Movies Ruined Because Of Test Audiences

Ever wish you could change how a movie ends? Well, if you are ever invited to a special screening of a movie that is still in-progress, you might get to do exactly that. Be careful what you wish for, however, because some movies have taken a turn for the worse after feedback from the audience.

Quite a few classic movies have been ruined because somebody at a test screening simply couldn't resist the urge to add their two bits. Whether folks call for a character transformation that comes totally out of left field or demand an alternate ending that misses the point of the movie, test screenings can have a pretty damaging impact on a movie. All it takes is for one member of the audience to make the wrong comment at the wrong time, and the filmmakers might take out a crucial scene. To be fair, it's usually the director or the executive producers who makes the final decision, but for each of these movies, it was test audiences who sowed the seeds for failure.

Some of the films below were simply not successful at the box office, despite the last-minute changes intended to appeal to the masses, which just goes to show that sometimes moviegoers don't even know what they want.

"Fatal Attraction" is a classic example of an alternate movie ending much better than the theatrical ending. In the film's climax, Alex (Glenn Close) was originally meant to kill herself and frame her lover Dan (Michael Douglas) for her murder. Instead, the theatrical version had Alex become totally unhinged and attack Dan with a knife. You have test audiences to thank for that. Michael Douglas told The New York Times, "The audience viscerally wanted to kill Alex, not allow her to kill herself."

Glenn Close shared that she was outraged when she learned the filmmakers wanted to change the ending. She told The New York Times, "It was going to make a character I loved into a murdering psychopath," adding, "I loved the original ending. I always felt Alex was more suicidal than psychotic." 

This is certainly more in line with how Alex acts in the rest of the movie. Although she does pour acid on Dan's car and boil a rabbit alive, all of these actions come from a desperate need to be loved, and this shows in Close's performance. Yet when Alex picks up the knife and starts slashing, she becomes a monster instead of a character. Many would argue that portraying Alex as a hysterical killer in this ending only reinforces stereotypes about women and mental illness. Plus, it conveniently sidesteps Dan's partial culpability in the affair. The original version would have ended the movie on a more bittersweet and realistic note.

You can tell right away that the theatrical ending of "Blade Runner" was slapped together at the last minute. Observant fans will notice it contains recycled footage from "The Shining." Disregarding the darkness of the rest of the movie, the ending shows Deckard (Harrison Ford) riding off into the sunset.

Director Ridley Scott wanted to end the movie on a more ambiguous note. Originally, Deckard would have found an origami unicorn left by his boss Gaff (Edward James Olmos). Since there was no way Gaff could have known about Deckard's recurring dream of a unicorn unless he had programmed the dream himself, this was meant to be a subtle confirmation that Deckard was an android. However, this ending left test audiences confused, so the studio persuaded Scott to replace it with a happy ending that implied Deckard was human. This, of course, undermined the whole point of the movie, which was to question what makes us human.

The studio also recorded a bunch of voice-over exposition from Deckard without the director's approval, but the voice-over was so clumsy that Ford himself hated it. Not only did these lines not add anything to the movie, but they also ruined some of the best moments. In this version, the dying words of Batty (Rutger Hauer) were followed by some musings from Deckard that spoiled all of the haunting ambiguity that came before it.

According to David Ayer, the director of 2016's "Suicide Squad," Warner Bros. was wary of doing a dark and edgy movie after "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" disappointed fans, especially since they saw the more lighthearted "Deadpool" performing extremely well. Ayer told the "Real Ones" podcast that the studio decided, "Okay, we're going to turn David Ayer's dark, soulful movie into a f***ing comedy now." So Warner Bros. held screenings for two versions: the Ayer cut and the studio's safer version. As producer Charles Roven explained to The Hollywood Reporter, "We tested both versions. They tested exactly the same ... [so] we all sat in a room and tried to come up with what would be the best of both versions." By trying to please everybody, however, the studio ended up pleasing no one.

It seems like the best parts of the movie got lost along the way. In Ayer's original plans, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) wouldn't have joined the Joker (Jared Leto) on his plane, still head-over-heels for him. Instead, "Harley stood up to him and refused to betray her new friends," Ayer wrote on X (formerly called Twitter). This would have been a welcome turn, giving the highly underutilized Harley much more agency. What's more, remarks from Ayer suggest she would have escaped her abusive relationship with the Joker by the end. This is a far cry from the final film, where Harley comes running back to him in the final scene.

Originally, the movie "I Am Legend" was meant to end the same way as the book: Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith) would realize that the zombies he spent the whole movie fighting were actually afraid of him.

