10 Endings That Make Movies Impossible To Rewatch

3. A Rushed Heroic Sacrifice - I Am Legend

In Francis Lawrence’s post-apocalyptic horror Robert Neville (Will Smith) alongside his canine pal Sam – two of the lone survivors of a lethal virus that has killed off the majority of humankind and mutated most that remain into nocturnal, vampire-like creatures referred to as Darkseekers – works to create a cure for the disease. But after developing a successful remedy using a captured female Darkseeker and discovering two fellow survivors, Anna and a young boy Ethan, a group of the creatures attack with Robert sacrificing himself by ushering the two to safety along with a vial of the cure and staying behind to blow both himself and the marauding Darkseekers with a handy hand grenade.

A silly ending firstly because Robert could quite easily have escaped too, but mostly because there was a much more interesting original ending. In the alternate ending – a conclusion that more closely mirrors the film’s source material, Richard Matheson’s book of the same name, and was thankfully released on DVD – Robert learns the Darkseekers are actually sentient beings attacking to retrieve their comrade, his test subject, and comes to realise the implications of his treatment of them. A perfectly good ending stupidly scrapped because test audiences apparently need clear delineation between the good and bad guys and can’t have a film end without a bang (literally).