If you could change the ending of any film, which would you change and why?

Spoilers, obviously

I found out today that some people are really upset about the rat wandering across the balcony at the end of The Departed, and this in turn reminded me of a film I particularly enjoy; The Martian. If I could, I would simply erase the entire classroom scene from the end of that film. The movie should end with him bending down to acknowledge the plant growing under his bench, then Sol 1 flashes on the screen as he walks across the grass. Done. Roll credits.

I figure some people are probably still angry about the Ewok party at the end of episode 6. It's OK, you can let it out here. This is a safe place.

I enjoyed Christopher Robin for what it was (basically Hook only with characters I actually like), and they do some good work pulling the heartstrings, even if the territory covered is well-worn by now. But then there's a jarring tone switch at the end and suddenly all the main characters get the happiest, most unrealistic ending ever, and it really sours the tone of everything that came before it.

I don't really watch a lot of movies so yeah, Winnie the Pooh critique is the best I've got.

Get Out, The Descent (US ending), and Bird Box...

None of those endings made sense considering the films upto that point. In all three cases I immediately googled and found the original story endings, and they all made sense.

Especially Get Out...that movie loses so much of its impact by going with the ending they eventually went with.

The Ending of Enemy is to much of a mindfuck really spiders. I know it's a metaphor but it's a real WTF jaw drop moment, i might have picked grey goo aliens instead of spiders. Nevermind the spiders are there for the metaphor to work so leave it as it is the movie is perfect :D.

Well, I just watched Blackkklansman and the ending there is purely pushing political agenda and nothing else. Don't get me wrong, I'm no Trump guy, but putting in 3 minutes of real footage that isn't connected to the story of the movie is just stupid. Also, re-using the theme from The Insider is just strange. And it's not like the movie wasn't already making heavy anti-Trump nods.

The ending of The Departed is extremely fucking stupid. It tanked way before the cheesy-ass rat scene, though. Scorcese made 85% of a fantastic movie, but then clearly had no idea how to end it. I mean, seriously, "everyone gets shot in the head except Marky Mark" is an ending that feels like it came from a 12-year-old boy, and then the rat scene is some amateur-film-student-who-thinks-they're-deep bullshit. It's horrific, and I don't know how people give it a pass. The rest of the movie was mostly excellent, so I guess everyone just overlooks the ending, but I can't get there. The wasted potential there infuriates me. (And no, that isn't my kickstarter, but I fully appreciate its existence.)

Other than that, I guess my picks would be trimming about an hour out of the end of LotR: The Return of the King and cutting the Ewok dance number from Return of the Jedi.

@ares42: I definitely agree about the ending to Blackkklansman, I enjoyed the movie overall, but the ending was strange.

A.I., I would get rid of the alien ending.

Hannibal. They should have stayed with the books ending.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

In the end of the movie the young John Connor should join The Terminator in the hot bath, ending the John Connor story, before it even really started.
Why? I like when movie series end before they go totally rotten.

Can we just nominate any film with a "it was all just a dream - oh WAIT! Shock scare!" ending? No. Fine. Sopranos is a TV show, so... that's out. Hm.

Then I'll say 28 Days Later. The film takes a severe drop in quality when the soldiers are introduced, but I actually liked the hide-and-seek quality of the zombie chase during that sequence. The whole thing is a mess, though, as though they wanted to write two separate films.

Runner-up goes to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Monty Python's always been a bit hit and miss for me, with Holy Grail being mostly a hit (if a bit ruined by overquoting - see also Hitchhiker's Guide which everyone should only be able to quote once before their tongues stop working), but I don't like bizarre humor for the sake of being bizarre, and I can't think of a better example of that not working for me. I get it, it's a classic, but that ending's bad.

Jurassic Park. Yeah, it's a cool moment on its own. But the first T. Rex scene is excellent with the huge footsteps and the cup of water shaking. You know the thing is coming. But somehow, it develops the ability to go completely unseen and unheard in the climax for a deus ex machina. It's a huge inconsistency. Then they get on the helicopter and go "That was crazy!", and credits roll. They went for spectacle over logic for that ending.

