Hollywood – a home to many popular movies that have stood the test of time. Many of these cult classics we grew up adoring almost had a different ending. And these endings were too wild for our tastes.
Army Of Darkness
Sam Raimi’s epic blockbuster showed us Ash Williams literally take on an entire army. And to everybody’s surprise (well duh!!) he actually won that battle. In the end Ash Williams takes a magic potion. He drinks that potion and sleeps, waking up back in his own time. Well that was the edited ending. the original ending was way darker. Sam Raimi’s original cut showed Ash drinking the potion and taking a nap. Only the nap went on too long. Ash wakes up in a desolate wasteland of a future. Universal Pictures ordered Sam Raimi to change the ending because it was deemed too dark. A horror-comedy being too dark? Nice going dumbasses!!
I Am Legend
A massive cult-classic way ahead of its time, I Am Legend stars Will Smith as Neville, a lone military scientist and the seemingly sole survivor of a viral apocalypse. The apocalyptic strain turns infected humans into violent mutant zombies. The movie ends with Neville sacrificing himself to save the cure against the virus, killing a lot of the mutant-zombies in the process. The alternate ending was subtler and more profound. Neville realizes that the mutants are more human and his presumptions about them being savages was wrong. Neville was actually the villain of the movie.
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Alien
Alien is one of the first true science fiction legends. It stands on the same pedestal as Terminator and Close Encounters. Ridley Scott’s masterpiece showed us an alien life-form that lays eggs inside other living creatures, giving birth to a race of super predators from a different corner of the universe. The movie ended with Ripley ejecting the Xenomorph Queen into outer space. The alternate ending was ultra violent. Ripley was supposedly beheaded by the Xenomorph Queen, who then mimics a human voice. She makes her way to Earth. The ending was so radical a studio executive threatened to fire Scott if he went along with it.
First Blood
Rambo was a decorated war veteran who was harassed by local authorities. he then waged a one man war against them. In the end, Rambo decides to surrender and is arrested. That was entirely different from the original ending planned for the movie. John Rambo was never going to give himself to the authorities. Instead he was supposed to take a gun and shoot himself in the head. Rambo would rather die than be captured.
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
This was a classic case of a Director almost creating his own Frankenstein’s Monster. Cameron’s original ending to the hit movie saw John Connor become a new US Senator as Sarah Connor cheered her son on. The Judgment Day never happened. The ending was cheerful and left no room for sequels. James Cameron hated the ending so he changed it. The Terminator died by dipping itself into a vat of molten metal. Judgment Day was not out of the picture just yet. It was just postponed.
The Butterfly Effect
This movie is the epitome of a slow-burning and super dark science fiction thriller. Ashton Kutcher plays Evan, a person with the ability to travel back in time via pictures. His time travel adventures destroy his girlfriend Kayleigh’s life no matter how many times he goes back. In the end, Evan travels back in time to the point when he first met Kayleigh, convincing her to never be his friend. As a result, a new timeline is created where Evan and Kayleigh are strangers to each other. In the alternate ending, to ensure Kayleigh lives a good life, he travels back in time to the point he was just a fetus and strangles himself with the umbilical cord so that he was never born. That was way darker and was never shown to American audiences in the theaters.
Man Of Steel
Man of Steel is a highly polarizing movie. Some hate it. Some love it. But dare we say, it is one of the most realistic superhero origin stories ever made in Hollywood. Superman may be a boy scout but in the end, the world is too cruel for his ideals and values. When Zod threatens to kill innocent civilians in the final moments of his rampage, Kal-El is forced to snap his neck, killing him. Producer Christopher Nolan had a different idea. His version of the script would have had a happier conclusion. Instead of being killed, Zod was stopped in his tracks by Superman and then banished from Earth, apparently back into the Phantom Zone.
Jurassic Park
This might take you aback. But we have to put it out there. The original ending to the 1993 movie saw Alan, Ellie, and the rest of the people escaping the carnivorous predators. But the alternate ending was much worse. In this ending, Alan, Ellie and the children finally make their way to a helicopter. But the hungry T-Rex arrives just in time to kill them all. It ends in an absolute bloodbath.
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A Quiet Place
Another popcorn thriller masterpiece, A Quiet Place takes place in a world where humanity is being hunted down by a race of monsters with super hearing. John Krasinski’s original ending was way bleaker and darker. The movie ends with Emily Blunt and her children successfully finding out the monsters’ weaknesses and even killing one of them. Krasinski’s alternate ending would have ended with the monsters successfully killing off the entire family and walking out of the house unscathed. Krasinski decided to change that ending after listening to an old interview video of Steven Spielberg.
The Lion King
The last entry to this list is probably the strangest of them all. In the original ending to the hit animated classic, Scar is eaten by Hyenas after the climactic battle with Simba. In the alternate ending that was in the first draft of the script, Scar tricks Simba the same way like his father. As Simba falls into a fiery grave, Scar laughs maniacally. Disney thought the ending was too intense for a children’s movie. So they changed it to the villain being eaten alive by hyenas. That was NOT intense at all!!!
