8 Great Movies Saved By Ridiculously Last Minute Changes
4. Test Audiences Stopped Scott Ending Up With The Wrong Girl - Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World ends with the titular slacker hero flying off into subspace with his new girlfriend Ramona after defeating her seven evil exes in physical combat. It's pretty weird, although not as weird as the alternate ending, which sees Scott go through all the video-game infused action, only to eventually pair up with his obsessed teenage ex Knives. And do you know what's even weirder than all that? The alternate one was the original finale of the film.
That's right - not happy with sending up modern action cinema by homaging an entire medium, Edgar Wright wanted to subvert the typical "guy gets the girl" finale with something that, being quite frank, doesn't even sit right as a "What if?" take.
Enter test audiences. Usually a blight on the creative process where members of the general public nit-pick a film they have no real interest in, forcing filmmakers to make neutering changes to their work, they actually improved Scott Pilgrim; the scores from test screenings were low, primarily because of that ending (well duh). Being unconventional is exciting and all, but the film is already pretty off-kilter - it doesn't need a final "twist" to cement that.
Wright and the studio realised this (as had Bryan Lee OMalley, the concurrently-written comic's writer, who had already altered the graphic novel's ending) and shot the new, thematically fitting conclusion.