A couple of Alex Garland's early screenplays have this issue. Both 28 Days Later and Sunshine have third act swerves that undermine the tone and premise of their otherwise extraordinary opening and middle sections. I still like both of those movies a whole lot, and in both cases understand the general ideas being explored, but it doesn't stop the fact that both films have jarring left turns at the worst possible time.

@doombot13: They're not aliens.

@inevpatoria: I never put it together that he wrote both of those, but it definitely makes sense.

Get Out ending is necessary, it’s a subversion of what happens too much in cinema where POCs (and that happens too much in queer movies too) can’t have a happy ending because all the movies about them feel the need to remind us that all is bad. In my opinion, Get Out knowingly subverts that, the same way a Gone Home does, and even hints that it’s going to do the exact same as Night of the Living Dead before changing course. I can understand people don’t like it, but I found it pretty smart. I’m also pretty pissed that every horror movies go for the bad, nihilistic ending cause it’s often easier that way (recently saw Sinister do that and bleh).

I’d say Source Code needs to cut everything after the kiss. The ending contradicts the rules the story establishes for no reason and the emotional peak would be stronger without all that trash. Not a great film anyway, but it’s still a fun thriller.

I really like the end of 28 Days Later and I think it totally suits what the film was going for, it's like a microcosm of what a post-apocalypse would look like. The start of the movie is the daze as it dawns on the main character exactly what's happening, the middle is the struggle for survival/hope of rescue and the end is the reality of what that rescue looks like (as bad as, if not worse, than the zombies). The last few scenes in the mansion when it's all going to shit are fantastic.

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)

The ending with the aliens if pointless. The Robot Boy did not need to be understood or not understood by aliens...he needed to be understood by HUMANS!!!

Return of the Jedi (1983)

Vader...does...not...need...to...be..redeemed. How simple can I make this? Just because bad man didn't want to be bad does not erase 20 years of him being a shit-bird douchebag. This is what should've happened. Luke is being attacked by the Emperor. Vader looks between the two and throws palpatine off the bridge. And, then Vader gives the "join me and we shall rule side by side" speech. Luke then says, "No, father, you just don't get it. No one person should rule, we need to restore the Republic." He walk away from Vader but as he walks off, the bridge falls with Vader on it.

No fireworks, no party after that, just ewoks and people burying teh dead and tending teh wounded. Luke finds Leia and says, "Our father is dead...but OUR legacy will be to restore the Republic" they both look in each other eyes and nod as if to say, 'That is what we are going to do...it as good as done.' As Luke walks away Han come out; he gives his speech that" If they are in love he will walk away.." and Leia tells him, "No, he's my brother you dope." They kiss and she says, "Come on flyboy, we have work to do... CREDITS.

War of the Worlds (2005)

Instead of breaking the family up with the son going off to war, Ray Ferrier (Cruise) grabs his son and say, "No! Being a man is not fighting your enemies...your demons. Being a man is protecting the ones you love, Robby! I'm coming to this far to late; but I need you, your sister needs you. If you want to BE A MAN then you will come back with me and get you sister out of here.", then the family confronts the aliens in the abandoned basement together. Maybe, father and son work out a way to distracted the aliens and get them out of the basement without fighting. Then the final scene is Ray bringing his kids to his wife and his in-laws. Ray is redeemed as a father, Robbie grows to see what truie manhood is, and Rachel (Dakota Fanning) feels safe for teh first time in years despite the destruction around her because he family FINALLY did something right.

Interstellar (2014)
The very second Matthew McConaughey is revealed to be an astronaut in teh story, the have Matthew McConaughey turn to teh camera breaking teh 4th wall to say, "Yeah, I don't buy me as this character either...let's just shut this down." Then the movies ends with the screen saying,, "Please redeem the cost of admissions at the counter when leaving, Thank You."

