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Budget Issues Saved Back To The Future From Its Ridiculous Original Ending
The original Back to the Future debuted back in 1985, became a monster hit, but the film’s impact has only grown by leaps and bounds over the past 40 years. Back to the Future is a beloved film that has proven to be relatively timeless, and yet the film that finally made it to the screen wasn’t the film originally envisioned in several ways. That included the casting of its lead actor, but it also included a different ending, and it’s an ending that fans were saved from thanks to the unlikely hero of budget issues.
It turns out that the ending we now know and love wasn’t the original ending, and the first glimpse at the original ending happened thanks to discovered storyboards from the film’s artist, Andrew Probert. In 2016, the set of 113 storyboards revealed that the climactic sequence involved a powerful bomb and the wiping out of a city, which is far from what we actually got. As for why, the studio wanted to save money to the tune of $1 million, and the best way to do that was to scrap that ending completely, leading to new ending that everyone knows.
Back To The Future’s Original Ending Explained
The ending was going to take place near a spot in the city where the military was prepping for a bomb test. Doc Brown is on the radio and has timed this out so that as the DeLorean hits 88 MPH, the bomb will go off, and that combination will send the DeLorean through time. The timer starts to count down from 5, and the bomb eventually explodes as Marty hits 88.
When the bomb detonates, it consumes the city in a huge mushroom cloud, and back in the present, we see that a group of people is at the landmark of the test site for a tour. As a tour guide is explaining stories about the strange phenomena that happened here (or at least reportedly happened), the DeLorean reappears, and the car is fully intact.
Why Back To The Future’s Ending Changed (& Why It Was For The Best)
Even for something like Back to the Future, that stretches the limits of believability, but it was moot due to the studio’s cutting of funds. Since that sequence was massively expensive, it got cut and reworked into the final sequence we now know, and that was clearly a decision that worked in the film’s favor.
Back to the Future co-writer Bob Gale explained what happened during an episode of The Collider Podcast, noting that the most expensive part of the sequence wasn’t actually the bomb going off or the fallout from it, but the actual construction of the town that the film was planning to destroy.
“And the most expensive thing was going on location and building this town. And we said well, if we can cut that out – if we can cut going on location and building a town and do something on a location that we already have, namely the backlot, that would save us $1 million easy,” Gale said.
Instead, they decided to use the backlot and figure something out, which included the switch from a massive bomb to power the DeLorean’s jump in time to a lightning strike as well. What’s interesting is that this wasn’t the only change that was in the original script for the film, as in an interview with SYFY Wire, Probert revealed it was he who convinced Bob Gale to change a key element that allowed for the ending’s surprise reveal.
In the film, Doc sticks the pieces of Marty’s letter to him in his jacket, which then leads to a great reveal in the film’s return to the present. In the original script, Doc was supposed to rip up the note and throw it into the DeLorean, but Probert thought that would telegraph the reveal, and there was a better chance fans would forget if he just stuck it in his jacket and kept moving.
“If you’re not ready for it, you overlook the fact that he skips past the point of the letter … because it’s no longer important,” Probert said. “He’ll deal with it later. Right now, we have to get this cable hooked up before the big bolt comes in and we miss our chance. So Bob says, ‘Okay storyboard that and we’ll see how it works.’ So I did and it worked.”
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