10 Movie Endings You Can No Longer See
The "what ifs" that you'll never get to see.
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00:00Every good story needs a good ending, and if you trip up when bowing out, you can be rest assured that people will remember that more than anything else you actually accomplished.
00:09As a result, endings in film are stressed over, often changing between scripts and production, on set, or after showing a group of people and asking them,
00:16What do you think?
00:17Whatever the reason though, the films we're talking about today have gone through changes that very few people can say they've seen both sides of.
00:23I'm Si for WhatCulture.com and these are 10 Movie Endings You Can No Longer See.
00:2910. Book of Shadows – Blair Witch 2
00:32Whilst everyone remembers the Blair Witch project as the film that popularised the found footage idea,
00:37one thing that remains unappreciated is the ambiguity of its ending.
00:41Whilst its sequel largely forewent the shaky camera of the original,
00:44director Joe Berlinger intended to keep a similar tone in Book of Shadows – Blair Witch 2.
00:49After visiting the site of the original mysteries, a teenage group of ragtag Blair Witch fans find
00:53themselves accused of murdering a group of tourists that they'd encountered on the way.
00:57The planned conclusion saw the main cast plead not guilty, but have found videotape shows otherwise,
01:02twisting the narrative that the film had shown us and leaving the audience questioning the truth.
01:06Furthermore, the film was given a purposeful linear narrative to give the story a descent into madness feeling.
01:12After Berlinger showed his film to the studio however,
01:14it seems as though they went about changing just as much as they could muster.
01:18In order to make it more contemporary, they requested more violence in the final act
01:22and additional shots were filmed that sapped the intended ambiguity of the tourists' deaths.
01:26The studio also cut the film's final scene into pieces and interspersed it throughout the story,
01:31changing the film's linear descent into, well, a mess.
01:34Thankfully, hardcore Blair Witch fans have done the best they can
01:37to restore Berlinger's vision to decent results,
01:39but hindsight editing can't help the film's critical admonishment.
01:439. Doctor Strangelove
01:46Doctor Strangelove has one of cinema's most striking conclusions.
01:49Faced with the looming reality of worldwide nuclear war,
01:52eccentric scientist Doctor Strangelove rises unexpectedly from his wheelchair
01:56with a plan to stop the destruction and explosions suddenly go off around the world.
02:01Audiences were left with a sarcastic laugh of despair that no other film in its era could achieve.
02:06It also has one of the industry's most discussed alternative endings
02:09that is nearly too barmy to be believed.
02:11In the original script, the film continued with a pie fight in the Pentagon's war room.
02:16This 1960s classic originally closed by parodying the war front with a battle of cream and pastry.
02:21So close was this to being the case that not only was it shot,
02:24it was also shown to test audiences that included critics.
02:27Director Kubrick felt that the final scene became too farcical,
02:30and worse yet, his actors had lost focus in the fun of the pie throwing
02:34and had actually started laughing on camera.
02:36The final nail came when a preview of the film was due to land on the same day
02:39as the real-life assassination of John F. Kennedy.
02:42The line in a scene that exclaimed,
02:43our gallant young president has been struck down and in his prime,
02:46suddenly felt too close to the bone.
02:48Thus, Kubrick found the right point to cut the final scenes off of Strange Love,
02:52and they haven't ever been seen since.
02:548. Scream, 2022
02:57It's rare that alternate endings are shot with the intention of never using them,
03:01but that's exactly the case with the return to the world of Ghostface.
03:04The 2022 Scream film brought back a series of actors from the series' heyday of the 1990s,
03:09including Sidney, Neve Campbell, Gayle, Courtney Cox, and Dewey, David Arquette,
03:14to fight against the return of Slasher Ghostface, and not all of them make it out alive.
03:18Sacrificing himself for Tara, one of the new kids on the block for the franchise,
03:22Dewey is stabbed to death.
03:23Apparently, this was a hot topic between the film crew and the studio.
03:26During production, directing duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillette
03:30were asked to shoot an alternate fate for the character.
03:33As such, they decided to make it unusable.
03:35The scene shown to the studio will likely never see the light of day,
03:38not just because it doesn't serve the story, but it's apparently intentionally rubbish.
03:42It consists of a badly framed over-the-shoulder shot of some doctor's legs,
03:46with a pair offering the studio that this is where they could put a voiceover or something
03:50to say that Dewey had surgery and survived.
03:52A sneaky alternate ending made out of spite,
03:54and to make sure that their original vision for the story stayed intact.
03:597. Event Horizon
04:01Event Horizon tells the story of a space anomaly that defies reality,
04:05showing unlucky bystanders their greatest fears
04:08and possessing them in order to pull passing ships into its grasp.