There were no aliens in A.I.

I'm with you to a degree. Like I said, I think the idea works, philosophically. Yet there's probably an argument to be made that it's either too on-the-nose, too genre-typical for a film hell-bent on defying genre conventions, or some sense of both. I also think the general quality of the writing and filmmaking don't hold up to the standard set by the movie's first 70 minutes. The really memorable beats of 28 Days Later are pretty frontloaded in the film.

It's less of a problem for me in 28 Days Later than in Sunshine, to be clear, where the execution borders on schlock. Mostly, it's interesting to see Garland's tendencies as a screenwriter laid out so bare, especially in terms of his stratospheric growth.

By the time he started work on Dredd he'd more or less solved the craft.

I’d change the entire third act of The Dark Knight Rises.

I mean, the movie was already going to be poor because I just don’t find Bane to be a very interesting adversary on a conceptual level (he’s strong and smart and spent a zillion years in a prison, HOW THRILLING). But that third act where they introduce Talia al Ghul out of absolutely nowhere just felt like it undermined Bane even more and didn’t really bring anything to the story. I remember they just unceremoniously off Bane and Talia and then the final challenge is “guess I have to use the Batplane to fly this bomb out into the ocean, never seen that in a piece of Batman media before.” I really can’t believe that third movie got made, and it really outdoes itself with its poor ending.

I'd change the end of Godzilla 2014 so that Godzilla wakes up and immediately starts chowing down on the Mutos. I get that they want Godzilla as a "Guardian of the Earth", but they also say that he woke up so he could eat them, and that makes him a little more animalistic and tonally appropriate if he's not literally just a good guy that shows up to save humans.

I wish the ending of Get Carter was exactly the same as the book, it's more appropriate, I think, but otherwise it's a fantastic adaptation.

Take the bad 3d in your face CGI steering wheel out of the ending of Fury Road. You know the one.

@soulcake: good movie!

hmmm, maybe I'd make the dreidel fall at the end of Inception or cut that shot all together. Idk. I tend to look at movies as a whole and if it dips at the end, it's easy for me to move passed it if it was overall a good experience.

A clockwork orange

Incredible film up until the last minute or so. Still an incredible film, don't get me wrong, but I wish it had the original book ending there instead of that clumsy downer ending

Flight is a good movie, but IIRC it ends with a long, boring, educational alcoholics-anonymous type speech that doesn't add much and made me roll my eyes.

Malcom X is a great movie, but it also gets overly "educational" with the classroom scene at the end.

Edge of Tomorrow is a really fantastic film, but the ending of it with Tom Cruise somehow going back in time to before any of it happened but the bad aliens are all still dead somehow just so he can reunite with Emily Blunt who doesn't know who he is kind of sucks. I know the internet has fan theoried it, but it really just feels like a 'we had to have a happy sort of ending, we couldn't possible end with Emily Blunt dead and Tom Cruise doing a noble sacrifice'. Still love that movie - and I'm not sure how the book and Manga "All You Need is Kill" (a WAY better title btw) end, but that ending sucked.

I'd shave off the last few seconds of "ReBoot: Daemon Rising" so the lacking "My Two Bobs" would have never happened.

Blade Runner's stupid unicorn.

I guess two movies come to mind, first:

Strange Days, which I think is a fantastic movie up until the last 5-10 minutes where it kinda just goes all deus ex machina and solves everything out of nowhere. I guess I'd probably prefer a downer ending - the movie is based on the LA Riots in 1992, and I think both today and at the movie's release in 1995 it must've been evident that police brutality wouldn't just go away if you managed to get a recording of it out there to the public. I wouldn't rule out that a happy ending could've worked with a bit more setup though ... and maybe without the party scene at the end.

