Was Fatal Attraction Flawed or Fixed by an Alternate Ending?
When Fatal Attraction came out in 1987, Glenn Close suddenly found herself as a femme fatale sensation. Prior to Fatal Attraction, she had played wholesome, all-American girls -- think The Natural or her portrayal of a dissatisfied but low-key yuppie in The Big Chill -- and suddenly, she found herself the face of every couple's nightmares. Although Close had understood from the get-go that her character, Alex, would be controversial, the script changed so significantly over the course of shooting, it became the stuff of her own nightmares.
Speaking to an audience at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2004 on a panel about sex and film, Close explained that in the original script, Alex committed suicide. At early screenings, test audiences hated the character so much that they left theaters outraged, demanding Alex be punished more severely for breaking up Michael Douglas' on-screen family.
The result was a revenge-heavy rewrite that required two additional weeks of shooting and almost caused Close to walk away from the project. During the Tribeca Talks, she explained that she had come to care deeply for Alex and to see her instability as a mental illness, rather than an overblown expression of lover's jealousy. For Close, punishing Alex instead of letting her self-destruct, reduced her to little more than the foil for a marriage in trouble. What was once a fully developed portrait of a woman in crisis was diminished to just another evil, slightly unhinged seductress.
Close eventually relented and filmed the new scenes, and went on to play the truly evil Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons -- as scripted. But what do you think? Does she have a point, or did Alex get what was coming to her?
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In my opinion, it's slightly unfair to those who didn't see the original ending to be placed in the position of trying to defend their belief that Alex should suffer "more" deeply. She's paid the price regardless. And can't she be mentally ill (she sure seemed that way to me) and still be killed by an revengeful wife?
Although "Fatal Attraction" is not a horror movie in the truest sense, I react the same way to it. Even though I've seen it enough times to know when to jump, it never fails that I do it anyway. Of course, I also know when to be titilated by the sex scenes, but that makes it all the more creepy.
Funnily enough I've very recently written an entire piece about this. In terms of cinema the alternate ending of Anne Archer offing Glen Close is much more satisfying providing closure for her and Alex (in a manner of speaking) and sparking off a 'happy ending' of sorts which gives the couple in crisis a fresh start as a team, again. However the issues are a lot deeper and the first half of the film works incredibly well in highlighting them in what I consider to be a brilliant case of subversive dialogue. If you want to see my spin on it you might consider taking a quick look at: http://alisa-miller.com/perfect-relationship-blog/214-fatal-attractions-muddled-message-highlights-the-core-of-issues-assailing-any-relationship.html - as far as cinematic quality goes, the box office success suggests that it touched many raw nerves and then worked to soothe them - you gotta love Hollywood!