10 Alternate Endings To 2020 Movies You Almost Saw
2. Joe Stays Dead - Soul
Pixar's recently released Soul follows the quest of jazz pianist Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) to reunite his soul with his body after falling down a manhole, causing his soul to end up in the Great Beyond.
The film ends in crowd-pleasing fashion with Joe's soul being returned to his body on Earth, giving him a second chance to take full advantage of everything life has to offer.
But as is typical for Pixar, the ending was heavily workshopped by filmmaker Pete Docter and his creative brain trust, with numerous different climaxes being proposed.
Among them was an especially upsetting ending where Joe never gets a chance to return to Earth after learning to better appreciate his life, instead venturing on to the Great Beyond. Docter said:
"I think people felt like it's cheating to let him go back. On the other hand, story-wise, you can't teach this guy to enjoy life the right way and then rob him of that...Ultimately, in the movie, every scene was Joe going, 'Wait a second, I didn't live this the right way before,' So, it didn't seem right then at the end to go, 'All right, off you go!'"
If some feel that Soul's ending arrives a little too abruptly for its own good, it's tough to imagine how Pixar could spin much positivity out of Joe being denied the chance to learn from his mistakes.
And for our final entry, if you haven't seen Promising Young Woman yet, MAJOR SPOILERS will follow...