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A drunken dinner with an apologetic Darth Vader? Say no more.

Spoilers are throughout this video, timestamps of when they appear are below:

0:58 / 1:39 - Groundhog Day
1:39 / 2:26 - Good Will Hunting
2:26 / 3:13 - Interstellar
3:13 / 4:06 - In Bruges
4:06 / 4:51 - Birdman
4:51 / 5:34 - Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
5:34 / 6:26 - Alien
6:26 / 7:13 - Legend.

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Transcript
00:00I am the first to say that Shyamalan is the Shyamaman, but even he can over-egg the crazy
00:09plot twists at the best of times. Whether it's revealing a whole village of people to be living
00:14old-timey in the woods, or that water can be utilised as killer alien juice, taking a sharp
00:19left turn in a movie can be the undoing of it, as these films quickly learned. Thankfully,
00:24however, these writers and directors realised just in time that, like a particularly visceral
00:29bout of food poisoning, a plot twist that takes you by surprise doesn't make it a good thing.
00:34More often than not, it just means they're full of shit.
00:37With that in mind, I'm Ash from WhatCulture, and these are eight abandoned plot twists that
00:41almost ruined famous movies.
00:448. Groundhog Day
00:46Rita awakens to find she's trapped in her own Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day ends happily with
00:51a time loop-trapped Phil finally breaking free and waking up next to Rita, the pair both well
00:56and truly in love, and Phil having finally learned to appreciate his existence. At least
01:00someone can.
01:01But that wasn't how things were originally supposed to end. Nope, originally, the script
01:05called for a horrific plot twist which would have cemented Groundhog Day as the ultimate
01:09troll movie, in which Rita, the endlessly kind, gentle, and intelligent female lead who did
01:13nothing wrong, wakes up and realises that it's her turn to spend an eternity learning
01:18to play piano and make ice sculptures. Maybe getting with Phil is the mistake she's never
01:22supposed to make? Who knows what they were thinking.
01:247. Good Will Hunting
01:26Chucky is crushed to death in a horrible construction accident. Good Will Hunting is generally regarded
01:31to be a pretty awesome movie, if you ignore all the boring bits, and that's partly thanks
01:35to Gus Van Sant's amicable direction. And yet, Gus Van Sant also very nearly ruined the movie
01:40with his meddling. That's to say, during the writing and development stages, the director
01:44insisted that, for absolutely no reason, Ben Affleck's character Chucky should end up getting
01:49killed in a freak and very unexpected accident at the construction site where he works. It
01:53would have been terrible, of course, because there is literally no reason for Chucky to
01:57die. Not only would such a death have distracted from the most important part of the story,
02:01which is developing genius Will's character and finding his purpose in life, but it would
02:05have added an unnecessarily schmaltzy layer that might have rendered the film way too sentimental.
02:10Not to mention just a bit depressing.
02:126. Interstellar
02:13The Chinese got there first
02:15In Interstellar, you'll remember that Cooper investigates planets because Earth is mega-dusty
02:20and gross. In the first draft of the movie in 2008, however, Jonathan Nolan decided a
02:25mid-film plot twist would have seen Cooper and his companions landing on a planet, only
02:28to find out that Chinese astronauts had already arrived 50 years earlier. Though all the Chinese
02:33astronauts have since been killed by radiation poisoning, it's then that Cooper discovers
02:38a secret underworld complete with a secure base that...wait for it...the surviving robots
02:43have built for humans to inhabit. It then turns out that the robots have been programmed to
02:47defend the base at all costs, so a large portion of the script is dedicated to Cooper fighting
02:52off landscaping robots in an attempt to escape. Wait, why was this pied off for the sake of
02:57a haunted bookshelf?
02:595. In Bruges
03:00Rey survives, then commits suicide
03:03In Bruges follows hitmen Rey and Ken hiding out, you guessed it, in Bruges. The reason for this
03:09is that Rey's feeling immensely guilty, having accidentally killed a little boy during
03:13a botched job. Ken reveals that he was instructed by their boss to kill Rey for his incompetence,
