10 Famous Movie Endings That Had Radical Last Minute Changes

6. Brad Pitt Nearly Avoided The Wrath Of Se7en

David Fincher's Se7en is a laugh-a-minute, the feel good hit of summer 1995 which left audiences smiling and with a renewed zest for life. At least we assume there's an alternate cut where that happens, perhaps put together by the film's editors so that they could possibly get through assembling the theatrical version without topping themselves. Set in a city that suffers perpetual rainfall, with two detectives tracking down a sadistic serial killer whose victims are presented as proponents of the seven deadly sins - most of which seem to involve not washing and looking gross - Se7en is one of the most intense and intensely upsetting crime movies ever. A large part of that is down to the ending which, even when you put Thom Yorke in it, is still super harrowing. Possibly even more so. After the surprise reveal that Kevin Spacey - who wasn't billed in the opening credits or marketing material - was the John Doe who had been setting up all these horrific murders, Detectives Somerset and Mills (played by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, respectively) followed their suspect out to the desert where he claimed his killing spree would end. It turns out that ending involves the delivery of Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box, which upsets husband Mills to the point that he shoots Doe in the head, thus becoming "wrath" and completing the seven deadly sins. It's harrowing and disturbing, both for gore reasons and the implications of how the insane killer had so thoroughly demolished the lives of the people around him. Despite being utterly soul destroying it's also a perfect ending, which we much prefer to the mooted original climax which saw Detective Somerset pulling the trigger on Spacey's character before announcing his retirement, which would have changed everything. Still, that's preferable to the studio's original insistence that Paltrow's head be replaced with that of a dog...