20 Recent Movie Plot Twists NOBODY Saw Coming
14. Pete Wins (Not Ray) - The Long Walk
The recent adaptation of Stephen King's dystopian novel The Long Walk is extremely faithful to the tone of the source material, though takes some unexpected liberties with the plot at the very end.
Readers of the book will know that protagonist Ray Garraty (Cooper Hoffman) wins the titular endurance trial after his pal Pete McVries (David Jonsson) willingly sits down and accepts his fate, and the seemingly unstoppable Billy Stebbins (Garrett Wareing) suddenly falls over dead.
But the film deviates sharply from this ending by having Stebbins give up, before Ray decides to sit down and die, leaving Pete the surprise winner instead.
And while the novel ended ambiguously with Ray walking past The Major (Mark Hamill) and jogging off into the night, here Pete shoots the Major dead with a rifle and walks off to parts unknown.
The ending is certainly still effective, but some nevertheless felt that the changes from the source were unnecessary and, in the case of Pete's execution of the Major, a bit too Hollywood by comparison.