Reshooting Deja Vu all over again (SPOILERS)

Question

SPOILERSI hate it when the change the ending of a movie without changing anything else. The entire movie sets up the tragic ending, where the hero's every attempt to avoid the inevitable helps to cause it and everybody dies, including the hero, and then SMASH CUT everyone lives happily ever after.Forget logic. Forget internal consistency. Forget a half dozen set ups left unpaid. Forget that the inability to avoid the inevitable was the whole damn theme of the movie. The tragic ending didn't test well. Reshoot it.Tim C

Usenet · Accepted Answer

Now, now, Tim. This *is* an Uhmerkin movie.
One time I took a Craig Storti workshop about dealing with people from other cultures. IIRC, Storti is a former State Department trainer who's lived in tons of different countries.
During the Q&A I asked him how Americans are different from people in other nations. He said that Americans are optimistic.

So it figures that we prefer movies with happy endings. Good triumphs over evil, the boy gets the girl, the poor misunderstood monster lives to terrorize another group of teeners in the inevitable sequel.

Lois

Usenet · Answer

Are you talking about the movie DEJA VU? If so - no reshoots were done... that ending was in the script:
***
Claire watches them go, off together across the blacktop ... past the families, past Search and Rescue vehicles, past the black FBI car where DOUG IS STANDING WATCHING THE DOCK
Claire gasps so violently she nearly faints.
It's Doug. The Doug who we saw in the opening scene, who has never been through the Time Window ... who has never met Claire.

He stands by his car, watching the dock, taking it all in. Just as he did before.
CLAIRE
OH ***! oh ***, oh ***!
Claire struggles to breathe, ready to pass out
Doug is talking to Andy Pryzwarra, who has just introduced himself. Doug asks him to step aside slightly and looks out over the dock again.
Pryzwarra scans the dock with him.
PRYZWARRA
What are we looking for?
OUG
Anything that doesn't belong.
Doug notices a shell-shocked woman CLAIRE this time standing alone. She's staring at him, drenched and trembling. ***
And it goes on with them meeting, talking, etc.
I think you missed that it's not "Future Doug" who hooks up with Clare, it's "Present Doug" because we've gone back in time. "Future Doug" is dead, but his present self is still alive.

- Bill

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Now, now, Tim. This *is* an Uhmerkin movie. One time I took a Craig Storti workshop about dealing with people ... the boy gets the girl, the poor misunderstood monster lives to terrorize another group of teeners in the inevitable sequel.[/nq]
I don't mind happy endings. I'm an American, too.

What I'm ******** about is endings that don't match beginnings and middles.
SPOILERS
The first act starts (after the big boom during the credits) with Denzel among scores of body bags. When he answers his cell phone, another cell phone (with the same ring tone) is ringing at the same time from inside one of the body bags.
In the second act, he gains personal motivation to change the past and learns that it may be possible (or it may not).
In the third act, he thrusts himself into the events he hopes to change, just to find at every step that not only can he not effect any change, but that his presence and every action he takes are necessary and integral to the story that has already unfolded and been set in history.

And then they don't have the closing shot of him and his cell phone being zipped up in the body bag from the first shot.
If you don't like the ending, fine. Change it. But don't write, shoot, and edit 110 minutes of movie A and then stick on 10 minutes of ending B. They could have and should have done better.
Tim C
"Besides it makes me look stupid when I've told my wife how it's going to end"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Are you talking about the movie DEJA VU? If so - no reshoots were done... that ending was in the script:[/nq]

[nq:1]And it goes on with them meeting, talking, etc. I think you missed that it's not "Future Doug" who hooks up with Clare, it's "Present Doug" because we've gone back in time. "Future Doug" is dead, but his present self is still alive.[/nq]
No, I got that. (And the shooting-your-grandfather type paradox it causes is one of the things that should have been avoided with better writing.)

It just seemed that the first 110 minutes of the film was a setup for a tragic ending. There were many things that specifically set it up, other things most easily explained with that ending in mind, and nothing inconsistent with that ending.
I presumed that if the ending were changed before principal shooting, they would not have left scripted, shot, and included in the final cut things such as the cell phone in the body bag, which served no purpose but to set up the tragic end. Which led to my conclusion that the suits must have waited until the last minute to force the studio ending.

Well, now I'm even more disappointed, knowing that the creative people had the opportunity to make the rest of the script match the ending and blew it.

Tim C

Usenet · Answer

Rent The Player.
Watch it twice.
The whole movie changes the second time.
Blair
"Altman was a genius."

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Now, now, Tim. This *is* an Uhmerkin movie. One time I took a Craig Storti workshop about dealing with people ... the Q&A I asked him how Americans are different from people in other nations. He said that Americans are optimistic.[/nq]
People in other nations are optimistic.
Americans are oblivious to risk.
[nq:1]So it figures that we prefer movies with happy endings. Good triumphs over evil, the boy gets the girl, the poor misunderstood monster lives to terrorize another group of teeners in the inevitable sequel.[/nq]
Good times.
Blair
"Happy days."

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I don't mind happy endings. I'm an American, too. What I'm ******** about is endings that don't match beginnings and middles.[/nq]
They're metaphors for American elections.
Blair

Reshooting Deja Vu all over again (SPOILERS)

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