10 Famous Movie Endings That Were Total Accidents
3. The Train Couldn't Be Turned Off During The Climax (Because The Engine Would Freeze) - 3:10 To Yuma
James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma is a rare remake of a classic movie that is itself an excellent movie, offering up a grittier expansion of the original text.
The film memorably concludes with the titular train pulling into town as outlaw Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) tries to fight his way towards it.
With the help of his captor Dan Evans (Christian Bale), he succeeds, but Ben's deranged comrade Charlie Prince (Ben Foster) savagely shoots Dan dead.
An infuriated Ben then kills Charlie and the rest of his gang, and boards the train after almost being shot by Dan's devastated son William (Logan Lerman).
It's a masterfully executed sequence, and one brilliantly underscored by the anxious, heartbeat-like chugging of the 3:10 to Yuma in the background, effectively replacing a traditional musical score.
It's a genius feat of sound design, or so you might think, but on the film's DVD commentary Mangold confirmed that, while he received much praise for this decision, it was actually a means to solve a technical problem while on set.
As it turns out, the weather was extremely cold while the scene was being shot, and so they couldn't risk turning the locomotive's engine off during shooting in case it froze and wouldn't start up again.
As such, the decision was made to leave the engine chugging away until the scene was in the can. Mangold could've obviously removed the sound effect in post, but it feels like such a vital component of the scene's design in retrospect that there was simply no choice but to keep it in.