Unfortunately, the movie was majorly changed after test screenings. As director Francis Lawrence explained to ScreenRant, "We tested [the original ending] twice and it got wildly rejected, wildly rejected, which is why we came out with the other one." Apparently audiences didn't want to see Neville confronting the moral ambiguity of his actions, instead demanding a traditional action movie climax where Will Smith sacrifices himself to blow up the bad guys.

Needless to say, the theatrical cut of "I Am Legend" changes the meaning of the entire movie. The whole point of the book is that, by treating these undead creatures as less than human, the hero becomes a monster himself. Yet the movie tosses out this nuance in favor of spectacle. In retrospect, Lawrence told the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast that he preferred the darker ending, and, despite the studio's reluctance to take a risk on that ending, he thinks audiences would have preferred it too. He argued that the major draw of "I Am Legend" was never the action, but instead its post-apocalyptic elements. "[Fans] would have accepted the nihilistic ending," he told ScreenRant.

Focus groups weren't happy with the original climax of "A Perfect Murder," resulting in a new ending for the final film. In both versions, Emily (Gwyneth Paltrow) reveals to her husband Steven (Michael Douglas) that she has evidence proving that he hired a man to kill her. In the theatrical version, Steven physically attacks Emily to make sure his secret doesn't get out, and she shoots him in self-defense. In the alternate ending, Steven only verbally threatens Emily before she shoots him, yet afterward she tells the police she shot him because he was attacking her. Detective Karaman (David Suchet) seems to suspect that Emily isn't telling the whole story, but he simply assures her, "What else could you do?"

In other words, Emily killing Steven is a bit more premeditated, so there is some moral ambiguity surrounding her character. "I liked that ending," director Andrew Davis told Yahoo! "But test audiences felt she was more empathetic if she killed her husband [in self-defense]."

It's only a slight change, but it makes a world of difference. The theatrical ending, with its shouting match between Steven and Emily and cliché ankle-drag shot, is anything but subtle. In contrast, the director's preferred ending would have given the heroine more shades of complexity. In the safer ending, Emily is just a victim. In the alternate ending, she's a victim who is willing to do anything to escape her abusive husband.

"Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" would have originally had a different ending. After Scott (Michael Cera) spends the entire film courting Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) — even though he's still in a relationship with Knives (Ellen Wong) — Scott would realize he needs to let go of Ramona and get back together with Knives.

However, this was not popular at test screenings. As director Edgar Wright recalled in an interview with Collider, one audience member said, "I love this film ... I love every scene, and I love every character. I really, really do not like that ending." So Wright shot a new ending that showed Knives giving Scott her blessing to be with Ramona. "As soon as we test screened the new ending," said Wright, "the scores went up again."

This feel-good ending may have satisfied the test audience, but it showed little growth on Scott's part. Arguably, the film would have been stronger if Scott had realized Knives was better for him after all. Or it could have taken a direction similar to the "Scott Pilgrim" comics, where Scott ends up with Ramona but not before he does some much-needed self-reflection. In the comics, Scott's face-off against his evil doppelganger Nega Scott was more than just a joke; it symbolized Scott confronting his own flaws. A movie this smart and subversive deserved an equally subversive ending, but test audiences wanted to see the boy get the girl, so that's exactly what we got.

Brian de Palma's thriller "Snake Eyes" originally ended with a giant tidal wave wiping out the bad guy (Gary Sinise). However, thanks to a test screening, de Palma had to come up with a rather underwhelming alternate ending. Instead of narrowly escaping a wave of Biblical proportions, protagonist Rick (Nicolas Cage) ducks almost comically to the ground to pass underneath a speeding vehicle, after which Sinise's character shoots himself.

Describing his original vision for the ending to Indiewire, Brian de Palma explained, "We were dealing with such a corrupt world that the only way to solve the problem is to have a hurricane come through and wipe it all away ... But it didn't work in the previews so we did this other ending which I don't think is as effective."

The theatrical cut is still fun, but not nearly as subversive. The religious imagery of Hurricane Jezebel would have added a whole new layer of meaning. The ending is anticlimactic, not least because there's plenty of foreshadowing for the hurricane in the film that never amounts to anything. In fact, the filmmakers didn't quite remove all references to the old version before releasing it in theaters. In the final scene, Rick says, "I keep dreaming I'm back in that tunnel, underwater. Only in my dream, I drowned" — no matter that he was never underwater. De Palma told Indiewire that if he was ever invited to do a director's cut of "Snake Eyes," he'd want to put that scene back in.

