The 1990 film of Roald Dahl's The Witches infamously changes the ending from the original book so at the end the protagonist is returned to human form, rather than the book's bittersweet ending of him being permanently stuck as a mouse with a much-reduced lifespan. Roald Dahl purportedly objected to this change so much that he stood outside cinemas with a loudspeaker urging people not to see the film, although this particular story has always seemed likely to be an urban legend to me given that Dahl died of cancer six months after the film's release. (This article says that he threatened to start a publicity campaign against the film, but was persuaded not to by Jim Henson, which seems more likely to me.)
Most sources, including that article, agree that an alternate ending true to Dahl's original text was filmed. The article says that Henson agreed to shoot both endings and then choose which one to go for as a compromise; I can see other sources of questionable veracity (such as the film's page on TV Tropes) which suggest that the true-to-the-book ending was filmed but performed poorly with test audiences, leading to the new ending being shot. (Note that even in the 'happy' ending, things like the protagonist's toy train system from the book are still present.)
Would the character of Miss Irvine - the witch played by Jane Horrocks who decides to quit due to her mistreatment by the Grand High Witch, and subsequently turns Luke, as he is named in the film, back into a human - not effectively be redundant in the version of the film with Dahl's original ending? Or would she still be there, just as an amusing aside rather than vital to the film's conclusion? Surely this indicates that the story about the true-to-the-book ending being filmed first is unlikely to be true - given the film has a witch who ends up being spared from the mass metamorphosis solely for the purpose of turning Luke back, that must mean that was always the original intention, rather than being thought up after the true-to-the-book ending performed poorly with test audiences?
And yet... I can sort of see some merit in that story. The film is pretty scary, and Nicolas Roeg did cut out several scenes after watching his young son's reaction to the first cut, so I can imagine him feeling he had to change the ending based on that rather than it always being his intention to do so. (The film does seem to end a little abruptly, too, although that could just be me.) It still seems more likely to me that the revised ending only being filmed after audiences disliked the true-to-the-book one resulted from a game of Chinese whispers, though.
For years, there was that urban legend about the alternate ending to "Big" (alleged to have aired in some New Zealand television outings) in which Susan accepts Josh's offer to follow him back into childhood, but I think we're agreed now that was just someone's wishful thinking getting out of hand.
ReplyDeleteI did once come across someone claiming to have seen an alternate ending to "The Thing" in which Kurt Russell plays chess with himself (as in, the Thing in Kurt Russell's form). I suspect that was completely fabricated, although a part of me still holds out hope on the basis of how weird that would be.
Personally, I have a hard time believing that Hollywood would ever think about using Dahl's original ending - at the very least, that particular detail about Luke being happy about his shortened lifespan because he won't have to witness his grandmother dying before him would be a massive sticking point. I am not one to defend Hollywood's insistence on pat, unchallenging endings, but given that "The Witches" was a film for children I do think that could have sent out a potentially dangerous message in the wrong hands (many consider Dahl's ending brave for the fact that the protagonist openly confronts his own mortality, but I do see an unfortunate side to his conclusion, in that it implies that should you lose the person closest to you, you yourself have nothing to live for). Maybe Dahl himself could pull it off, but his gruesome wit inevitably loses something when represented by actual flesh-and-blood humans (as opposed to the mildly grotesque gangliness of Quentin Blake's illustrations), and I suspect most directors would really struggle to make that ending fly.
At the very least, the revised ending is fairer to William and Mary, who in Dahl's book I seem to recall are last seen getting booted against the wall by the Grand High Witch. As a murid owner myself, that's probably where I would draw the line.