Director M. Night Shyamalan has become famous over the years for his twist endings, beginning with the shocking reveal at the end of The Sixth Sense and continuing through movies like The Visit, Glass, and Split. When ranking the best M. Night Shyamalan movies, it’s impossible not to focus on the success or failure of his endings. One of my favorite twists in an M. Night Shyamalan movie occurs in the 2004 thriller The Village, though during a recent appearance on CinemaBlend’s ReelBlend podcast, the director informed us that he had a wildly different idea in mind, but it was too jarring on audiences.
The following is going to get into spoilers for The Village, and a few more of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies, so proceed with caution if you prefer not to know story details for a 20 year old movie.
What is the alternate ending for The Village?
The Village stars a very young Joaquin Phoenix and Bryce Dallas Howard as residents of a colonial village named Covington. The townsfolk live in harmony, for the most part, because they stay out of the woods that surround their village, believing there to be monsters amongst the trees. We are meant to believe that Shyamalan has created a period piece. But when her lover Lucius (Phoenix) is fatally injured, the blind Ivy (Howard) agrees to brave the woods and find medicine. What she finds, instead, is a modern-day security guard – played by Shyamalan, in his routine Hitchcockian cameo – helping Ivy, but also agreeing to keep her secret.
On the ReelBlend podcast, Shyamalan stood by that ending. But that wasn’t always his intention. As Night explained to ReelBlend, he had a more jarring concept that also featured him in a cameo, but involved… Jay-Z? He tells us:
That ending changed a bit. I had shot a different ending for The Village and … I thought for a long time about putting it on the Blu-ray. I intentionally didn't because it was so different and it would make such a – you would change your memory of the movie so much. Because it was (such an) alternate path. Basically, (Ivy) came out, and everyone found out about the place, and it basically blows up, essentially. … I was thinking about putting ‘99 Problems’ – this is before the Black album came out. I was thinking of putting that as the thing. Because like, she comes (out of the woods) and literally, a car almost hits her, but the guy driving it, which was me by the way, was was listening to Jay-Z's ‘99 Problems.’ That was the ending of the movie. Like, I almost hit her. And like, you're hearing him, ‘I got 99 problems, but a ...’ So basically, the value system just goes flip at the end.
It’s cool to hear that M. Night Shyamalan did go so far as to film that version of the ending, with himself behind the wheel of a car, bumping along to Jay-Z and almost hitting Bryce Dallas Howard as she emerges from the woods. But in taking the discussion one step further, Shyamalan makes it clear why he stuck with the ending that he released, even though it earned him mixed reviews.
Why didn’t M. Night Shyamalan use the Jay-Z ending?
In the theatrical cut of The Village, Ivy secures the medications needed to heal Lucius, then returns to the village. The town elders who established this safe space as a means to protect their children and families from the perils of modern society agree that the pain and suffering experienced over the course of the movie are worth it, so long as it allows them to maintain the ruse of Covington.
As Shyamalan explained to ReelBlend:
The idea of the way it is now, where they make a decision to continue this way of life, was really powerful and poignant. That kind of tableau of them standing at the end and making the decision where they’re all like, ‘It's worth it for this.’ I mean, we'd all want that for our kids. If we could make a world where we think they're safer.
He also explained that while he had one massive vote on confidence in the Jay-Z ending, it knocked the audience out of the emotional zone of The Village. He said:
My wife loves that (ending). She saw it and was like, ‘THAT was the end!’ It's so provocative. It was so polarizing, because people got offended. Because you're hearing cursing and it's like – immediately you went from ‘Little House on the Prairie’ to Jay-Z.
Make sure to watch our full conversation with M. Night Shyamalan on the ReelBlend podcast:
And if you want to see the latest M. Night Shyamalan movie, Trap, it continues to build an audience week after week at the box office, fending off competition from Deadpool and Wolverine, as well as Blake Lively’s It Ends With Us. There are choices at the multiplex, including several more upcoming 2024 movies, so go buck wild.
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