04:11After absolutely flopping upon release,
04:13the film's unexpected surge of DVD sales caught the attention of both director Paul W.S. Anderson
04:18and Paramount Pictures.
04:19Hoping to capitalise, Anderson agreed to put together a director's cut.
04:23The film's final moments see a fight between Miller and a resurrected Dr. Weir,
04:27possessed by the now sentient Event Horizon ship.
04:29This was not the only proposed ending, however,
04:32and one which involved Miller facing off with the Burning Man he sees in his dreams,
04:36had tested negatively in front of audiences and went unused.
04:39However, the director's cut DVD never materialised, and thus neither did this scene.
04:44Asked what became of the project in the ensuing years,
04:46Anderson said that it would never release,
04:48due to the sheer fact that most of it doesn't exist anymore.
04:52In 2012, a VHS tape from the shooting of the movie was found that gave its cult audience hope,
04:57but even today Anderson says that the project is indefinitely scrapped.
05:00We can only assume that this mysterious VHS,
05:02presumably tucked away in Anderson's private library,
05:05has the secrets that Event Horizon fans seek,
05:07and an alternate ending we'll quite likely never see.
05:116. Brazil
05:13According to Universal, who were set to handle the US release of Terry Gilliam's Brazil,
05:18the reactions from international and European audiences
05:21to the dystopian black comedy were unsatisfactory.
05:24Brazil's lead character Sam, who has spent the film struggling against a bureaucracy
05:28that has pinned a string of terrorist attacks on him,
05:30ends the story thinking that he's evaded his captors and avoided torture.
05:34However, it's all revealed to be an illusion in his head,
05:36as he stares, smiling madly into the middle distance and humming to himself.
05:40Studio head Sid Sheinberg demanded that the film be given a happier ending,
05:44cutting around the story and reusing footage where possible,
05:47so that love interest Jill survives and Sam makes it out of the city to start a new life.
05:52But the egg landed firmly on the face of Universal when,
05:55having screened his version to critics in secret,
05:57Gilliam's Brazil won a plethora of awards.
06:00It forced the studio's hand and they released it in its original edited format.
06:04Ergo, the version of this film that you would struggle to see today is the Sid Sheinberg cut.
06:09It did appear on a Criterion DVD and LaserDisc of all things,
06:13but with technology moving forward and not always so well preserved,
06:17it may be a matter of time before this version,
06:19and its sappier ending, goes from hard to find to totally lost.
06:24Number 5. Misery
06:27A difference between the Stephen King novel Misery
06:29and the 1990 Rob Reiner directed movie adaption became its most iconic moment.
06:34In the book, crazed superfan Annie tries to stop the escape of her captured favourite writer
06:38Paul Sheldon by removing his foot with an axe.
06:41In order for Paul to come out of the motion picture version in a more triumphant way,
06:45Reiner and company decided it might be best for Annie to
06:48simply smash Paul's ankle in with a hammer.
06:50Seems like Paul can't catch a break either way.
06:53Almost certainly the smallest, most amusing, but keen-eyed change to ever come from a test
06:57audience preview was the suggestion to reshoot the ending of Misery,
07:01where Paul, months later, is haunted by his experiences.
07:04Why? Because, and I quote, he needs to walk with a cane.
07:09Paul was too healthy after his experiences and it was too much of a suspension of disbelief.
07:13In all fairness, it's a good point, but it makes you wonder how many people called this out,
07:17because apparently it was enough of a pressing issue to fire up the production trucks again,
07:21as the scene was indeed reshot.
07:23It's presumably almost identical, except this time Paul gets a walking stick to lean on.
07:28The cane-less ending of Misery is not really something we particularly need,
07:32and as such it's something that has either been destroyed or locked away in a vault.
07:36Regardless, it's a fun story and an anomaly in an otherwise drama-free production.
07:414. World War Z
07:44World War Z's lead character is fairly standard zombie movie stuff.
07:48Brad Pitt's family man, Jerry, happens to be a former United Nations investigator,
07:52but he's just trying to keep his family safe.
07:54The closing moments of the film feature Jerry arriving in Wales to be reunited
07:57with his wife and daughters, and a montage of sequences that show
08:00how humanity fights against the zombie horde in the future.
08:03It's more than a little odd, as it sort of comes out of left field,
08:06leaving World War Z without the big climax you'd expect from a big-budget zombie flick.
08:10Reason being is that this wasn't the intended conclusion,
08:13and that the montage we see features already shot footage for the original and much darker ending.
08:18An entire third act of the film saw Jerry fighting his way through the Russian tundra,
08:22but when the studio was shown what was being pieced together,
08:24they were unhappy with the disconnect.
