Invasion of the Body Snatchers is one of the better SF movies ever made, IMO. It dates from the mid-fifties, and it addresses a lot of Cold War paranoia without ever slotting into easy allegory; folks have read it variously as a condemnation of McCarthyism and of Stalinism. And it’s wonderful in its build-up of dread.
The director intended the final scene to be a super downer: the main character, fleeing his doomed hometown, comes across a truck leaving the town full of alien pods, and screams into the camera, “They’re here already! You’re next! You’re next!” Fade to black, creepy as hell, right?
Except the studio decided that was too much of a downer, so they forced the addition of a frame story, where the protagonist is telling the story to the cops, and they believe him and mobilize the might of the US of A to fight off these alien invaders, and everything’s all right!
Only this latter version was ever released, AFAICT. But the original ending is far superior.
Awesome, thanks! Here it is, for anyone who wants to see it. If only they had stuck with that ending, and figured out a way to drop plant vines from the ceiling like they do at the end of the stage version.
Yup! One of my favorite college experiences was working with a buddy to write a paper about the differences between these two movies and how they reflected the zeitgeist.
They won’t officially admit to it in so many words, but the recent Star Wars movie Rogue One had a different ending, almost the entire last half hour was rewritten and reshot. They say it was just an adjustment made as the edit came together, but fully 2/3 of the sequences that were shown in the trailer never ended up in the finished film. And they have said some characters were originally intended to survive.
I wouldn’t be the one to judge them as best sports movies, considering I don’t like sports movies, but sports movies are the genre, possibly excluding horror, that has the most “unhappy” endings in the sense of the protagonists losing in the climax. Even though I don’t like them in general, I give the genre credit for building up genuine suspense. As opposed to horror movies which often have the protagonists “lose” due to implausible mistakes or a deus ex machina.
Fran was supposed to stand up into the helicopter blades but they never filmed it. They built the fake head for the stunt but since they didn’t use it, it ended up being the head that was shotgunned in the opening scene.
Scott Pilgrim vs the World ends the same way as the book, with Scott and Ramona together. But there’s an alternative ending that was filmed and is included as a bonus in the blu-ray where Scott ends up with Knives.
While it only changes that one scene, this different ending retroactively changes the entire movie. In the original version, Scott is the main character. But Ramona is almost as important. The story is as much about her changing as it is about Scott changing and how they both are able to grow enough emotionally that they can finally maintain a stable relationship.
But with the alternative ending, it becomes Scott’s story. It’s about how he grows up enough to finally straighten out his relationship with Knives, which is the relationship he is in at the beginning of the movie. And Knives, unlike Scott and Ramona, is pretty much the same character at the end of the movie as she is at the beginning. Ramona, in this version, is essentially reduced to a prop; her importance in the movie is now how she effects Scott rather than being important for her own sake.
I’m surprised by this. I felt Rogue One had the same problem that Revenge of the Sith had; we’ve already seen the next movie in the series so we know going in where these movies had to be when they ended. We knew certain characters had to live and other characters had to die because we knew who was going to be around in the next movie.
Well, none of the characters had to follow through and participate in the next step. That wasn’t their forte, they weren’t fighter pilots. They could just as easily had other roles in the Rebellion that meant a sequel movie* might be developed for them, other sorties involving Imperial infiltration perhaps. But I guess ultimately they agreed with what you’re saying, it’s more dramatic and a cleaner slate to remove them from the picture entirely.
*A couple of the leads, including Felicity Jones, did have that in their contracts
Towards the end of the recent thriller Get Out, we see flashing light approaching and wonder whether the arrival of the police means that our hero is saved or that he’s going to be arrested (or worse) for having just killed several people in self-defense in very suspicious circumstances.
As it turns out, both versions were shot. In the theatrical release:
It’s not actually the police at all, it’s a friend who’s been worried about the main character throughout the movie. The protagonist gets in the friend’s car and they get the hell out of there.
But in the ending that was shown to some test audiences and apparently appears on the DVD:
It is the police. The main character is arrested and goes to jail, and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be much hope of mounting a convincing defense for him. However, he at least has the comfort of knowing the he stopped the villains.
The Bradley Cooper technothriller Limitless has two endings. The original wasn’t favored by test audiences, so they went with a more upbeat one. Both involve a final meeting between Cooper’s character and Robert De Niro’s at a U.S. Senate campaign office in NYC. I prefer the upbeat one, myself, but you can see both on the DVD.
A special mention for SDMB fan favourite TV show Farscape.
The people behind the show were told Season 4 would be the finish of it. So they prepared a happy ending with the two leads, John Crichton and Aeryn Sun settling down and starting a family.
Then they were told it had been decided to continue for a fifth season so they prepared a new cliffhanger ending where the two leads were seemingly killed.
Then they were told that in fact the show would actually be finishing after all. Although the makers had the happy ending they were so peeved at the indecision they deliberately broadcast the cliffhanger ending complete with a “To Be Continued” caption.
Although eventually the show did return with what would have been the fifth season condensed into a couple of TV movies.
