Even though this isthe thread that keeps on giving, it’s limited to just a single alternate ending that doesn’t actually exist. There’s a whole universe of non-existent alternate endings. How about. . .
The Godfather – Doesn’t anyone remember the version where Michael said, “Just this once you can ask me about my business. Yeah, I had Carlo whacked. The bastard deserved it.”
Citizen Kane – Reporter Jerry Thompson walks through Kane’s junk hoardings at Xanadu, sees a sled marked “Rosebud” and smacks his forehead. “Ohhhh. It’s all about his lost childhood!”
The directors cut of Little Shop of Horrors. Audrey 2 eats them then the plants take over the earth with a long scene of them rampaging through the cities. It’s great!
On a less violent note, I much preferred the alternate ending to A Knight’s Tale where William (Heath Ledger) realizes that he barely knows the beautiful noblewoman he’s been obsessed with winning over, and also that she seems kind of demanding.
Fortunately for him, the only other significant female character (Laura Fraser as Kate) is also attractive and single – not to mention intelligent, possessed of a useful skill, and is actually someone he’s spent a lot of time with and is his friend. The ending where *they *wind up together was a lot more satisfying.
Lieutenant Zogg–figuring out in time what’s going on–throws a pie at Major Kong, unbalancing him from the bomb and preventing him from dislodging it.
However, a drunk Premier Kissov, angry at the now-failed demonstration of his Doomsday Device, manually sets it off.
Time passes, and we see the conditions in the mineshaft shelters. A ratio of ten women for every man turns out to not be such a great idea for various reasons.
The shining - Shelley Duvall and Danny escape in the snowplow, but after going over a hill and driving towards a light source they find they are back at the hotel. No matter which direction they drive they always end up back at the hotel.
Frozen: Marshmallow, the vicious snowcreature, goes on a violent rampage down the North Mountain, and eats everyone in town in what would have been the bloodiest scene in Disney history.
*"Last night we said a great many things. You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then, and it all adds up to one thing: you aren’t getting on that plane with Victor because that’s not where you belong. I’ve been planning on going back to America and I want you to come with me, where we’ll both be safe and out of this war.
We both know Victor has his work, the thing that keeps him going. What we have is each other. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re on it, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. We’ll always have Paris. And now we’ll have New York. Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, so I’m going to leave that to Victor. It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world so we won’t be missed if we avoid the war and just focus on our own happiness."*
In the novel Tom Hagen does tell Kay the truth about Carlo and Tessio; only he justifies it as safety. You can forgive a traitor but he can never forgive himself and thetefore y0ur life is always at risk.
“Meet John Doe”. Gary Cooper jumps out the window. Which is what the New York Times in its one sentence review of movies on television said he should do.
My Fair Lady: Eliza doesn’t return to Higgins. She asks for help from Colonel Pickering, who is the only one who treats her decently. He’s too much a gentleman to take advantage of her, though if the part were cast with someone closer to Eliza’s age, a romance is possible.
At the end of George Bernard Shaw’s original play Pygmalion, upon which the musical My Fair Lady is based, Eliza doesn’t go off with Higgins, but with Freddy (who is her own age, so romance was certainly possible). He even wrote a very lengthy afterword in the published edition of the play to tell what happened with Eliza and Freddy and their Flower Shop after the events of the play were over.
Shaw also wrote a screen treatment for Pygmalion, in which, as in the stage play, Eliza goes off with Freddy. Unfortunately, when Anthony Asquith filmed it, he ignored many of Shaw’s suggestions and indications, but the biggest change was that he ended it with Eliza coming back to Higgins. When they made the play into a musical, Alan Jay Lerner kept the Asquith ending (although in his published edition of the play, he gave Asquith no credit for the altered ending.)
I kinda like the idea of Eliza going off with Colonel Pickering, age difference or not. That would make for an interesting Afterword.
I prefer the alternate ending of A Night to Remember, where the idiot crew of the SS Californian realizes “Oh my god, that big ship over there is sending off emergency flares and distress signals because it’s sinking!” and race over to rescue all the people in the lifeboats and pull many survivors out of the water before they freeze to death.
The Alternative Ending of “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” was awesome! After the Emperor told him of Padme’s fate, he looked down started breathing really loudly. Everything in the room started smashing and breaking. Even the Emperor was alarmed at this display of rage and power. Then Vader quieted down, kneeled and said his first words “What is thy bidding my master?”