1. The Butterfly Effect Used To Have 100% More Baby Suicide
We've yet to make it through all of the Two And A Half Men star's filmography, but we're pretty sure The Butterfly Effect is the only Ashton Kutcher film that was supposed to end with him strangling himself as a baby. In the womb. With the umbilical cord. Then again it's been a while since we watched Dude, Where's My Car, so who knows? We might be wrong. A rare dramatic outing for the Punk'd host, Eric Bress and J Mackye Gruber's bizarre drama thriller with sci-fi touches was a critical failure but a surprise box office smash, because we guess people really like seeing a surfer dude using photographs and home movies to travel back in time and mess his life up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YalIIvvVI9k At the film's opening, Evan Treborn is not leading a charmed life. He suffers from migraines and frequent, unexplained blackouts which he thinks might have something to do with the repressed memories of sexual abuse he suffered as a child, alongside several other neighbourhood kids. Or the time his insane father tried to strangle him to death, before being killed by guards himself. Or the time he accidentally killed a woman and her infant daughter whilst messing around with dynamite. Or the time his best friend set his dog on fire. Man, after all that, you can understand wanting to just pull tricks on your celebrity mates, no matter how cruel. Luckily for Evan it turns out he can travel in time by looking at old photos and videos from his past which, if he concentrates hard enough on, he will be transported into. Each time he tries to improve things for him and his pals, he actually makes things a lot worse. Because of the butterfly effect, see? Every change has a ripple effect which has unintended consequences, from turning him into a convicted murder to a multiple amputee. In the end he "fixes" things by alienating the love of his life, Amy Smart's Kayleigh, so she never gets involved with his terrible history. At the end they don't know each other but share a look of recognition when they pass in the street, so it's kind of a happy ending? It's certainly a change from the original ending Bress and Gruber filmed, which saw Kutcher's character going to a much more extreme length to put things right. Instead of just breaking a little girl's heart he finds the video of him being born, transports himself into his fetus form and kills himself before he can ever live. And then his mother bemoans "another" miscarriage, suggesting all her kids end up having crappy lives and choose to commit suicide before they can even be born. So yeah, The Butterfly Effect could have been a LOT more emo were it not for this radical change.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
