I just finished reading the “alternate ending to the movie ‘Big’ thread”. (To sum it up: it doesn’t exist). But there must be movies that had legitimate alternate endings, whether it be in theaters/TV/home video. What are they? And do they work as well as the original endings?
Well, there’s Clue, that had three different endings. Different theaters got different endings. It more or less worked - as a mystery movie, it wasn’t very mysterious. Or complex.
There’s an alternate ending included on the DVD for What Dreams May Come. On the other hand, I hate that ending. It is much more “corny” and childish.
Clue was a comedy. A parody of a murder mystery. And to date, the only rewatchable game-based movie.
As for the op, there are lots of directors cut type different endings that can be consideted “alternate”. The one i can think of off hand is Little Shop of Horrors.
My friend and I watched 2004’s The Butterfly Effect separately, and when we were discussing it one day, we argued over how it ended. Later we found out that there were four different endings to that movie - one happy ending, one dark and sad ending, and two others somewhere in between.
Brazil is an interesting example of this. The producers had a contract with Universal to distribute the film in the U.S. When Terry Gilliam finished it, Universal chairman Sid Sheinberg hated it and ordered his editors to create a new version. There are numerous small changes, if you know where to look, and the ending is completely different. With a certain amount of guerrilla marketing, Gilliam got them to release the film pretty much intact from his original version. The studio version was shown on TV at least once, though.
It wasn’t a mystery movie at all. The whole point of a mystery movie is to spot the clues and hints and identify the criminal before it’s revealed on screen. If you know there are multiple possible endings, you know there’s no point in even trying to figure it out.
Clerks originally had a different ending. Kevin Smith was convinced to go with a ending more in tone with the rest of the movie.
I Am Legend had a different ending that was closer to the book’s ending. The studio decided to shoot a new ending that fit better with the action movie genre.
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story supposedly had a different original ending (that’s included as an extra on the DVD) that ends with Globo-Gym winning the final match (no double fault). And then the movie just ends with heroes losing. I think it’s more likely to be a joke than an actual ending - there’s just too many plotlines that only pay off with the actual ending. Although it certainly would’ve made for a twist in a comedy sports movie.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine didn’t really have different endings, but it did have different post-credit scenes. One had Wolverine drinking in a bar in Japan, the other had Deadpool recovering his head. Different theatres got one scene each.
The original ending to Clerks was apparently only shown at the Independent Feature Film Market, not at ordinary movie theater showings. People there criticized the ending, so Kevin Smith changed it. It was later made an extra for the DVD and LaserDisc of the movie:
Little Shop of Horrors and Brazil have already been mentioned, so I’ll toss out Bladerunner and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. (Also, Return of the Jedi might count–no substantive plot differences, but bring back Yub Nub, dammit!)
With a few exceptions, the best sports movies are the ones where the result of the Big Game goes against the natural expectations of the movie. Rocky loses the big fight and it’s still a triumph, Fast Eddie beats Fats at pool and it’s still a tragedy. For a comedy where the heroes lose, there’s The Bad News Bears; it wouldn’t be nearly the movie it is if the Bears won at the end.
Though that ending makes a little less sense with regard to the title of the movie. In the book he’s legend because he becomes a horror story for vampire parents to tell their vampire kids about the daywalking serial killer. In that ending he becomes… the guy who killed [del]vampires[/del] ape zombies for awhile until realizing he was wrong, then they made up and everything was okay.
Supposedly, that alternate was the intended ending, but executive meddling gave it a happy ending. I didn’t know it was actually filmed though.
There is some alternate, perfect, universe where that film doesn’t exist.
In European theatres, the horror movie *Descent*showed the last survivor, Sarah, emerge from the caves and escape the monsters - though only in her head; she is still deep underground with the light of her torch slowly dying and the monsters closing in to eat her.
In the USA, the audience mostly saw a more ambiguous ending: Sarah sees Juno’s ghost in the car, screams and the movie cuts to black.
Army of Darkness has Ash return to the S-Mart in one ending, and screw up the drop count of the sleeping potion in another which results in his awakening far from his own time in a dystopian world.
In the George A Romero Dawn of the Dead (1978) film, the ending is two survivors of zombies fly away from a shopping mall in a helicopter.
The original script had the two abandon their attempts to get away and instead they kill themselves. The helicopter had the engine running and as the end title credits roll the machine then runs out of fuel showing they were doomed anyway.
The scripted ending has (as far as I know) never been seen by the public but there are suggestions it was at least partially filmed although the footage was later lost.
TCMF-2L
The original ending of Blade Runner was happy and seemed way out of place where they imply they escape to a still beautiful wilderness that somehow could still exists in the future the rest of the movie showed us. The director’s cut has a more ambiguous ending.
“Kiss Me Deadly” originally had an ending where Mike Hammer and Velma are wading into the ocean to escape the fire and explosion caused by the MacGuffin…an atomic device. Later releases just has the beach house exploding, implying they were caught in it. In 1997 the original ending was restored and the dvd has it, with the apocalypse scene as a bonus.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Wayne’s World yet.
I remember the 1st time I saw it and at the end thinking, that ending kind of sucked. Then the characters decided they didn’t like it either so they redo the ending and make a “Scooby Doo” ending.
Then they do a 3rd ending to make it a happy ending.
I haven’t seen Pretty in Pink listed, though I’ve always heard the ending to that one was reshot. Never seen it, but I’ve never bought any dvds of the movie, either. Terminator 2 had a tied-up, Judgement-Day-never-happened ending with old-Sarah but that one ended up not being used.
Teenage Dirtbag 
It’s only a music video, not a full length movie, but the clip is completely altered by not showing the very end where he wakes up from the dream
So it was played as a trailer in movie theaters with a happy ending for happy kids movies, and shown with the postscript when a darker clip was wanted.
Terminator 2 had one where we see that the Skynet apocalypse did NOT happen. Cameron wisely left it open-ended.
The Shining had one in its first weekend or so in theaters. It showed that the guy who offered Jack Nicholson the job at the hotel was spooky and in on the haunted stuff. Kubrick wisely trimmed it and ended with the far superior zoom on the party photo.
I watched that on a pbs deries on film noir and I was into mike hammer because of the tv show
I remember hurling a cup at the tv because dammit mike hammer didn’t die…
And I knew about the t2 ending because that’s how the book version ended… a lot of people were confused when they referenced it in t3 …