15 Sci-Fi Movie Endings That Would Have Changed Everything

4. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1980)

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is the most beloved big screen adaptation not just of the original series, but of any Star Trek property to date. And it’s not hard to see why: Nicholas Meyer assembled the old gang – including William Shatner’s Captain Kirk and Leonard Nimoy’s Spock – to board the starship USS Enterprise once again, but this time facing their deadliest enemy yet, genetically enhanced superhuman Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalbán).

Khan has a history with Kirk, after the Captain exiled him and his people to Ceti Alpha V fifteen years prior, and leads the Enterprise into a carefully engineered trap, all while trying to get his hands on the Genesis Device, a technology capable of reorganising dead matter and terraforming worlds. Famously, Spock sacrifices himself in the film’s final sequence, entering the Enterprise’s irradiated engine room to restore warp power and save the crew. A funeral is held and his body is jettisoned out into space. And, in the original cut of the film, that was that.

But news of Spock’s untimely death got out ahead of the film, and a massive fan campaign twisted Paramount’s arm, who twisted Meyer’s, who in turn twisted Nimoy’s – who had wanted his character dead for good. As such, a new scene was shot and tacked onto the end, showing Spock’s casket landing on the planet revitalised by Khan’s activation of the Genesis machine, with a voiceover from Nimoy, all but promising the character’s return.