10 Sci-Fi Movies That Almost Had Way Better Endings

Let’s face it—we were all a little heartbroken when 2018’s The Predator hit screens. A hard-R reboot of the long-running action/horror/sci-fi franchise, the presence of Nice Guys director and Last Boy Scout scribe Shane Black brought with it the promise of some aggressively cool eighties-style violent set pieces and loveable characters.

Unfortunately neither materialized onscreen, with a misjudged subplot about an autistic child instead taking centre stage as the onscreen action stagnated and the miscast mercs at the centre of the story failed to gel into a likeable pack of misfits. Most egregious was the ending, wherein the Predator sort-of super suit is unveiled and the complicated plan of the predators to take over earth post-global warming’s impending apocalypse are explained.

It was bad, sure, but the messy ending wasn’t actually entirely Black’s fault, as prior to studio-mandated reshoots the writer director had tried to put together a much more ambitious climax to the flick. This would have involved a cameo from the first film’s hero, Arnold Schwarznegger’s Dutch, and there was even a draft wherein the Predator Killer was revealed to be none other than Alien’s Ellen Ripley—and another draft where it was Aliens’ Newt!

Did they make sense? Varying degrees, sure. But would they have been better than what we got? You bet.