10. Clerks - Dante Hicks Died
Clerks was definitely the best comedy of the 90s, and definitely the kind of debut every filmmaker would love to have. It was a movie in which you follow the protagonist in a very bad day of his life. We saw him having horrible moments, being humiliated and, in the end, having an epiphany about his life. It was a happy ending because after that we knew that things would get better for him, and that he'll do the right choices from now on. This ending ruins everything. Not only because it went as far as actually being shown at some movie festivals, but Smith was also considering it to be the real ending to the film. This makes Dante's catchphrase "I wasn't supposed to be here today" much more depressing. And in the original script, the situation was much, much more darker. While in the clip we don't know who is the killer, it's mentioned in the script. We know that Jay and Silent Bob are drug dealers, and in the script they're talking to a guy about the party and that if he wants drugs he should better be there with some money, to which he just replies "Don't worry, I'll get the money." And we don't see him until the very end of the movie, shooting Dante in the chest. How much it would have changed the film? This would have changed the film's feeling completely, it would have passed from being a light-hearted comedy about the life of a clerk to be a sad tragedy about how pointless life is. In a way it was a fitting end to Dante, since he said he preferred endings like that because "Life's a series of down endings." This ending could had a much bigger impact in the audiences, but for all the wrong reasons. However this ending felt completely out of place, even Roger Ebert said that he loved more the second time because of how out of place the first ending was. Thankfully, the canonical ending wasn't so depressing, and we could enjoy a great series of spin-offs, and a new sequel that is now on the works.