Re: Into The Woods, the Giantess kills the Narrator, but only because the rest of the group GIVES him to her, because they’re annoyed by his asides and Greek chorus-ey lines, and because he’s conveniently close enough to offer up as a substitute for Jack (which scam is helped by the Giantess’s nearsightedness).
The novel First Blood ends with the sheriff gunning Rambo down. It’s a grim end to a book whose main theme seems to be that war destroys even the survivors and violence leaves scars on the perpetrators as well as the victims.
The film, of course, ends in a cathartic monologue (“NOTHING IS OVER!!!”) and three increasingly implausible sequels.
Note that it was the same director! He bastardized his own vision!
The porn version of Full Metal Jacket called Full Metal Jackoff had a happy ending.
Same deal with Night of the Living Dead/Night of the Giving Head.
The Young Lions
In the novel, Christian ambushes Michael and Noah, killing Noah. Michael then kills Christian and carries Noah’s body back to camp, refusing to let anyone help him.
In the movie, Christian ditches his weapon, gets spotted by Michael and Noah, and is shot dead by Michael. Noah returns home to his family, blissfully unaware that he was supposed to die.
Speaking of Walt Disney, the source material for National Lampoon’s Vacation had the narrator’s father shooting (and winging) Walt Disney, and being committed to a mental hospital, while the family flies home.
Cujo, the movie, had a different (happier) ending than the novel.
Interestingly, the film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Mist went darker than the book, one of the rare occasions in which a film adaptation did so.
I’m surprised I haven’t seen anybody mention the horror film The Descent from about 2005.
It’s a movie about spelunkers who get trapped in a cave and eventually find that the cave is full of cave-adapted humanoids.
In the original UK release, the troglodytes violently hunt and kill the spelunkers, until a single wounded-but-living woman is left. Then, she miraculously discovers a hole to the outside world, emerges just a few meters away from her parked car, hops in, and escapes – except she doesn’t. The movie cuts back to the cave, and you see that she’s just hallucinating the escape and that the troglodytes are closing in for the kill. The end.
The US release apparently decided that was too dark, so they end the movie before the cut back to the cave. So…she gets away. Yay. Except…it doesn’t make any sense, is a complete deus ex machina, and is incredibly abrupt.
The original version of Big had adult Susan wishing herself to be 13 again and ending up as Josh’s new classmate.
What?
Blade Runner has already been mentioned but if you get the chance check out the dvd extras, there are several takes of Harrison Fords voice over at the end. You can hear his total disdain for the entire thing in every single syllable.
He had every right to complain. Artists of Shaw’s caliber don’t write in order to win Oscars . . . especially when their integrity is compromised.
Kind of. It obviously goes badly for the father, but from a wider point of view it’s “Yipee, the cavalry has arrived! They’ll just shoot up those bugs and everything will be dandy.”
Doesn’t really gel well with those Arrowhead Project soldiers hanging themselves.
But the worst part: after cleaning everything up, the Army had Big Alien Bug stew for the next six months.
Man of a Thousand Faces, the wonderful Lon Chaney biopic starring James Cagney, has a happier ending than Chaney’s real life. Although he dies at the end, the film doesn’t reveal that his death came just before he was to star in Tod Browning’s Dracula (Bela Lugosi, who was playing the role on stage, was brought in at the last minute to play the role in the film), nor that his last illness was lingering and painful; it’s quick and graceful in the film (albeit, it is true to the fact that he couldn’t speak in his last days, and used the sign language he knew because he had Deaf parents). It further shows him turning over his make-up box to his son, and adding a “jr.” to the name, suggesting that his son had his blessing to go into film as “Lon Chaney, jr.” Actually, Chaney was against his son acting, and wanted him in a steady profession, so he sent him to plumbers’ school. The son, whose actual name was Creighton Chaney, wanted to be a serious actor, not a film monster in make-up, like his father (his first film in the movie is suggested to be a horror film). Creighton Chaney made a number of films throughout the 1930s as Creighton, including Of Mice and Men, where he played Lennie, and it was nominated for Best Picture. It wasn’t until 1941, ten years after his father’s death, that he bowed to studio pressure, and let them bill him as “Lon Chaney, jr.,” and he began making monster movies for Universal.
Although Chaney was considered for the role of Dracula, others were, too, especially including Bela Lugosi, who had played the role from the start in the New York production. To say Lugosi was brought in “at the last minute” gives the wrong impression – they’d been stringing Bela along for months with the possibility of playing the role. At any rate, David Skal, in Hollywood Gothic, which is probably the best book on the stage and film Dracula, doesn’t convey the impression that they were absolutely locked on Chaney in the role, and certainly not that Lugosi was a “last minute” replacement.
Chaney had played a vampire in the now-lost film London After Midnight. He had bugged-out eyes, a top hat, and each of his teeth came to a point. I don’t know if he would’ve carried his “look” over to Dracula, had he been able to play the role (some elements of the costume, like the high-necked cape, were dictated by the needs of the stage production, and might have dominated), but it’s likely that our image of The Vampire might be vvery different had Chaney lived and been cast in that role. Ironically, when Tod Browning (who directed both Dracula and London After Midnight) remade London After Midnight as a talking picture (Mark of the Vampire), he cast Bela Lugosi as the vampire, so he and Chaney did, in fact, play the same role, but in a different picture.
Actually, in neither London After Midnight nor in Mark of the Vampire is the “vampire” really a vampire. It’s part of an elaborate con by the police to catch a killer.
You must have left before the end. Javert kills himself, Valjean leaves Cosette with Marius, fearing that she would be disgraced if his past were discovered. C & M then go to find V dying in a convent, at which point his spirit is met by all the spirits of the departed, including Fantine and the Bishop.
I think you’re confusing the more recent musical version with the slightly less recent non-musical version with Liam Neeson that the poster is referring to.
Hey, Liam Neeson, Hugh Jackman! It’s an easy mistake!!!
(You are, of course, correct. hangs head in shame)
Pretty sure I remember seeing that one once…