12 Sci-Fi Movie Endings That Were Almost Completely Different
Zod lives! Alex DeLarge finds God! The Planet of the Apes wasn't Earth all along!
Not every ending works out perfect the first time around, and often times a little probing will uncover that myriad different denouements were scripted, planned, and in some cases even filmed before the filmmakers picked the cinematic cut that we ended up with.
This phenomenon appears throughout cinema in every genre, but seems particularly prevalent in sci-fi. It may be due to the larger budgets required by sci-fi meaning that producers and other financiers are more likely to have a larger stake than usual in the finished film, or it may simply be because the genre offers more creative freedom and as such directors are spoilt for choice when it comes to deciding which way to take a story’s climax.
Whatever the cause, these alternate endings are often a fascinating glimpse into the different visions of classic films which we never got to see on the big screen. Many are darker and more cynical, some are surprisingly cerebral, and a few even buck the trend by being more optimistic than the eventual ending decided on by the studio—but in every case, here are a dozen sci-fi endings which were originally unrecognizable.
12. The Little Shop Of Horrors - Audrey Was Almost Fed To Audrey II
Yes, by now most of you may know that Muppets performer Frank Oz’s big budget 1986 musical version of Little Shop of Horrors was forced to jettison an incredibly ambitious and expensive original ending wherein most of New York was destroyed by the nefarious sentient plants central to the flick’s plot. The sequence was fully finished before test audiences abhorred it, and as such a significant chunk of the film’s sizeable budget was wasted once it was scrapped.
What you may not know is that this wasn’t the first brush the franchise had with darker denouements. Yes, the original 1960 comedy horror cheapie produced by trash cinema legend Roger Corman and featuring Jack Nicholson had its own ending revised too, cutting a brutal twist wherein the nebbish protagonist is forced to off his own love interest and feed her to the insatiable plant.
Guess it's true, history repeats itself first as an inexpensive indie production, then as a big budget remake that repeats the same mistakes...