10 Sci-Fi Movie Endings You Can No Longer See

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan famously ends with Spock (Leonard Nimoy) sacrificing himself to save Captain Kirk (William Shatner), though the film nevertheless hinted at his possible resurrection.

Moments prior to his demise, Spock performs a mind-meld on Bones (DeForest Kelley) and cryptically tells him to "remember" - in actual fact transferring his spirit or "katra" into Bones - before we see Spock's casket land on the newly formed Genesis planet.

Yet both of these moments were late-stage additions after The Wrath of Khan's original conclusion went down like a lead balloon with test audiences.

In Nicholas Meyer's first cut of the movie, Spock simply died in unsentimental fashion without any hint whatsoever that he could be brought back to life.

Executive producer Harve Bennett later said that the test audience reacted with a "funereal silence," and so despite Meyer's objections, a more hopeful ending was cooked up with a few snappy reshoots. This led to Spock returning for all four subsequent movies featuring the Original Series cast.

While there isn't a night-and-day difference between the two endings, it's clear that the tone of Meyer's original cut would've been considerably more downcast compared to what we ended up with.

But sadly, that cut has never been made available to curious Trekkies in the four decades since The Wrath of Khan's release, and almost certainly never will.