10 Movie Adaptations That Changed The Ending For The Better

2. A Clockwork Orange

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEOm7bny59I Having read the source material for A Clockwork Orange long after first seeing Stanley Kubrick's excellent film, it feels like such a deflation in the final pages after being so enthralling for its majority. Alex ends up with a new gang of Droogs (sounds promising, right?) but has stopped his life of violent crime, realising it's time to settle down, have a family and contribute to society. Kubrick's ending is vastly superior. Alex (Malcolm McDowell) has his psychological conditioning - which attempted to curb his violence but instead turning it inward - reversed back, and while smiling for a picture in his hospital bed, has visions of sex and violence, while hilariously exclaiming, "I was cured all right." Anthony Burgess' original ending is too clean and definitive, whereas Kubrick leaves us with plenty to think about beyond the bounds of the story. Amusingly, the original US version of the novel was published without the final scene which was regarded as "too optimistic", and Kubrick wasn't even aware of the happy version until the film was in production. Burgess himself even suggested that his original ending wasn't at all realistic, and so it's a foregone conclusion really.