There were so many stories around Brazil by Terry Gilliam. One of them is that a studio executive hated the movie and assumed that nobody would like it because of the downer ending. He re-edited the movie for TV with what is known as the ‘Love Conquers All’ version. This version of the movie made no sense at all.
Oh, man. That ending makes the movie. It’s one of my all-time favorite scenes, and I’ve described it to a couple of people who’ll never see the movie, to explain why I love well-done ambiguity in movies.
The REAL ending, so much better than the “Hollywood” ending
I was extremely :dubious: when I heard Disney was going to make a version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. At best, it’s a pretty dark story.
In the original novel, Quasimodo prevents the gypsies from rescuing Esmeralda, thinking they are trying to harm her. Esmeralda is betrayed by Frollo, and hanged. Quasismodo kills Frollo, but he is later found dead of starvation with the body of Esmeralda, hidden in the cathedral where he took it after her death.
In the 1939 film with Charles Laughton, Esmeralda is pardoned by the king and marries Gringoire, the poet. Quasimodo is left desolate but survives.
In the 1956 film with Anthony Quinn, Esmeralda is accidentally killed by an arrow rather than hanged. Otherwise the ending is like Hugo’s with Esmeralda’s and Quasimodo’s skeletons found together in the cathedral many years later.
In the Disney film, Frollo is killed in a fight with Quasimodo, but Quasimodo is saved by Phoebus. Esmeralda ends up with Phoebus, captain of the guard, which Quasimodo reluctantly accepts. But Quasimodo is hailed as a hero by the people of Paris, which is the happiest ending he gets in any version.
There’s West Side Story, where only ‘Romeo’ dies.
the sequel to Disney’s Pocahontas makes no mention that she dies of smallpox contracted during her trip to England
I never saw Mermaids (with Cher, Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci), but recall an interview with Cher where she said the original dark ending would not fly with American audiences and she convinced director Lasse Hallström to change it.
I don’t know that it is a happy ending but, unlike the David Morrell novel, Rambo survives at the end of First Blood.
V for Vendetta
In the movie it’s implied that despite V’s death, the mass uprising by the citizens will topple the fascist government and immediately lead a new liberal government in place with a peaceful transfer of power.
In the book V’s plan all along was for his death to basically destroy all form of government (in accordance to his Anarchist philosophies) and for a better form of government to maybe eventually take it’s place though not for a very very long time and the immediate result is that England is a lawless hellhole for at least the next few decades.
To be fair, though, Dame Agatha herself wrote the alternate ending for the theater version of And Then There Were None.
Meanwhile, Game of Thrones went for the downer ending which hasn’t even been written yet.
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There were so many stories around Brazil by Terry Gilliam. One of them is that a studio executive hated the movie and assumed that nobody would like it because of the downer ending. He re-edited the movie for TV with what is known as the ‘Love Conquers All’ version. This version of the movie made no sense at all[\quote]
Is that just taking out Palin’s last scene?
I dunno, I think you could still figure out that the over the top rescue scene was probably a total delusion
In the novel Hannibal, Lecter’s brainwashing of Clarice is completely successful, and she becomes his lover and traveling companion as they escape and tour the world together. In the movie, his brainwashing is unsuccessful - Clarice escapes with her mind intact, even though Lecter gets away also (minus a hand).
Depends. The US version of the book was published without the 21st chapter where Alex decides to become a model citizen (with the author’s reluctant permission BTW). That’s the version that the movie was based on.
Nitpick: The Phantom does, indeed, die in the original novel The Phantom of the Opera. He lets Raoul and Christine go–his first really selfless act–and visits the Persian to tell him all that happened, that he is dying, and asking him to publish a notice in the Paris newspaper when he is gone, so Christine can come to bury him in accordance with his last request. All this happens, with a curt message of “Erik Is Dead” showing up in the paper, and later Leroux claims that a skeleton, wearing a gold ring, was found in the subcellars when the city officials were burying a time capsule. He is sure that this must be Erik’s skeleton, as Christine gave back his own gold ring before burying him. He ends by expressing pity for Erik, who would have been one of the most celebrated composers and geniuses of his time if he’d only had a normal appearance, praying that God will forgive him his crimes and grant his soul peace, and proposing that the skeleton should be donated to the music conservatory rather than given a pauper’s grave.
In a bit of an inversion of this, the 1925 Lon Chaney silent version was supposed to end similarly, with Erik setting Christine free of his own will and dying of a broken heart in his lair. But test audiences found this boring, so they filmed the final mob chase instead. This seems to change the story from a tragedy of unrequited love to a straight-up horror story.
PDQ Bach satirized this at the end of The Stoned Guest by having everyone who has died jump up to sing a reprise.
Doctor Sleep is another inversion. The recent movie has a darker, more violent ending than King’s book.
(The article linked below explains how, but it is of course VERY spoilery.)
This one is a bit ambiguous but is the first thing I thought of . . .
In Graham Greene’s novel Brighton Rock, we know that the still delusional Rose will hear the recording that Pinkie made for her in which he says a string of horribly cruel things, ending with “I hate you”.
In the films, on the recording Pinkie says something along the lines of " You’ve asked me to make a recording of my voice. I know what you want me to say; you want to hear me say ‘I love you’ ". He then goes on to say how he actually hates her. At the end, we get to see Rose play the record, only the needle gets stuck on the “I love you” part and plays it over and over.
Awesome novel and movie, btw.
In Sweet Bird of Youth, Chance, the protagonist, is kind of a jerk. He makes one bad choice after another, which almost inevitably lead to him being attacked by Boss Finley’s goon squad. Tennessee Williams wrote several different endings, with varying degrees of violence. The first Broadway production went with the one where they castrate him.
When they filmed it in 1962, they could not show (or even imply) that. He gets roughed up a little, but escapes. He then skips town, accompanied by Finley’s daughter, presumably to live happily ever after.
That ticked me off, and I don’t even like Tennessee Williams.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s changed the melancholy ending to a happy one. It changed many other things along the way as well.