Okay, I can understand in many cases where they take a story with kind of a downer ending and change it to a happy one for a play or a movie – especially a play. ho wants to sit through a long piece, watch characters overcome obstacles, work out personal differences, then die? So when Agatha Christie adapted her novel And Then There Were None (which also has some now non-pc titles) she changed the downer ending to one where the two romantic leads go off happily away with one another (leaving an island full of dead bodies).
I also understand why they did it in the early years of cinema – audiences were new to the medium. Why jinx it by hitting them with a depressing ending. So I don’t approve, but I understand when the silent version of Moby Dick, titled The Sea Beast, has captain Ahab survive (!) and go home to his sweetheart (!!!)
I’m less forgiving now, and don’t particularly care for the changed Happy Ending. Heck, when John Carpenter filmed the Thing in 1982 the Bill Lancaster script actually changed a relatively happy ending to an ambiguous AND depressing one. We’ve come to expect the occasional downbeat ending, and heap scorn on tacked-on or inexplicable happy endings, like in the Demi Moore Scarlet Letter
So which annoying Changed Happy Endings do you know of?
The 1950s British version of 1984, where Winston Smith stands up to Big Brother (in the American version, he succumbs, as in the book)
The 1940 film Our Town, where a character who dies in the play doesn’t
The 1957 movie The Pride and the Passion, adapted from C.S. Forester’s novel The Gun (in which everyone dies) only one of the main characters dies.
This year’s Into the Woods ditched several critical deaths and defanged the two (three if you count the Wolf) they did leave intact. In doing so, they completely thwarted the pacing and character motivation, and undermined every thematic element that made the story interesting.
Bladerunner had a changed ending from the one the director wanted. The director’s cut restored the gloomier, unresolved ending. It’s better that way.
Les Miserables with Liam Neeson does not end with Jean Valjean’s death. While Les Mis does not really end all super sad or all bad, it does end with his death and things get tied together well. If I remember correctly, that movie version ends with Javert’s suicide and Jean Valjean walking away(a free man in all ways, I guess).
Really? I thought the movie sucked massively, but I have not seen or even listened to the musical. Can you give more details on the changes? I’m curious now.
One of the worst movies I saw from 2014, though it had a couple OK moments.
In the 1941 Hitchcock film “Suspicion,” starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine, Alfred Hitchcock originally wanted Grant to be guilty, but the studio insisted that the public wouldn’t accept Cary Grant as a murderer. Hitchcock’s original ending had Johnny (Grant) killing Lina (Fontaine) by poisoning her milk, but then convicting himself by mailing a letter that Lina had written. Joan Fontaine said, Cary Grant “did kill me in the original cut, but at a preview, the audience simply refused to accept him as the murderer.”
And of course in "The Natural, " Roy Hobbs wins the big game with a climactic home run. In Bernard Malamud’s book, Hobbs strikes out.
Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, a cinematic crime against literature.
(posting from work, so I can’t elaborate. Never, ever watch this post-auto accident Montgomery Cliff version. The PBS television version from the early 80’s is the honest one)
In Forester’s book The African Queen her mission fails – she doesn’t sink the Louisa. In the Huston movie, of course, she succeeds, if somewhat belatedly.
A famous example is the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where they tacked on a “Happy” ending at the insistence of the studio. Director Don Siegel wanted it to end with Kevin McCarthy wandering on the highway, screaming “You’re next!” to people, trying ineffectually to warn them of the threat of the Pod People. The studio insisted that they shoot a new ending showing that the authorities finally believed him. But Philip Kaufmann, in the 1978 remake, gave us the scene of McCarthy unsuccessfully warning people, shot from inside the car, as Siegel had wanted to.
What makes it all the more interesting is that Siegel’s original ending would have been MORE depressing and ambiguous than the ending of Jack Finney’s novel, The Body Snatchers, where the pods inexplicably give up and float off into space. (See the original novel. Or here: The Body Snatchers - Wikipedia ) It’s another reason I’m not fond of Finney’s book or most of its adaptations. Give me Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters instead, any day. It’s a more believable treatment. And it predates Finney’s novel, in any case. (Finney’s book , serialized in 1954, was published in 1955. Heinlein’s book came out in 1951.)
The Chocolate War. In the movie version, Jerry wins the fight. Everyone cheers. Brother Leon gives him a thumbs-up :smack: Obie takes over as the Assigner and Archie submits.
Granted, the novel as it’s written is horribly pessimistic, and probably not the best message to send to middle/high schoolers. But if you don’t like it the way it is, don’t make a movie of it.
In the novel Jurassic Park, the mathematician & Walt Disney both die. In the movie, both are alive & kicking (well, one has a broken leg) and ready for sequels.
In the stage version of Nicholas Nickleby, there’s a show-within-a-show of Romeo and Juliet with a deliriously happy ending. I don’t know if that was in the Dickens, but the change to Shakespeare worked very well.
The original script of Chinatown had a happy ending. Roman Polanski changed it over writer Robert Towne’s strenuous objections.
Little Shop of Horrors, the 1986 movie with Rick Moranis. Apparently they shot the downer ending, screen-tested it, and then changed and gave the audiences what they wanted.
The Glass Menagerie (1950) with Kirk Douglas and Jane Wyman was a pretty OK movie right up until the end when, astonishingly, Laura uses the experience to boost her self-confidence and start entertaining gentleman callers all over the place. Her limp pretty much disappears.
The Little Mermaid - in the original story she becomes sea foam at the end since the prince doesn’t return her love. Also, having legs is compared to walking on knives.
The stupid happy ending goes way further back than the movie (actually, way further back than the musical), but My Fair Lady is an example. In Shaw’s original play, Pygmalion, Eliza actually DOES leave Higgins high and dry. The ending was changed by the producer of the very first stage production, against Shaw’s vehement objections. That ending has followed through to the musical adaptation and the movie that was made from it.
I hadn’t heard about changes to the stage version, but the very first movie version of Pygmalion, with Leslie Howard as Higgins and Wendy Hiller as Eliza, also has the changed ending. Shaw was reportedly furious. It’s always annoyed me that in his foreword to the printed version of My Fair Lady Alan Jay Lerner says that he changed the ending “because he didn’t think Shaw got it right”, but didn’t see fit to mention that he was merely following in the footsteps of others in doing so.
Shaw, of course, in the printed edition of the play, added a lengthy afterword (atypically for him – he usually had long introductions) explaining exactly what happened to Eliza and Freddy after the events of the play.
The original Frankenstein film with Boris Karloff. IIRC, in the books, Dr. Frankenstein’s fiancee was murdered by the Creature and the doctor died at sea during an attempt to find and destroy him.
The movie ends with the Creature going on a rampage and tossing Dr. Frankenstein off of a building. But then the doctor recovers and goes on with his life. Was the Creature killed by the villagers? I don’t even remember it being shown on screen. Pretty sure his fiancee(wife?) isn’t killed, either.
Also, the tones of the two works were very different. The book developed the Creature as a tragic figure, a hideous but articulate person, and hated by his creator and anyone who saw him. Driven to violence out of frustration and rejection. The movie rewrote him as a mindless, dangerous beast.
Yeah, but The Shire recovered quite quickly and well even in the book. They just didn’t want to blow another hour on the scouring and recovery, and I can understand that.
