Shredded story arcs, tacked-on happy endings, and the most notorious voice-over narration in film history: They say the customer is always right — but what about test audiences?
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00:00Shredded story arcs, tacked-on happy endings, and the most notorious voiceover narration
00:05in film history.
00:06They say the customer is always right, but what about test audiences?
00:10You can tell right away that the theatrical ending of Blade Runner was slapped together
00:14at the last minute.
00:15Observant fans will notice it contains recycled footage from The Shining.
00:19It's also worth noting that this ending gives Deckard a much happier ending than the otherwise
00:23dark film might have promised.
00:24Ridley Scott wanted to end the movie on a more ambiguous note.
00:27Originally, Deckard would have found an origami unicorn left by his boss, Gaff.
00:31Since there was no way Gaff could have known about Deckard's recurring dream of a unicorn
00:35unless he had programmed the dream himself, this was meant to be a subtle hint that Deckard
00:38might be a replicant.
00:40However, this ending left test audiences confused, so the studio persuaded Scott to replace it
00:45with a much happier ending, one that heavily implied Deckard was human.
00:48This of course undermines the whole point of the movie, which was to question what makes
00:52us human.
00:53The studio also recorded a bunch of voiceover exposition from Deckard without Scott's approval,
00:57but the voiceover was so clumsy that even Ford himself hated it.
01:01One particularly atrocious moment saw Batty's death followed by some musings from Deckard,
01:05essentially killing the mood in the film's most famous scene.
01:08I don't know why he saved my life.
01:12Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before."
01:16Originally, I Am Legend was meant to end the same way as the book on which it was based.
01:20Dr. Robert Neville would realize that the monsters he spent the whole movie fighting
01:23were actually afraid of him.
01:25I'm sorry.
01:31Unfortunately, that original ending was changed in a big way after a few rounds of test screenings.
01:36As director Francis Lawrence explained to Screen Rant, we tested it twice and it got
01:40wildly rejected.
01:41Wildly rejected.
01:42Which is why we came out with the other one.
01:44Apparently, audiences didn't want to see Neville confronting the moral ambiguity of his actions,
01:48instead demanding a traditional action movie climax in which Will Smith sacrifices himself
01:53to blow up the bad guys.
01:56I am Legend!
02:00Needless to say, the theatrical cut of I Am Legend changes the meaning of the entire movie.
02:04The whole point of the book is to say that, by treating these undead creatures as less
02:07than human, the hero becomes a monster himself.
02:10Yet, the movie tosses out this nuance in favor of spectacle.
02:13In retrospect, Lawrence told the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he preferred the darker
02:17ending, and he thinks audiences would have preferred it, too.
02:20I feel like everybody went to see The Last Man on Earth and enjoyed it for that reason
02:23and would have still enjoyed it with the nihilistic ending.
02:28Scott Pilgrim vs. the World was originally supposed to have a very different ending.
02:31After spending the entire film courting Ramona Flowers, Scott was to realize that he needs
02:35to let go of her and stay with Knives.
02:37Well, bye and stuff.
02:39Yeah, and stuff.
02:42But this wasn't popular at test screenings.
02:44As director Edgar Wright recalled in an interview with Collider, one audience member said,
02:48I love this film.
02:49I love every scene, and I love every character.
02:52I really, really do not like that ending."
02:54So Wright shot a new ending, in which Knives gives Scott her blessing to be with Ramona.
02:58Go get her.
03:01What?
03:02You've been fighting for her all along.
03:05Wright later pointed out,
03:06As soon as we test-screened the new ending, the scores went up again.
03:09This feel-good ending may have satisfied the test audience, but it removed a great deal
03:13of growth from Scott's character.
03:14Arguably, the film would have been stronger if Scott had realized Knives was better for
03:18him after all.
03:19Or it could have taken a direction similar to the Scott Pilgrim comics, in which Scott
03:22ends up with Ramona after all, but not before going through some much-needed self-reflection.
03:27In the comics, Scott's face-off against his evil doppelganger Nega-Scott was more than
03:31just a joke.
03:32It symbolized Scott confronting his own flaws.
03:34A movie this smart and subversive deserved an equally subversive ending, but test audiences
03:39wanted to see the boy get the girl, so that's exactly what we got.
