15 Sci-Fi Movie Endings That Would Have Changed Everything

Science fiction has always been the place to explore an infinite universe (or, universes) of possibilities, wowing generations of filmgoers from as far back as Georges Méliès’ Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902) through to present-day marvels, like Denis Villeneuve’s Dune or anything Christopher Nolan puts his budget behind. And, so often, the concluding scenes are used to fit in one last trick, plant doubt in our minds or levy a devastating final commentary against society.

But the endings we know and love (mostly) are not always what the filmmakers, actors or studios wanted. Sometimes grand finales leak and have to be tweaked, sometimes test audiences get their teeth into things and tear it apart, and sometimes directors decide that whatever they were aiming for in the first place just isn’t working anymore.

Could you imagine an MCU in which Loki bites it early doors? A Terminator universe cut off at the root by a happy ending? Or a Star Trek without Spock? Well, you almost didn’t have to.

These are ten story-changing endings that were scripted – and in most cases actually filmed – but which either the filmmakers opted not to use, audiences rejected, studios nixed, or which were simply superseded by better options.

Arrival arrived in Denis Villeneuve’s transitional period, when he had the artistic capital to attract big stars and command midweight budgets, but was still on his journey to becoming a household name. And it has all the hallmarks that define the director’s recent career, namely: philosophical and complex human stories set against a backdrop of grand, jaw-dropping spectacle.

Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner are linguist Louise Banks and theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly, called in to investigate and attempt to communicate with the extraterrestrial inhabitants of gigantic hovering spacecraft that have mysteriously arrived on Earth. The pair get up close and personal with the so-called Heptapods, researching and attempting to decode their complex written language.

The original script for the film had the Heptapods communicate blueprints to an interstellar ship that would provide a way to leave Earth in the face of imminent, planet-threatening disaster. And then Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar dropped.

Shaken by the similarity of the films, screenwriter Eric Heisserer had to re-tool his script to ensure Arrival remained its own thing, digging deeper into the language aspect instead. Thus, the film as we know it ends with Louise using the aliens’ language to experience memories of the future (just go with it), which allow her to prevent humanity from descending into devastating conflict and achieve global unity.  And, at least on the macro scale, all is well.