Inspired by this thread about movies with changed endings where the originals were better, I decided to start this thread, about movies that changed the endings and were better for it.
For purposes of discussion, we’ll include alternate/new endings and movies based on books where the movie followed the original story enough to make a new ending meaningful (ie: I, Robot or StarShip Troopers probably don’t count). Let’s try to keep spoilers in black boxes.
I’ll start it off with Flight of the Intruder. The movie did a suprisngly good job following the plot of Stephen Coonts’ book about a Navy bomber pilot and his navigator who decide to go on an unauthorized bombing run on Hanoi, mostly just compressing characters and subplots together while keeping the main plot intact. At the end of the book…
…Cool Hand Grafton rescues his badly wounded navigator, Tiger Cole, from NVA soldiers after their plane is shot down. It might have been because I saw the movie first, but the end of the book seemed kinda cheap somehow. In the movie, the roles of Tiger Cole and Major Frank Allen are rolled together, so he dies when he calls in an air strike on himself to keep the NVA from using him as bait to catch Grafton.
Just for kicks and giggles, I’d like to mention Clue, just because the three alternate endings are a hoot to watch. Actually, Clue in general is just a hoot to watch, especially if you’re a Rocky Horror fan.
Another Stephen King book that I thought had a weaker ending than the movie was The Shawshank Redemption. The movie’s ending might have been a bit cheesy, but was oh-so-satisfying.
The novel ends with Red en route to find Andy in Mexico but not sure that he will, ending with the words “I hope.” The movie shows Red finding Andy on the beach in Mexico. [/spoiler]
The Natural. The book ended with Roy Hobbs striking out and losing the game, then being banned from baseball for life. I’d have slit my wrists if the movie had ended that way.
The director’s cut of Cinema Paradiso has a very different ending, where the protagonist meets his former love and tries to recreate their relationship. Whereas in the actual release this didn’t occur, and IMO is a better movie for it.
The Princess Bride; the book ended with Buttercup and Westly riding off together, but Buttercup was pregnant with Humperdinck’s child; Westly hadn’t rescued her until quite a while after the wedding.
I preferred the movie ending of A Clockwork Orange to the book. I prefer the idea that Alexander is completely incorrigible and simply a born hell-raiser, and the idea of him growing out of it and changing his ways didn’t seem cynical enough for my tastes.
Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness’ originally filmed ending was abrupt and depressing, which in and of itself is not a bad thing; the other two films in the quasi-series end on a similar note. The ending of AoD, however, is more in the nature of a ‘punchline.’ Even though the rest of that movie was also broadly comical in tone, I felt that the original ending was unsatisfying and something of a non sequitur.
Supposedly, after the first ending was poorly recieved by test audiences, the studio demanded that Sam Raimi film an alternate ending, which resulted in the more upbeat ‘S-Mart’ epilogue. I am deeply impressed that Raimi, having been strongarmed into directing an ending that was essentially the polar opposite to his original concept, was able to invest so much energy into the finished product. The S-Mart epilogue is so lively and entertaining, with so many delightfully quotable lines, it’s the perfect final act for AoD’s madcap comic tone.
As a side note, Bruce Campbell himself has emphatically voiced his preference for the originally filmed ending. It’s a testament to the man’s charisma that he can be so wrong about this and yet it affects my appreciation of his coolness not one iota.
The ending to Hannibal. I like the idea in the book of Clarice and Hannibal running away together, but there is no way in the movie that the audience would have bought that.
Dr. Strangelove was originally supposed to end with a pie fight, which would have, IMO, changed the film from a brilliant dark comedy to a lame 60’s farce like Casino Royale.
Maybe it’s because I read the book first, but I always interpreted the last scene as Red’s imagination of what he hopes to find when he gets to Mexico. It fits with his final line better, I think.
[spoiler]In order to return to his own time, Ash is sealed into a cave after he has been given a potion that will put him into suspended animation. He’s told that one drop equals one century of sleep, so it’s critically important that he take only a certain number of drops-- no more, no less. As he’s drinking the potion, though, he’s distracted briefly by a falling rock, and predictably fucks up the count as a result. When he emerges, it’s not to the modern day, but to a blasted, future post-apocalyptic landscape. The End.
The way Bruce Campbell explained it, this was supposed to be a cliffhanger-type ending that would have encouraged the studio to shell out cash for a proposed sequel, in which Ash would have fought killer robots to liberate an enslaved humanity. The fact that this sequel never happened accounts to some degree for his relative distaste for the alternate ending. Frankly I never felt like the S-Mart ending was an insurmountable barrier to potential sequels, but then I’m not a moviemaker either, so who knows.[/spoiler]