03:42Fatal Attraction is a classic example of a movie with an alternate ending that's much
03:46better than the theatrical version.
03:48In the film's original climax, Alex was originally meant to kill herself and frame her lover,
03:52Dan, for her murder.
03:53I don't know what I'll do, but it's gonna be something terrible.
03:57Instead, the theatrical version has Alex become totally unhinged and attack Dan with a knife.
04:02And, well, you have test audiences to thank for that.
04:05As Michael Douglas told The New York Times, the audience viscerally wanted to kill Alex,
04:09not allow her to kill herself.
04:10Glenn Close later revealed that she was outraged when she learned the filmmakers wanted to
04:14change the ending.
04:15She told The New York Times,
04:16"...it was going to make a character I loved into a murdering psychopath.
04:19I loved the original ending.
04:21I always felt Alex was more suicidal than psychotic."
04:24This is certainly more in line with how Alex acts in the rest of the movie.
04:27All of her choices come from a desperate need to be loved, and this shows in Close's performance.
04:31Yet, when Alex picks up the knife and starts slashing, she becomes a monster instead of
04:35a character.
04:36Many would argue that portraying Alex as a hysterical killer only reinforces unfortunate
04:40stereotypes about women and mental illness.
04:42On top of that, it conveniently sidesteps Dan's partial culpability in the affair.
04:46The original version would have ended the movie on a more bittersweet and realistic
04:50note.
04:51Focus groups weren't happy with the original climax of A Perfect Murder, resulting in a
04:55new ending for the final film.
04:56In both versions, Emily reveals to her husband, Stephen, that she has evidence proving that
05:00he hired a man to kill her.
05:02In the theatrical version, Stephen physically attacks Emily to make sure his secret doesn't
05:06get out, and she shoots him in self-defense.
05:08In the alternate ending, however, Stephen only verbally threatens Emily before she shoots
05:12him, after she tells the police she shot him because he was attacking her.
05:15What else could you do?"
05:16In other words, Emily's killing of Stephen seems to be premeditated, adding some moral
05:20ambiguity to her character.
05:22Director Andrew Davis later told Yahoo!,
05:24"...I liked that ending, but test audiences felt she was more empathetic if she killed
05:28her husband in self-defense.
05:29It's only a slight change, but it makes a world of difference.
05:32In the safer ending, Emily is little more than a victim.
05:35In the alternate ending, she's also a victim, but one who is willing to do anything to escape
05:39her abusive husband."
05:41Brian De Palma's thriller Snake Eyes originally ended with a giant tidal wave taking out the
05:45bad guy.
05:46Thanks to a test screening, however, De Palma had to come up with a rather underwhelming
05:49alternate ending.
05:50Instead of narrowly escaping a wave of biblical proportions, protagonist Rick ducks almost
05:55comically to the ground to pass underneath a speeding vehicle, after which the villain
05:59simply shoots himself.
06:00Describing his original vision for the ending to IndieWire, De Palma said,
06:03"...we were dealing with such a corrupt world that the only way to solve the problem is
06:07to have a hurricane come through and wipe it all away."
06:09But it didn't work in the preview, so we did this other ending, which I don't think is
06:13as effective.
06:14The theatrical cut is still fun, but not nearly as subversive as the alternate version.
06:18The finalized ending is also a little anticlimactic, not least because there's plenty of foreshadowing
06:23for the great hurricane in the film, but never really amounts to anything.
06:26In the final scene, for example, Rick says,
06:28"...I keep dreaming I'm back in that tunnel, underwater.
06:34Only in my dream, I drowned."
06:36But in the theatrical cut, he never was underwater.
06:39De Palma told IndieWire that if he was ever invited to release a director's cut of Snake
06:42Eyes, he'd want to put that scene back in.
06:45The original ending of A Fish Called Wanda would've had con artist Wanda kiss Archie,
06:49the would-be victim with whom she fell in love, but the camera would then have panned
06:52down to show Wanda's shoes, designed to look like sharks, a symbolic reminder to viewers
06:56that even now, Wanda was playing Archie.
06:58Sadly, it wasn't to be.
