10 Alternate Endings That Improve Movies

8. 28 Days Later - Jim Dies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch2vPwOlEX4 To be fair to Danny Boyle, his theatrical ending to 28 Days Later was hardly an uplifting, hopefuly one; though Jim, Serena and Hannah managed to survive the Rage outbreak, a large part of the population is dead, and the authorities don't seem to have a clue how to deal with it. However, Boyle's original ending chose to go far bleaker, ending with Serena and Hannah trying to save a near-dead Jim, injecting him with adrenaline, which is no use, and they're left crying over his bloody corpse. They eventually pick up their guns and walk off into the world to face off against the infected, an ambiguous close that doesn't clue us in one bit on what might be in store for the pair, while Jim is left to rot in a disused building. Wonderful. What's really great about this ending isn't its misery, but how well it plays with audience expectation; when Serena gets out the adrenaline shot, we're convinced that Jim is going to be revived like in every other film with a similar scene, but no, he doesn't respond, and is gone for good. It's so devoid of hope, if it's precisely for that reason we can see why it wasn't used.