2. Robert Neville I Am Legend
The revised ending of I Am Legend serves as the perfect cautionary tale against executive meddling, because it didnt make any damn sense. Let me just set the scene for the travesty that occurs through the accidental haphazardness of his fellow survivors, Will Smiths fortified home is besieged by hordes of agile zombie-mutants, something made all the more inconvenient by the fact hes just discovered a cure for the virus which ravaged the world. Pushed back into his basement laboratory, he attempts to reason with the monsters but to no avail. So he gives the cure actually just some cured blood in a vial to the survivors and stuffs them in a coal chute while he blow up with a grenade, taking the monsters with him. Yet heres the question why does he sacrifice himself? He could just as easily put himself in the chute as well and fling the grenade out after all, the girl actually shouts to him that theres room for him. Yet no, Will Smith wants to go out in a blaze of glory, so he flings himself headlong into the zombies, grenade in hand. Its just stupid on so many levels, because not only is his death pointless, is actively detrimental to the film. Remember, Neville was already a super-genius before the virus, so with most of the population decimated his value would only increase. After all, its not as if that cure could be figured out by your average person after all, its still something which needs further refinement by a pharmacologist. Neville doesnt even know if there are any survivor communities out there, but he still flings himself and thus the only intellect capable of manifesting a cure into certain death. Good going, idiot.