10 Films That Suffered In The Editing Room

I Am Legend is a pretty decent film across the board.

Will Smith's leading performance as Dr. Robert Neville is among his best work and the film's overarching themes of hope and humanity make for a thoroughly enjoyable watch for the most part.

That is until the film enters its climax and Neville is forced to sacrifice himself in order to save his cure from being destroyed by the leader of the former-human entities, running head-first into his adversary whilst simultaneous pulling the pin on a grenade.

Spectacular as this ending was, it proved to be a bit of an epic blow-off to what had been a much more personal story up until this moment.

The actual 'alternate' ending - which was more in-line with the book's message - involved the leader suppressing their rage and then greasing the image of a butterfly onto the glass in-between the 'darkseeker' and Neville. This alluded to the woman 'darkseeker' Neville had been testing his cure on - who had a tattoo of the very same creature - and forced him to realise just how human these beasts still were.

This original ending, where the leader takes back one of his own and Neville survives long enough to take his cure elsewhere, apparently didn't sit well with some test audiences and this led to the studio opting to alter the film's ending into the more dramatic - yet simplistic - one we saw in the cinema.

It didn't completely derail the film to have the explosive theatrical ending it did upon release, but it was definitely made to look inferior in comparison to the thoughtful alternative version which was released shortly after.