10 Near-Classic Movies Ruined By Terrible Endings

5. A.I. Artificial Intelligence

If you've written yourself into a corner, just bring aliens in out of nowhere to save the day. For its majority, A.I. is a thoughtful, beautifully rendered film that follows cute child robot David (Haley Joel Osment) as he experiences "life" for the first time. He ends up at the bottom of the ocean by film's end, in what would have been a hauntingly brilliant way to end the film, but Spielberg being Spielberg, he can't help but resist a little schmaltz, and so thousands of years later, an alien race composed entirely of silicon rescues him from the ocean depths. Before they plan to reverse-engineer him, they offer David one wish, and he opts to spend a day with his mother, seemingly an effort not to make the film appear completely bleak. However, as the video above details, many hang this affectation on Spielberg, yet he claims that the original ending scripted by Stanley Kubrick was much the same. One can't help but imagine that Kubrick wouldn't have wrapped the story in so much cotton candy, but the guy has a point, assuming he's telling the truth.