13 Movies That Should've Ended 5 Minutes Earlier
4. The Shawshank Redemption
How It Ended: After being paroled, Red (Morgan Freeman) keeps his promise to Andy (Tim Robbins) and ends up heading to Zihuatanejo, Mexico, where the pair are happily reunited.
How It Should've Ended: To be honest, you can't really blame Columbia Pictures for insisting that Frank Darabont shoot such a happy ending, given the grim journey these characters have been on, but there was still a far more dramatically water-tight ending that arrived a few minutes before.
Morgan Freeman's monologue as he sits on the bus to Mexico is the logical end-point, and ending with the line, "I hope the pacific is as blue as it is in my dreams. I hope...", would've been absolutely killer.
The ambiguity would've tied into the film's central theme of hope, but they just couldn't resist giving us a definitive, sentimental answer.