In the discourse that “the book is always better than the movie,” we find that endings can often be the breaking point. Films tend to be more dramatic than books. It’s why people often remember those more than how the books end.
Sometimes when we read books, it’s hard to imagine something different during the endings. We’ve become engaged with those characters for days, and often times we even dream about those worlds that can be interpreted from an author’s mastermind. The conclusion to the stories appears to be immaculate and anyone tampering with that is playing with “auteurship,” right? Well, Hollywood doesn’t seem to care.
Film adaptations have the power to twist a story’s conclusion.Movies adapted from booksshould be seen as something else altogether, and sometimes an ending has the capacity to make us forget where it all came from. They are the drawing line in a conversation that will never stop. People will fight to the death about what was better for the story: the original ending or something “better” from a cinematic perspective.
We gathered some and came up with a list of films that dared to touch the untouchable and changed the book’s ending for the sake of cinema, even if we don’t always agree with those changes.
This article contains spoilers for each film and book.
20Knock at the Cabin
We’ll start things off with a recent pick. M. Night Shyamalan’sKnock at the Cabinis a pretty good adaptation of Paul Tremblay’s modern horror gem,The Cabin at the End of the World. Even though we knew Shyamalan would take some liberties when bringing the story to the big screen, what he did with the ending was pretty risky.
In the book, Tremblay goes for ambiguity, and in a very dark way. The two leads ride off without knowing if an accident involving the death of their young daughter will actually save the world. But in the film, an act of sacrifice by a father saves the day, a little girl isn’t killed, and the apocalypse is stopped.
19The Mist
Stephen King actually likes what Frank Darabont did when adaptingThe Mist, and how could he not? The darkest version of whatever someone could have thought of is what you actually see on the screen. The movie is nihilism at its best and has a conclusion that will break your heart.
Related:Is The Mist the Darkest Stephen King Movie Adaptation?
In the book, the survivors escape and go on a long drive. King decides the reader should bear hope considering they will run out of gas sometime. But that’s it. No climax. In Darabont’s film, a father commits a horrific act as he shoots survivors and his own son to stop them from suffering. Seconds after, the good guys arrive and the mist fades away. We, in the audience, remain breathless.
18The Shining
We bring you another King project, only this time he’s not keen on the film adaptation. InThe Shining, a maze of ice is responsible for trapping the characters in the very stylishly gloomy conclusion. Jack Torrance dies when he freezes to death and his face shows an expression that’s not quite serious today. Wendy and Danny leave the Overlook Hotel in peace.
The book’s ending is more … hopeful. Jack actually has a moment of clarity and compassion, and somehow instigates his son to run away. The possessed Jack goes to the boiler room and starts a fire that burnsthe Overlook Hotelwith him inside. Also, Hallorann survives and becomes a key piece in Danny’s recovery.
17The Little Mermaid
In Disney’s version ofThe Little Mermaidwe know the good guys will win, and the prince will get the princess. There’s no surprise there. But what many people don’t know (and those who found out were seriously freaked out by the real version of the story), is that in the book, the prince doesn’t kill Ursula and marries Ariel after bringing Triton back to life.
No, no.Hans Christian Anderson’s version of the factsis much darker: Ariel basically commits suicide after failing to complete a task to make the prince fall in love with her. Can you imagine this in a Disney film? Yeah, we can’t either.
16First Blood
If the ending forFirst Blood, also known asRambo: First Blood, had been the original from the book by David Morrell, then there would never have been a franchise. It’s simple as that. Perhaps producers saw the potential and risked forcing changes to the novel where John Rambo tragically dies after failing to surrender. In the film, he actually did turn himself into the authorities. The Colonel still won, but we were able to get Stallone in countless versions of John Rambo kicking ass and also curing himself of a wound using powder and fire.
15Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Based on the book Red Alert by Peter George,Stanley Kubrick’sDr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bombis a terrific and hilarious dark comedy about the dangers of humankind being able to create weapons of mass destruction.
In the book, we’re about to exterminate the planet but someone manages to stop it. We live happily ever after. But Kubrick decided otherwise as he went all the way causing a nuclear catastrophe. Several things happen to cause our annihilation, from rogue bombers to the destruction of a missile site.
14The Thing
Sometimes more suspense is better. This is exactly what happens with the second film adaptation of the book Who Goes There by John W. Campbell Jr. The film is the terrific horror sci-fi adventureThe ThingbyJohn Carpenter.
In the book, we win. Aliens are defeated minutes before they can achieve victory. But in Carpenter’s film, two survivors sit hopeless in the snowy night. But are they human? They can’t trust each other and they will be suspicious until they freeze to death.
13I Am Legend
Richard Matheson’s novelwas adapted in 2007. The hugely successfulI Am Legendhad two alternate endings, and in both Robert Neville faced vampiric monsters. In one of those endings, Robert sacrificed himself for humanity and blew up the laboratory with him inside. In the other, he recognized the humanity in the monsters as he evidenced a trait of intelligence in the last moment. Hollywood kept the first.
Related:10 TV Shows That Ruined Their Endings
Butin the novel, things aren’t exactly like this. In Matheson’s version, the vampires aren’t exactly monsters, and they have the ability to engage Robert Neville. The vampires are also pretty smart, and they have come up with a cure for the disease, only Neville isn’t in the “to be saved” plan.
12Jurassic Park
We all remember being relieved after a helicopter takes the survivors away from the island inJurassic Park. Spielberg had subjected everyone to his version of a PG-13killer dinosaurs movie, and now it was time to rest. However, if screenwritersDavid Koepp and Michael Crichton had kept the original ending from the novel in the script, things would have been much darker.
To begin with, a lot more characters die in the novel, so there would be fewer survivors in the end. And the dinosaurs? They’ve gone extinct again as government agencies blow up the island with napalm.
The ending of Robert Zemeckis’Contactis terrific and sadly, very short. Ellie’s visit to what lies beyond the stars is a great conversation with a representation of the man who always believed in her, her father. Yeah, it’s an alien posing as a loved one for making the message clearer. She comes back and boom! Nobody seems to believe she made her journey. But a few calculations later, the empirical evidence shows she actually went somewhere.
In Carl Sagan’s magnificent book of the same name, themes of faith and religion are essential up until the end when not only Ellie but four more people are allowed on the spaceship. Their encounters with “loved ones” are similar and again people on Earth are stuck in disbelief. But it doesn’t stop there. Government officials actually accuse the travelers of a conspiracy and force silence on them. Of course, Ellie finds a way to prove them wrong, but at what cost?