08:26Jerry had gone from warm family man to a grizzled, bearded, zombie-killing badass,
08:30and it didn't really make a whole lot of sense.
08:32Presented with options, they decided to come up with something else rather than soldier on.
08:36Thus, the original ending of the film was never quite finished.
08:39What did exist was excised into oblivion, with only thin slices featuring in the final cut.
08:44So whilst we can get a taste of what could have been, we can only wonder about the rest.
08:493. Somewhere in Time
08:521980s romance fantasy flick Somewhere in Time is, by general consensus,
08:56a fine if not fairly middle-of-the-road film.
08:59It explores time travel as obtained by hypnosis,
09:01so that our lead character Richard Coolea, portrayed by Christopher Reeve,
09:05can meet his otherwise unobtainable girl of his dreams that he sees in an old photograph.
09:10Something else that appears to be unobtainable is the original cut of the film.
09:13Somewhere in Time ends with the death of its protagonist,
09:16and through the point of view of the lens,
09:17we see Coolea's spirit finally reunited with the woman he loves.
09:21It's a fine ending, but according to Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeffrey Wells,
09:24it was much better the way that he remembers it.
09:26Executing a technique that was rare in those days,
09:29Somewhere in Time originally ended with an extraordinary and extra-long tracking shot
09:33that led us through the halls of the hospital and into the arms of Coolea's love,
09:37very slowly and very deliberately.
09:39In the 1980s, with very little trickery available,
09:42the shot would have been incredibly hard to capture.
09:44According to the film's cinematographer, Isadora Mankowski,
09:47Universal Studios thought that it was too long and trimmed it down to a few edits,
09:51fading parts of the shot together to get the point across quicker.
09:54And then, well, it appears they threw the reel in the bin,
09:57since as far as Mankowski knows, the original version no longer exists.
10:01Number 2, Dawn of the Dead
10:04After being held up in a shopping mall for months following the end of the world,
10:08Dawn of the Dead's surviving duo of Peter and Fran find themselves in jeopardy
10:11as raiding bikers cause their safe haven to become suddenly far less safe.
10:15With barriers and defences now down,
10:17hordes of zombies begin to pour up into the shopping mall's offices.
10:20Their once bunker and now home under attack,
10:23the two race to the roof to get aboard their helicopter to make their uncertain journey onwards.
10:27Whilst the version we've all seen ends ambiguously,
10:30the original script was a lot darker and more definitive about things.
10:34According to special effects guru Tom Savini, the suicide ending was indeed shot.
10:38George A. Romero spent some years denying this,
10:40before admitting in a DVD commentary that some work had been done on it.
10:44Evidence of it still exists in the film,
10:46making this the only entry on a list that you still kind of see.
10:49Peter puts a gun to his head for a moment,
10:51and Fran's way out was to include deliberately decapitating herself on the helicopter's blades,
10:56a chilling callback to an earlier scene with an unfortunate zombie.
10:59At the very least, knowing that the script called for Peter and Fran to commit suicide,
11:02makes the final scenes of Dawn make a lot more sense.
11:061. Deep Blue Sea
11:09Proving that the power that test audiences have,
11:11Deep Blue Sea not only has an original ending that nobody has seen in 20 years,
11:15but also the choices made in exercising it actually affect the finished product.
11:19Susan McAllister, as played by Saffron Burrows,
11:21morphs throughout the film as a woman researching shark brain tissue,
11:25looking for the cure for Alzheimer's disease,
11:27into someone fighting for her life and killing off her specimens in order to save herself and others.
11:31In the original ending, Susan survives the ordeal.
11:34Test audiences were apparently distraught,
11:36as they had concluded that Susan was the real villain of the piece.
11:39After all, if it wasn't for her work, the sharks wouldn't be attacking at all.
11:43Thus, a one-day reshoot occurred, and thanks to some new CGI,
11:46Susan is gobbled up as she tries to make her escape.
11:49Is it penance for her so-called misgivings?
11:51Or a very sudden and brutal death for a character
11:54who was caught in an unfortunate set of circumstances?
11:57The jury is still out if the ending of Deep Blue Sea was the right call,
12:00but whatever you think of Susan's fate, it's an interesting change to make.
12:03Moreover, it's created an alternate ending that's been lost to time.
12:08And that's the list.
12:09Head down into the comments to let us know what you thought of this video.
12:13Are any of these endings something that you're dying to see?
12:16And are there other alternative endings that you can no longer see that we missed?
12:20Make sure you hit that like button, subscribe for more, and hit the notification bell.
12:25I'm Sy for WhatCulture.com, and have a good week.