07:00In an interview with Vanity Fair, Jamie Lee Curtis explained,
07:02"...what happened is we showed the movie to audiences and they loved the movie, hated
07:06the ending.
07:07The relationship between Archie and Wanda was so real and people were rooting for them."
07:11So the filmmakers added a few scenes to leave no ambiguity that Wanda truly did love Archie.
07:15Curtis, however, much prefers the original ending.
07:18She told Vanity Fair,
07:19"...I loved the sort of truth bite that John had written.
07:21A darker, much darker, more sinister ending."
07:24Focus groups aren't solely to blame for the mess that is Last Action Hero, as the problems
07:28with this movie began as early as pre-production.
07:31But they certainly didn't help.
07:32The feedback from test audiences and the changes enacted afterwards exemplify everything that
07:36went wrong with this film.
07:38As producer and star Arnold Schwarzenegger explained to Roger Ebert,
07:41"...our movie was a big hit with the test screenings, but there was one thing that was
07:44very clear.
07:45The audience did not like to see my vulnerability.
07:48They wanted me to kick in gear and get the action going."
07:50Yet by giving audiences what they wanted, the filmmakers may have undermined the whole
07:54point of the movie.
07:55Last Action Hero was originally meant to be a satire of action movies.
07:58"...I'll be back.
07:59Ha!
08:00You did not get to say that, did you?"
08:03"...That's what you always say."
08:05The original version would have put more emphasis on how young Danny loses himself
08:08in violent action movies to avoid dealing with the grief of losing his father.
08:12Between the page and the screen, however, that concept played an increasingly smaller
08:15role in the movie.
08:16These test audiences may have even impacted the poor box office of Last Action Hero.
08:20The movie's reputation preceded it, sinking it before it could even launch.
08:24Schwarzenegger later told We Minored in Film,
08:26"...You can't have people just like your movie.
08:28We need them to be passionate.
08:29Word of mouth is what makes movies big."
08:32Poor Ridley Scott can't seem to catch a break.
08:34These audiences ruined not just Blade Runner, but also his 1985 fantasy film Legend.
08:39Scott recalled in a DVD commentary for The Legend Ultimate Edition that, at one screening,
08:43there were two audience members smoking and jeering at the screen.
08:46Determined to reach a wider audience, he cut down the runtime from over two hours to 90
08:50minutes.
08:51Along the way, he replaced the entire score of the movie, switching out Jerry Goldsmith's
08:54haunting orchestral music for an instrumental score from the electronic band Tangerine Dream.
08:59You may think that changing the background music of a film may not make much of a difference,
09:03but it has a huge impact on the finished product.
09:05For example, after the male unicorn is killed, Goldsmith's score conveys the wordless rage
09:09of the female unicorn mourning her mate, while Tangerine Dream's score contains a vaguely
09:14sad and ethereal clip of music that doesn't quite match the mood.
09:17Looking back, Scott regrets compromising his vision.
09:19He told The Guardian,
09:20"...People said Legend didn't work, but I think it does work.
09:23I just made it 25 years too soon."
09:26The original ending of Little Shop of Horrors is tragic, and absolutely bonkers.
09:30The hero Seymour gets swallowed by a man-eating plant, which then proceeds to germinate until
09:34the entire world is consumed by carnivorous plants.
09:37But focus groups didn't take kindly to that ending.
09:40Director Frank Oz told Entertainment Weekly,
09:41"...For every musical number, there was applause.
09:44They loved it.
09:45It was just fantastic.
09:46Until we killed our two leads, and then the theater became a refrigerator, an icebox."
09:50Reluctantly, Oz agreed to shoot a happy ending, even though it meant discarding a sequence
09:54that had cost nearly 20 percent of the movie's budget.
09:57Sadly, this last-minute change had a huge impact on the movie.
10:00After all, the original stage musical kills off the hero, and really, it's hard to imagine
10:04the story ending any other way.
10:06Little Shop of Horrors is meant to be a cautionary tale.
10:08Seymour keeps feeding the plant human flesh, and along the way, Seymour feeds his own ego,
10:12so it's a fitting end for Seymour to be eaten himself.
10:15Thankfully for fans, the long-lost original ending was later restored and shown in theaters.