Some of the changes test audiences requested in "A Fish Called Wanda" arguably improved the movie. (We don't think anybody needed to see the guts of a dog splattered on the road after one character runs it over.) However, there is one change the audience demanded that even one of the actors admits was uncalled for.

The film's original ending would have shown con artist Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis) kissing Archie (John Cleese), her would-be victim whom she falls in love with instead. Except that the camera would have panned down to show Wanda's shoes (designed to look like sharks), a symbolic reminder to viewers that even now, Wanda was playing Archie. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Jamie Lee Curtis explained, "What happened is we showed the movie to audiences, and they loved the movie, hated the ending," said Curtis. "The relationship between Archie and Wanda was so real, and people were rooting for them." So the filmmakers added a few scenes to leave no ambiguity that Wanda truly did love Archie.

However, Curtis much prefers the original ending. When she heard the filmmakers were calling her back in to reshoot the ending, Curtis recalled thinking, "Oh please, are we wimping out here?" She added, "I loved the sort of truth bite that John [Cleese] had written — a darker, much darker, more sinister ending." It would have fit right in with the rest of this darkly comic movie.

Focus groups aren't solely to blame for the mess that is "Last Action Hero." The problems with this movie began as early as pre-production, but test audiences were the final nails in the coffin, since their feedback (and the subsequent changes to the movie) exemplifies everything that went wrong with this film. Producer and star Arnold Schwarzenegger explained to Roger Ebert, "Our movie was a big hit with the test screenings, but there was one thing that was very clear: The audience did not like to see my vulnerability ... They wanted me to kick in gear and get the action going."

Yet by giving audiences what they wanted (more action), the filmmakers may have undermined the whole point of the movie. "Last Action Hero" was originally meant to be a satire of action movies. The original version would have put more emphasis on how young Danny Madigan (Austin O'Brien) loses himself in action movies with lots of gratuitous violence to avoid dealing with the grief of losing his father. However, between the page and the screen, that concept played an increasingly smaller role in the movie.

In fact, test audiences may have impacted the poor box office of "Last Action Hero." The movie's reputation preceded it, sinking it before it could even launch. "You can't have people just like your movie, you need them to be passionate," Schwarzenegger told We Minored in Film. "Word of mouth is what makes movies big."

Poor Ridley Scott can't seem to catch a break: test audiences ruined not just "Blade Runner" but also his 1985 fantasy film "Legend." Scott recalled in the DVD commentary for the "Legend" Ultimate Edition that at one screening, there were two audience members smoking and jeering at the screen. Afraid that nobody would go to see his film unless he appealed to a wider audience, he cut down the runtime from over two hours to only 90 minutes. Along the way, he replaced the entire score of the movie, switching out Jerry Goldsmith's haunting orchestral music for an instrumental score from the electronic band Tangerine Dream in hopes of giving the film a more modern feel.

You may think that changing the background music of a film may not make much of a difference, but it has a huge impact. For example, after the male unicorn is killed, Goldsmith's score conveys the wordless rage of the female unicorn mourning her mate, while Tangerine Dream's score contains a vaguely sad and ethereal clip of music that doesn't quite match the mood, according to Collider. Also, the theatrical cut shows the villain's face in the opening scene, instead of waiting until much later to reveal it, thus stripping him of much of his menace.

Looking back, Scott regrets compromising his vision. "People said 'Legend' didn't work," Scott told The Guardian, "but I think it does work ... I just made it 25 years too soon."

The original ending of "Little Shop of Horrors' is tragic and absolutely bonkers. The hero Seymour (Rick Moranis) gets swallowed by a man-eating plant, which then proceeds to germinate until the entire world is consumed by carnivorous plants. But focus groups didn't take kindly to that ending. Director Frank Oz told Entertainment Weekly, "For every musical number there was applause, they loved it, it was just fantastic ... until we killed our two leads. And then the theater became a refrigerator, an ice box." Reluctantly, Oz agreed to shoot a happy ending, even though it meant discarding a sequence that had cost nearly 20 percent of the movie's budget.

This last-minute change arguably ruined the movie. After all, the original stage musical killed off the hero, and really it's hard to imagine the story ending any other way. "Little Shop of Horrors" is meant to be a cautionary tale, complete with an ending song that warns audiences, "Don't feed the plants!" Seymour keeps feeding the plant human flesh, and along the way Seymour feeds his own ego, so it's a fitting end for Seymour to be eaten himself. What else would you expect from a movie where one character is trapped in a toxic relationship and another feeds his boss to a man-eating plant?

Thankfully for fans, test audiences didn't completely ruin "Little Shop of Horrors." The long-lost original ending was later restored and shown in theaters.

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