10 Movies They Didn't Know How To End

3. Speed

The Keanu Reeves-starring action-thriller classic Speed is one of the greatest high-concept movies of all time, boasting an impossibly creative and intriguing premise - a commuter bus is rigged with explosives which will detonate if it drops below 50 miles per hour.

Yet as ludicrously entertaining as the film is, it also hits a bit of a roadblock deep into the third act.

With the bomb-on-bus scenario resolved at the 90-minute mark, the film needlessly continues for almost another half-hour as Jack Traven (Reeves) hunts down bomb-maker villain Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper).

This over-egged climax was not actually part of Graham Yost's original script, which took place entirely on the bus. But Fox refused to green-light the film without a re-write which added more exterior action to the film, believing that audiences wouldn't want to watch a movie set solely on a bus.

Switching the action to a manhunt that concludes on a subway train was entirely studio-mandated, and though it's still pretty entertaining, the movie really felt like it was done once the bus was evacuated. Whether Payne was caught or not, the concept the film was sold to audiences on was over.

Given that Speed's script was still being worked on mere days before shooting started - with the help of Joss Whedon, who punched up most of the dialogue - it's honestly pretty surprising the end result turned out as well as it did.