12 Depressing Alternate Endings That Were Way Better Than The Originals

6. 28 Days Later

The actual ending of 28 Days Later is pretty uplifting, though it resists confirming whether Him, Selena and Hannah actually survive (the implications are mostly positive,) and in all honesty, it always felt a little jarring considering the bleak atmosphere of the rest of the film. The suggestion that Jim would survive was just too arrogant, considering what he goes through and that the rest of the world has basically crumbled to its knees.

But that wasn't always the way - originally Danny Boyle wanted Jim to die on the operating table, in much more dramatic fashion, and for the surviving duo of Selena and Hannah to take up weapons and walk out of the hospital into grim uncertainty.

According to Boyle, he wanted the pair to survive, and intended the film to be read that way, but test audiences saw it differently, and the ending was scrapped in favour of something more tangibly happy.

The Problem

The problem was that those test audiences saw the pair's decision to arm themselves and walk away as an implicit suggestion that they would be dead sooner rather than later. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but Boyle didn't agree with that, and made the changes.