Famous movies with endings that completely changed their meaning
Hours of unused helicopter footage. That’s what Stanley Kubrick sent Ridley Scott when Warner Bros. told him “Blade Runner” needed a happy ending. The mountains and forests were outtakes from the opening of “The Shining,” according to Screen Rant.
Endings are the part of a movie that decides what it was about. Change the last five minutes, and you’ve changed the whole film.
Six famous movies follow, each with an ending that was written one way and released another. We say who made the call.
A studio gave Ridley Scott a happy ending
In 1982, “Blade Runner” ended with Deckard and Rachael driving through green mountains, with Harrison Ford narrating. Scott didn’t want either. Warner Bros. did, and Scott didn’t have final cut, per Screen Rant.
The version he wanted reached audiences by accident. In 1990, a Los Angeles theater showed his workprint by mistake, and viewers saw no voiceover and no happy ending, Mental Floss reported. That led to the 1992 Director’s Cut, with a new unicorn dream that made Deckard’s humanity a question.
Scott says Deckard is a replicant. Ford says he played him human, per The Filmaholic.
Terry Gilliam’s nightmare got cut to 94 minutes
“Brazil” is a dark satire. It ends with Sam Lowry lost in a way he can’t come back from. Universal’s chairman, Sid Sheinberg, secretly made a 94-minute version with a happy ending, nicknamed the “Love Conquers All” cut, per Flickering Myth.
Gilliam fought back. He took out a full-page ad in Variety asking when Universal would release his film. Sheinberg responded with an ad of his own, per the University of Wisconsin. Then Gilliam held secret screenings for critics, and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association named “Brazil” Best Picture, Syfy Wire reported.
Universal relented.
Andie was supposed to end up with Duckie
In John Hughes’s original “Pretty in Pink,” Andie ends up with Duckie. A test audience at the Paramount lot booed it, director Howard Deutch told USA Today. “They did not want Molly to end up with Jon Cryer,” he said, per the interview.
Hughes wrote a new five-page ending. Reminisce Magazine reports it was reshot in a day. The band Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark wrote “If You Leave” in less than 24 hours for it, per one account.
Andrew McCarthy had nearly quit when he read the first ending, calling his character “spineless,” The Hollywood Reporter noted. Hughes later disliked the change, Screen Rant says. The footage of the original ending is lost.
The original ending cost $5 million and was thrown away
The musical “Little Shop of Horrors” ends with the plant eating everybody. So did Frank Oz’s 1986 film. It was a 23-minute finale with elaborate model work, SlashFilm reports, and it reportedly cost about $5 million.
After two test screenings, in San Jose and Los Angeles, audiences rejected it, per IMDb’s alternate versions. “They loved those people, and they hated us for it,” Oz said. Howard Ashman wrote a happy ending.
Warner restored the original in 2012. Fans loved it, the same source notes.
Glenn Close thought Alex was more suicidal than psychotic
“Fatal Attraction” originally ended with Alex taking her own life, in a way meant to frame Dan, per the AFI Catalog. Test audiences hated it. “She had done such a good job and was such a great villain,” Michael Douglas recalled, that they just wanted to kill her, per Yahoo.
Close argued for keeping it. She felt Alex was ill, not a monster. Director Adrian Lyne and Paramount reshot the ending six months later, for about $1.3 million. Close was dunked in the bathtub more than 50 times, Looper reports.
In Japan, the original ending was shown, the AFI notes.
“Pretty Woman” was called 3000, and it ended on a bus
J.F. Lawton’s script was dark. In it, Edward doesn’t fall for Vivian, and she ends up back on the street, per TCM. A coda showed her and her friend Kit on a bus to Disneyland, Lawton told Yahoo.
Touchstone, a Disney division, bought the script for $17 million. Director Garry Marshall saw a fairy tale. “Julia was Rapunzel,” he said. Julia Roberts later called the original “really dark and depressing,” the script about two terrible people.
Marshall worried about being “the guy who turned it into fluff,” Lawton said.
The bottom line
“Blade Runner’s” happy ending used footage Stanley Kubrick sent over. “Little Shop’s” original ending cost about $5 million and stayed unseen until 2012.
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