10 Original Endings That Would Have Ruined Great Movies

5. DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story (2004)

The Ending We Got: DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story is all about team-work, Lance Armstrong cameos, and embracing the fact that one of your teammates thinks they're a pirate. It's also about wrenches, and how dodging them makes you a better person.

And after all the work that Vince Vaughn and his team of "Average Joes" put into to try to beat Ben Stiller and his team of questionable morons, they win the prestigious dodgeball competition and the world is put to rights. It's a feel-good ending to a feel-good comic romp, and one that you absolutely would not picture having been subject to any alternatives.

The Original Ending: You'll be surprised to learn that the filmmaker's original intent was to have Vince Vaughn and his team lose the competition, then. Horribly. And that's about it. They lose the competition, and stare dumb-founded whilst Ben Stiller and a team-mate push their foreheads together and grin wildly in their moment of immense glory. The film even freeze frames heroically on the bad guys and cuts to black with the gusto of any good sports movie. Then the credits roll to some seriously inspirational music cues.

Not too shocking to hear that test audiences hated this ending like a wrench to the face. Fearing it was too bleak and sudden, it was scrapped in favour of a much happier alternative. And though there's a sly, dark comic touch to the original ending, it's simply too punishing to watch a character like Stiller's emerge as winner.