What I think is really at stake with the Hollywood ending vs. alternate endings is audience expectations and industry conceptions of audience expectations. The theatrical ending includes heroic sacrifice, and a conveniently happy ending for two of the characters while letting everyone be impressed by how noble Neville is.

The alternate ending serves to bridge the gap between Us and Them by showing and acknowledging the intelligence and compassion of the infected. On the one hand, Neville lives (good for audiences, we’re supposed to want our heroes to live), but on the other, it grants humanity to the Bad Guys, which we’re supposed to not want. It’s a mixed message, though I have to say that overall, I like the alternate ending a bit better.

The alternate ending pays off the ‘Neville is a man on a mission, nearly gone off the deep end’ — in recognizing the Vamp Leader’s message and freeing the Butterfly Vamp, he steps back from the edge of the abyss/obsession. But it doesn’t resolve the ‘other survivors’ and ‘God told me the Vermont fallback is there’ angle. The whole Atheist/Theist layer of the story is muddled in the alternate, and clumsily resolved in the original.

Best use of alternate endings ever: Clue, the movie. They’re built in, and each one is more awesome than the last.

I hear the Broadway version of Xanadu has a different ending from the movie version. Apparently Kira dupes the skaters in the disco roller rink to perform a ritual that opens a gate to Tartarus, unleashing the Titans once again upon the face of the Earth. (I always knew that muse was up to no good.)

Then again, I received that information 2nd hand.

Or third…

The movie musical version of Little Shop of Horrors had an alternate ending. Both the original black and white film and the stage play ended with the entire cast getting eaten by a giant alien plant. It was pretty cool, but not something that would have appealed to a contemporary audience at that time.

The alternate ending was a little hard to swallow (is it even possible to electrocute a plant?), but it probably kept the movie musical version from being a total flop.

It would be nice if both endings were available on a DVD, though. They did film a version with the original ending, but the test audience hated it so much that they went back and made a happily-ever-after alternate.

This is mine (a Pi-ku):

Not a cake I think.
Euclidean to degree.
Counts for round measures.

Anyway, as I’m no film buff and most of the movies I’ve seen that were based on books were either punctilliously accurate (LotR and Harry potter) or grossly mangled (anything by Alan Moore), I don’t really know much from alternate endings.

So instead I’m going to share with you an author bio I wrote up a few days ago for a short story submission (I never ended up using the bio):

Michael Gordon is 2 cups chopped contemporary fantasy (use urban fantasy for a grittier texture), three ounces reheated vampire memoir, a dash of celtic heroic epic (for flavor), and two mundane eggs. Mix well and let sit indefinitely.

I couldn’t decide whether it should be “Bake at 451F” or not. Also, wasn’t sure how many I serve. I think currently two.

Anyway.

My favorite alternate ending is the one for Army of Darkness. While I don’t think it necessarily makes it a better film, since I love it already, it seems more fitting to Ash’s character that he screws up one more time and doesn’t get the happy ending he enjoys in the theatrical version.

Since Superman: The Movie and Superman II were originally supposed to be one movie, you could kind of view the sequel as the end of the first film–and I highly recommend Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut for a far superior film. It’s like an alternate version of the film from a parallel universe. The only thing that would have really improved the first film was finding a way for Superman not to reverse time by flying around the earth, although it’s almost worth it because of how much fun everyone has references it years later in pop culture.