So I caught The Butterfly Effect on FX last night. Stopped to watch it because I enjoyed it on my first viewing. However when I got to the end I had the most extreme displeasure in watching a new ending. I first saw the movie on DVD, and it ended with Evan warping back to his time in the womb and strangling himself with the umbilical cord. At the time I was stoked because it was such a bleak and, to me at least, fitting ending to the story.
Apparently, that wasn’t the original ending of the movie (a fact I just found out). In the theatrical version, he goes back to when he goes back to his first meeting with Kayleigh, tells her that he hates her and will kill her and her family if she ever comes near him again. She moves in with her mom instead of her dad and everyone has a normal and happy childhood. Jump to the future, everyone is alive and well . Are you serious? What an incredible cop out. What makes Evan so special that he can successfully change the future when his grandfather, father and two brothers cannot? I thought the whole movie was pointing out the impossibility of ever “fixing” the past, even if you had the ability to do so.
I am so glad that I saw the alternate ending first, as I don’t think I would have ever given this movie a second chance if I saw the original vanilla happy ending. Anyone have the same experience? Maybe even with a different movie?
For #1, that is fascinating, and I had no idea about this ending. I first saw it about 2 years ago and the ending was the same as the one you (and I) saw last night on FX…
For #2, I’d just suggest that even int he ending you saw first, he is STILL changing the future.
Ah, I figured they must have had some other ones. I was honestly half expecting Evan to follow her when I saw it.
Very true, but it’s not some naive attempt to tweak it so it works out for himself. He’s fixing the past, but not fixing it to make himself feel better or create this ideal picture with him as the center, as opposed to all of his other attempts throughout the movie.
Captain America’s ending 2a is the one I remember in the theater but I dunno if I’d call it a vanilla happy ending. True, it seems the best of possible worlds what with no one getting molested, blowed up, or driven to prostitution, but in order achieve it Evan has to give up the one thing he really wanted, Kayleigh’s love – and he knows it. There must have been some dust blowing around in the theater during that scene because something got in my eye at that point.
Maybe I’m more tender on that point because I’ve had to give up the one I loved. YMMV.
I told Mr. singular he had to see this movie because it was so great. I’d seen it on DVD, and it was showing on HBO, finally. I was hugely pissed when ending #2 instead of #1 unfolded, not to mention embarrassed. I had no idea there was such an enormously inferior ending coming - it absolutely ruined the movie. Never watched it again since.
There’s another scene that gets cut from the “Theatrical Version”, the one with the cop-out ending: going from memory, somewhere in the middle of the film, Evan follows his mother outside from a cafe or something, where she is sitting on a bench. Conversation goes around, and she reveals to him that she was pregnant twice before he was born, but both prior pregnancies were stillbirths. So, after seeing the ending with unborn Evan strangling himself with his own umbilical cord, you have to wonder: did this happen twice before, with Evan’s other siblings? Did they too go back to the womb and commit suicide in utero?
In the theater, I saw ending #2A (sees her, but doesn’t approach her). The director’s cut has ending #1 (where he, as a fetus, strangles himself).
I actually prefer ending #1- silly as it looked, I thought that it fit the best thematically- the only way to keep from making things worse is to remove himself completely. I can easily imagine why they showed the other ending, though- I just bet that half the audience in the test theater laughed when they show him as a fetus.
That’s what we’re led to believe. In addition to adding that scene, the Director’s Cut ads a scene where he goes to a palm reader who tells him he has no lifeline, and also one where he’s raped in the prison.
I first saw this when the DVD came out, and when I rented it they had a two sided DVD. director’s cut on one side, theatrical on the other. I think I watched the theatrical first, but I’m not 100% sure.
Anyway, I really prefered the theatrical version. Something about a fetusactually being physically capable of committing suicide just struck me as even more absurd than the idea of a guy being able to travel back along his own lifetime and make changes.