This includes films that added new endings, completely different endings, or just took it that extra step further to give it that extra oomph it needed.
Needless to say, this list contains MAJOR SPOILERS for all the movies involved, so tread carefully.
Additions
Out of Sight
The first of many successful Soderbergh/Clooney, team-ups, and the only Jennifer Lopez movie I like enough to own. Elmore Leonard's novel ends when Karen Sisco (Lopez), does the right thing and shoots bank robber Jack Foley (Clooney) in the leg and arrests him, despite their romantic involvement.
The 1998 film has the same scene, but adds one more: Karen arranges for Jack to be transported back to prison with Hejira Henry, an uncredited Samuel L. Jackson playing a nine-time prison escapee. "Maybe she thought we'd have a lot to talk about," smirks Clooney, and then the film fades out to "It's Your Thing" by the Isley Brothers.
The Mist
I haven't actually seen or read this, so I'll paraphrase briefly here without giving much away: Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's novella is pretty faithful in depicting a group of terrified people in a supermarket during an unnatural mist, filled with terrifying creatures. The novella ends, after tensions escalate to killing inside the supermarket, with a group of the remaining sane survivors heading off in a car into the mist-covered land, uncertain of the future.
So The Mist just goes a couple of steps further, examining the survivors' dilemma when the car runs out of gas, and then breaking out a devastating revelation. The bonus ending even got King's total seal of approval- he says "The ending is such a jolt—wham! It's frightening. But people who go to see a horror movie don't necessarily want to be sent out with a Pollyanna ending."
The Departed
The Hong Kong film last year's Best Picture was based on, which had the unfortunate US title of Infernal Affairs, is pretty much step by step the same as Scorsese's adaptation, although Marty and screenwriter William Monaghan added a few new subplots to flesh their story out.
The point of all those subplots becomes clear at the conclusion. In the original, the undercover good guy (Tony Leung), and the mole in the police department bad guy (Andy Lau), eventually come to a rooftop confrontation, and another police department mole shows up and kills Leung, and is then killed by Lau to hide everything.
And that's where Infernal Affairs pretty much ends, with the hero dead and the corrupt cop alive, but determined to change his ways. The Departed follows the same steps, and pretty much the same climax- good guy (DiCaprio) gets killed, corrupt cop (Damon) kills everyone else to cover things up. But it has two different threads going for it- one, Damon is way more unlikeable than Andy Lau, pretty much sealing his fate when he accidentally stabs a bystander in an alleyway chase that is not in the Hong Kong version. Two, Oscar-nominated Mark Wahlberg is an original character, and after a leave of absence, shows up as the hand of justice at the end of The Departed and shoots Damon in the head.
So this way, everyone's dead, but it feels more satisfying. Infernal Affairs eventually spawned a few sequels or prequels (or something), but The Departed made sure it ended as a singular acheivement.
Being There
Jerzy Kosinski adapted his own 1970 novel for the 1979 film version, but added a perplexing and mysterious scene to the end to capture the surreal nature of the book's prose. Peter Sellers plays Chance, the simple minded gardener catapulted to national fame by a series of misunderstandings: his simple gardening tips are taken for brilliant metaphors for politics and economics by the Washington elite, and soon he's being discussed as a potential Presidential candidate, instead of the sitting president.
The novel ends with Chance wandering away from an important political advsior's funeral, and peacefully observing nature about him. In the film, Sellers wanders outside to enigmatic quotes read at the funerals eulogy, and then right as one of the quotes is read- "Life is a state of mind"- he walks across a lake. And to make it clear that it isn't stepping stones, or a shallow bank, he playfully pokes his umbrella downward into the water, and the continues.
It adds a very metaphysical tone to the events that have come before- is Chance a ghost? A Christ figure? Or is he just so blissfully unaware that he doesn't sink? It's a great addition to a film with great performances, and arguable Sellers' best film entirely.
Excisions
A Clockwork Orange
Kubrick, according to legend, got the American copy of Anthony Burgess's novel, which did not contain chapter 21, in which the uber-violent and sociopathic young Alex grows up and changes his ways, completely reversing the rest of his character's development.