03:18but refuses. As a result, Ken is actually the one to eat a lead sandwich for disobeying
03:22orders, and Rey gets a hot load of bullets too. In the original script, the director included
03:27a further twist that saw Rey back in London recovering from his injuries. Love interest Chloe
03:31calls him up, only for Rey to tell her to hang up the phone for her own good. She asked why,
03:36to which Rey replies, I don't want you to hear the gunshot. Rey hangs up himself at this
03:41point, puts a pistol to his head, and cuts to black. Thankfully, McDonagh reconsidered
03:45and decided to stick with the more vague scene in which Rey bleeds to death in the square
03:49and really, really hopes that he doesn't die.
03:524. Birdman
03:54Is that Johnny Depp?
03:55Birdman is a great, weird movie, following an actor trying to reinvigorate his career with
04:00a stage play. The original plan was to have its ending drift back to the theatre that sees
04:04most of the action, back into the dressing room only to reveal Johnny Depp putting on
04:09a wig similar to the one Riggan war whilst on stage, surrounded by a bunch of Pirates
04:13of the Caribbean posters, only for him to say, in Jack Sparrow's voice mind you, what
04:17the f*** are we doing here mate? The point? Well, they wanted to imply an endless loop.
04:21Another actor made famous through playing the same character over and over again, attempting
04:25to make amends and gain some credibility through the act of theatre. This would have been a funny
04:30twist of course, but it would have also cheapened the film somewhat. Also, Disney didn't allow
04:35it. Killjoys.
04:363. Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back
04:39Darth Vader apologises unexpectedly over an awkward, drunken dinner. In the first draft
04:44of The Empire Strikes Back, the script calls for the ultimate twist, one more expected
04:49than Vader turning out to be Luke's dad. Yes, Vader sits down to a meal with Han, Leia and
04:54Chewie, sort of apologises to Leia for being a dick on the Death Star, whilst Han watches
04:58on and glugs down glasses of wine. It's probably a good thing that the script was rewritten
05:02to feature an antagonist who was actually scary, and not one that, you know, preferred to host
05:07dinner parties and make amends. After witnessing Darth Vader's cruelty in the original movie,
05:12it would have been super out of place to witness the sudden plot twist that saw him acting
05:16so casual. Anything for a scone though. Pass the tea, Darth.
05:202. Alien The alien bites Ripley's head off and imitates her voice
05:25One of the inherently great things about Alien, which is the tale of a spacecraft invaded by,
05:29you know, an alien, happens to be that it features a female lead who faces a mighty challenge and
05:34overcomes the odds, as well as the cool xenomorph stuff and killer robots and a space cat. But it
05:38very nearly destroyed Ripley's badass heroism with one foul swoop, killing her off for literally no
05:44reason at all. And not just killed though. The plan was for the alien to bite her head off in the
05:49escape to the shuttle and then, in the weirdest plot twist ever known to man, sit down in a chair
05:53and record a message on the log whilst imitating her voice perfectly. Which is... unfortunate,
05:58I guess? This ability actually wouldn't have been mentioned beforehand also. Shock factor intended.
06:04It was supposed to be crazy and completely out of nowhere. A plot twist nobody could have ever seen
06:09coming. Well, that's one thing they got right.
06:121. Legend It was all a dream
06:15There is arguably no worse of a plot twist than it was all a dream. Not only does this type of ending
06:20cement a film as entirely pointless, it almost never ever enhances the story. The normal version of
06:26fantasy extravaganza legend culminates with Tom Cruise recovering a ring and using it to revive the
06:31princess after she's knocked out by darkness. And the two go off into the sunset and it's happily ever
06:36after. An unused ending however, one which was actually filmed, throws in the most arbitrary plot twist
06:41imaginable. It was all a dream. Scott shot this ending, which was the lovers going their separate
06:47ways, complete with implied wake up sequence for Jack. What really would have been the point in that?
06:52Now viewers, you can open your eyes as this video was actually all in your mind. It was a dream all along!
07:11you
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