15 Sci-Fi Movie Endings That Would Have Changed Everything

Eric Bress and J Mackye Gruber’s The Butterfly Effect is not tremendously well regarded within the world of science fiction cinema, but you’d be lying if you said you didn’t enjoy its wacky twists and turns at least the first time round.

Ashton Kutcher plays Evan Treborn, who has a history of blackouts and memory loss, and discovers in his later twenties that he can travel in time. The blackouts are flux moments during which Evan inhabits and controls his past selves, changing their future based on his altered decisions. Unfortunately for him, each change he makes brings with it unintended and increasingly dire consequences, as he tries and fails to make his life great and put himself on a romantic collision course with his childhood friend Kayleigh Miller (Amy Smart).

This may sound like the setup to a classic Kutcher comedy, but boy how it’s not. Butterfly Effect goes hard on the consequences, playing fast and loose with chaos theory in order to plunge Evan into various nightmare realities. And Bress and Gruber were more than willing to ride this vibe out to its worst conclusion, completing a devastating ending that sees Evan strangle himself with the umbilical cord in his mother’s womb, saving Kayleigh and his friends from all the possible miseries he has caused.

Thankfully, the studio intervened and course corrected to give us a theatrical ending that has Evan push Kayleigh away as a child and then stop time travelling altogether. Phew.