 film, but the 2010 version that holds to the script has Mattie seeking him years later and discovering that he had died.
It’s weird - in the 1969 version, they killed off La Boeuf, which did not happen in the novel. And as you said at the end of the movie Mattie still has her arm, and she Cogburn are friendly and talking as he rides off with the implication that they will remain in touch, but there’s no followup with adult Mattie.
But the 2010 version follows the novel - La Boeuf lives, and Cogburn leaves as soon as he gets Mattie to a doctor, so she doesn’t see him again. And at the end Cogburn writes a letter to a now 30-something Mattie asking her to visit him, and she arrives (minus an arm) to find he had died just a few weeks earlier. So if anything, the 1969 movie version added something bad, the death of Le Boeuf.