And second: Babylon A.D., which I think would need more than its ending changed, but I think it has the most jarring quality drop I've ever seen in a movie. The first third or even half the movie may be among the best cyberpunk I've ever seen, and then suddenly, as the characters go from Serbia to the US, it just ... basically becomes unwatchable. It's fucking crazy how good a setup that movie has and just how miserably it fails in the second half. I don't really know how to salvage that movie, but I really wish someone would, because I think it could've been so good with a totally different second half.

Sunshine: I wouldn't randomly turn it into a slasher movie. It was great until that point.

I am Legend: Keep it closer to the book. With him realizing he was hunting/killing the new form of humans rather than monsters. Probably no woman and kid being added in either.

@deathstriker: Yeah, it feels like the film adaptations of I Am Legend always miss the point of the book, which is that the main character has essentially become a villainous predator of these humanoids that are different from him. I Am Legend and The Omega Man both completely ignore this and instead really just lean into this survivalist mentality of being the last human, and the remaining former humans are clearly monsters. fwiw, the alternate ending of I Am Legend implies the former humans have some humanity in them but of course that isn’t the one that made it to theatres. And it still feels really half-assed because they’re still mostly inhuman beasts.

There’s a much older adaptation called The Last Man on Earth that on the one hand is much closer to the book, but on the other hand is really low budget and kinda poorly produced, even for an early 1960s horror film. Has Vincent Price, though.

The Last Jedi - Rey and Kylo stop fighting after the throne room scene and take the series in a new direction instead of ending the movie leaving things exactly where it started with a few extra ancillary characters dead.

Maybe they just leave together for parts unknown and work on their trauma - the rebels await a first order attack that never comes, the first order is leaderless and reeling so they cut their loses and leave while splintering to a shattered command structure. Everyone is left with a dark, vague feeling of unsettling ambiguity on what will come next and what happened to their friends.

Movie three is actually just well produced episodic content exploring Rey and Kylo's awkward personal adventure on the Falcon through the outer reaches, their individual dogmas contrasted and tested through the trials and bizarre encounters they face. B and C plots can be left for books or resolved off screen in a time skip for when they return to known space.

Batman the Dark Knight Rises ending. Would of carried more weight if they left it ambiguous at the end.

Glass. But ide actually change at least the final hour

Ghostbusters (2016) I would edit out the endless talking and replace it with well written jokes and pauses.

Reference:

The Revenant...Glass should have just gotten his rifle back and left Fitzgerald alive...

@patchryan: Even if you rewrote it it'd still have a terrible villain, even worse theme, and look like some shitty live action Scooby Doo movie. Regardless of the main cast, it was a bad Ghostbusters flick from top to bottom.

The cinematic ending of 1408 is infinitely better than the one they put on the home release.

@shiftygism YOU WIN THE PRIZE OF MY UNDYING INTERNET RESPECT

@junkerman: OMFG thiiiiis. There's really no good reason for Kylo and Rey not to have joined forces in my opinion. They spend the whole film questioning themselves and everything they believe in and then, "naaaah, let's keep doing what we're doing. Cool? Cool." For all the chances some say that film takes, it chose the safest, most Star Wars ending it could have chosen.

Probably Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. if the ending wasn't so dumb it would be an alright movie on par with Temple of Doom.

I tend to only really watch films that are certain to make me happy or satisfied at the end so i can't think of many, i've also contributed to a thread like this before where i said Drunken Master 2, spoilers, Jackie Chan drinks some kind of industrial alcohol in the final fight, in most versions of the film it ends with Jackie just being unable to show up, as if they couldn't find him for the end of the movie, while in the original release the rest of the cast discover that Jackie has become, literally, a blind man with serious mental illness... Joy...

This time however i will say The Day of the Jackal (1973), it's not a terrible ending but it's a nearly 2 and a half hour film where you watch a hitman meticulously see through an excellent plan to assassinate the president of France, and then fail in the most boring way possible, history doesn't really allow him to succeed but at least his demise could have been more impressive... though i can appreciate in retrospect his relatively "simple" end, it also allows for the questions at the end which do extend the mystery past the films credits.