So I’m sitting here with my son, and we’re talking about how movies could have ended quicker. Here’s a sampling …
• Star Wars: Luke and Leia fall madly in love, retreat to Utah.
• Rocky: Rocky is hit by a car during early training scene.
• Little Mermaid: Prince Eric falls into the ocean while Ariel is napping elsewhere. Eric drowns.
• Silence of the Lambs: Hannibal eats Clarice.
• Creed: In third Tijuana fight, Adonis Creed knocked out six times by local hero Eduardo (El Pollo Loco) Marquez. Never boxes again.
• The Sound of Music: Maria never receives job offer. Remains unhappy singing nun.
• Return of the Jedi: The second Death Star is built one month early and blows up all the planets before Jedis are aware of its existence.
• Cars: Lightning McQueen takes a five-minute Starbucks break, is never hit by train. Remains regular car and ultimately winds up in Avis lot.
• Finding Nemo: Shark eats Nemo. Nemo dies.
• Batman Forever: Riddler wises up, stops giving Batman clues. Kills him with gun eight seconds into film.
• Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indiana Jones slips in cave, is gorged by 1,000 snakes. Three fingers and a pelvic bone found years later.
• Cinderella: Miracle cure saves father. Daughter goes on to study at four-year prep school, then becomes a barber.
• Remember the Titans: In name of racial unity, players go to local bar on eve of big game, get drunk. Entire roster suspended for season.
• Coraline: Family never moves, remains blissfully content in suburbia.
• Shawshank Redemption: Andy Dufresne murdered by home invader. Wife sentenced to life in Logan Correctional Center, where she learns to knit and spends her days as a model inmate.
• Julie and Julia: Julia Childs accidentally slices off three fingers in tragic Thanksgiving Eve accident. Never cooks again. Cookbook never exists; Julie becomes a full-time phone receptionist at local CPA firm.
• Alvin and the Chipmunks: Alvin gets eaten by wolf.
• Superman: The Movie: After being sent from Krypton to earth as a baby, little boy with super powers lands in yard of Orwell and Marge Anderson, who run the Anderson Family Traveling Circus. Enlist Wonder Boy to life of train travel, sparse meals, hay bed and afternoons and evenings spent bending bars with his bare hands. Young Clark Anderson forever known as “The Amazing Bearded Bar-Bending Boy.”