He did become aware of the last chapter before finishing the screenplay, but decided it was too optimistic and unrealistic to be plausible. And thank goodness he did- most of the controversy around A Clockwork Orange is about whether we're supposed to be condemning Alex's (Malcom McDowell) activities whole-heartedly, or voyeurisitcally following them. But nobody would buy the abrupt reversal at the end, especially not after McDowell's frighteningly intense portrayal.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
I'll start by saying that I read the trilogy once a year, and I don't think I could have handled the Sophie's Choice of what to leave out of the film adaptations myself. But for the most part, Peter Jackson and company did a phenomenal job of parsing down Tolkien's world for the screen, the most wise of which was leaving out the last bit of the final installment, the "Scouring of the Shire" chapter, in which the Hobbits have to fight a decrepit but still dangerous Saruman, who's taken over their home.
A brilliant move for us fanatics was to include many deleted scenes and extended ones on the Special Edition DVD's, but the Scouring of the Shire was never filmed. As much I could envision watching an entire day's worth of LoTR (next Thanksgiving I'm so going to Austin, TX for this), but you don't want the public massaging their asses as they walk out.
Revamps
Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk's debut novel was brilliantly adapted into a film by David Fincher, but the finale departs from the book slightly, making a more unique, and purely cinematic finale. As the narrator (Edward Norton in the film) finally does away with his psychotic alter-ego Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt), in the novel, the bombs Durden has set in the building fail to go off, and the narrator is rescued by Marla and a group of people from the support groups he attended early in the novel. The final lines of the book find him in a mental institution of some kind.
The film Fight Club has Durden place bombs not in the building he's inside, but in all the surrounding ones. And even though the narrator takes Durden out, he reaches a weird acceptance, and watches the buildings fall with Marla as The Pixies' "Where is My Mind" wails, and the film slows down for one frame of porn.
The Natural
One of the most famous sports movie endings of all time is actually a complete fabrication. Malamud's novel about Roy Hobbs, the phenomenal baseball player with the magical bat, approaches its climactic scenes in the same exact way: The Knights have a chance to win the pennant, and Hobbs is up with a chance to win the game, and he decides to give it his all, despite pressure and money from the Judge to throw the game.
In Barry Levinson's film, Robert Redford hits a home run that wins the game, explodes the spotlights, and catapults the film into a euphoric ending. In the book, Hobbs strikes out on three pitches, is exposed as a cheater, and retires from baseball a failure. There's even a little boy who approaches him and pleads "say it ain't so!" much like the legendary scene with Shoeless Joe Jackson.
So why are they both good? Sometimes life is bitter, but we go to the movies for exploding lights, triumph, and Randy Newman scores. Sorry, literary bitterness.
The Prestige
Christopher Priest's 1995 novel involves a modern-day framing device that Christopher Nolan's film ditches, but the stories are relatively faithful, to a certain point. Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman both play turn of the century stage magicians that perform a trick where they transport instantly across the stage. Bale is revealed to actually be twins, while Jackman uses a machine that Nikola Tesla built for him on commission.
Both tale's involve a key scene where Bale's character sneaks backstage to discover the secret of the Tesla machine, and the way it works in the novel leads to a finale involving ghost-like apparitions, and cold shells of human beings- ideas easier to imagine than portray cinematically. In the film, the machine works in a more straightforward way, but it forces Jackman's character to make horrible choices to perform his trick.
It's a rare case of both versions working equally well, and I honestly enjoy both the book's end and the film's end equally.
Metaphysical self-parodies
Adaptation
I couldn't resist including this one. The great Charlie Kaufman was hired to adapt a screenplay from Susan Orlean's "The Orchid Thief," got frustrated (or inspired), and wrote a movie about himself adapting it instead. Nicholas Cage plays a balding and neurotic Kaufman, and his fictional twin brother, who eventually take Orleans' simple account of her interviews with an eccentric flower collector (played to an Oscar by Chris Cooper), and add a romance, a car chase, and a man-eating alligator to it.
It's both the least faithful, but best film adaptation ever.
I'm not sure how this simple list grew to over 1600 words, but thanks for reading if you made it all the way. Any other obvious ones I missed?
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