Five Movies That Originally Had Much Darker Endings

We all like to wonder what might have happened if things had gone differently in our favorite movies. What if the killer had been stopped earlier? What if the main character had taken a step to the right instead of the left? What if the bad guy just got away? A lot of times these endings don’t make it into the movie simply because they don’t fit well with the story or because they represent the dark endings that people don’t want to see or even contemplate.

Here are five movies that originally had much darker endings

Rocky V – Rocky dies at the end

We’ve seen Rocky take on some of the toughest movie boxers that ever were, and he’s beaten them all at great expense. In Rocky V though he was originally supposed to take on his student, Tommy Gunn, and eventually get beaten so badly that he had to be rushed to the ER. It was written that he would die of his injuries and that Adrian would later on make a speech saying that he would always be remembered. But then the writers remembered that much like Superman and James Bond and several others, Rocky is far tougher to keep down than the average person, and simply can’t die until the time is right.

American Sniper – Chris Kyle’s death is shown

There’s been a lot of controversy over this film for many reasons, but one reason why this scene was never showed was that Chris’ widow wanted her children to remember their father in a positive light. She didn’t want them to see him being gunned down by a person he was trying to help, even if it is just a representation of the act. No one can really fault her for this, since most people want to remember how Chris Kyle lived, not necessarily how he died.

Training Day – Alonzo gets away

Imagine a man that keeps a neighborhood under his thumb, terrorizes criminals and his partner in the same manner, and is an all around sleaze that no one can stand just getting way. Actor Denzel Washington, the talent behind Alonzo, didn’t care for the part of the script where the bad guy stayed a step ahead of the mob. This is one of the main reasons why Alonzo didn’t get to last until the credits started rolling.

The Silence of The Lambs – Dr. Lecter’s dinner date with Chilton

It’s easy to agree on the fact that Chilton kind of had this coming. He’s a nasty person, smug, arrogant, and unfortunately for him, quite rude. Now if you’ve been keeping up with the films, Dr. Lecter despises rude people and in fact makes it a point to dine upon them exclusively when he can. Grisly as this scene might have been, some fans might have, for lack of a better phrase, eaten it up.

Groundhog Day – Rita is stuck in her own time loop

All that work to be done just to get to the next day, and then just to find out that Rita now has her own time loop to deal with. Worse than that is the fact that Phil wouldn’t even realize it unless she told him. At this point you would have to wonder if he’s going to keep his new attitude and do everything to help her, or if he’s going to throw up his hands in defeat and go back to his old ways. This is a “what if” that just keeps on coming, literally.

Conclusion

The darker endings of films are sometimes considered to be the better endings that never were. Imagine if your favorite character died, or if the moment you thought was the definition of the whole film was flipped on its ear? The ending to a movie is always subject to what the director and writers want, but the probability that it will end the way the audience wants is typically very low.