The Butterfly Effect

The Butterfly Effect [+ favourites]

i know this movie was out a long time ago, but it just came out on DVD and has an alternate ending to it. when i saw it in the theatre the first time around i thought to myself "hmm thats a messed up movie" but a couple hours later once everything had time to set in, i really liked this movie. the only problem i had with it was the ending, i thought it was a bit weak and "hollywoodish" ... you know how hollywood likes those sappy cheesey endings.

well i rented this movie the other day (mostly so my friend could watch it for the first time) and we watched the directors cut with the alternate ending. i thought that this ending was MUCH better. i have no idea why they didnt use it in the theatre. i almost got mad actually.

anyway, my point is that if you have or havent seen this movie, you should watch the directors cut because it is very good in my opinion.

original - 6/10
directors cut - 8/10

"UNIX is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus. ~Peter H. Coffin"

I just watched the movie as well and thought that the movie was quite well done. What was the ending in the theatres?

Ashton did quite the good job, the story line was well thought out and certain scenes were just well directed and thought about it made me shiver or say HOLY F! However I do have a quam about the ending, in the timeline where he is in the mental instution and they said that there were never any journals. The timeline says there is, when he went back the last time it was in the basement (when the girl got killed) of the house doing the kiddie movie. At that point in the movie he was ALREADY keeping his journals. Everything before that point was a "given" and he was writing his journals since the death painting in kindergarden.

Anyway if the endings are diffrent I give the DVD version a ....

8/10 as well

"The Restless Mind - The curiosity of intellectual infancy"

theatre ending - the main character goes back in time to when he first met kaylee(sp) and tells her something like "i hate you, i think youre ugly and if you ever come near me again ill kill you and your whole damn family." then it goes forward in time and we see everyone doing well and all that jazz, then it goes to a scene of him burning his journals (which made no sense to me because technically there shouldnt be any journals). then it goes to a scene of him in a big city, he walks by kaylee(sp) and they barely even notice eachother, he turns around to find her but she is already lost in the crowd of people.

it just seemed like a sappy "happy" hollywood ending that didnt fit with the rest of the movie. the ending of the directors cut is much more dramatic and satisfying for me.

"UNIX is an operating system, OS/2 is half an operating system, Windows is a shell, and DOS is a boot partition virus. ~Peter H. Coffin"

I just watched the butterfly effect on tv and the ending was awful. when i watched the movie before he kills himself in his moms stomach. but i heard that the ending where he tells callie that "i will kill you and your family" is the real ending. i don't even know why they made that one.

"laminated muffins"

imsorry but mayb im just bein an emotion gal here,but the first ending was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
oooooooooooo much betta.the second sucked 2 the ultimate..he killed himself.which nutcase decided 2 change it 2 that.pathetic. i was so upset when i watched it agen.

"There is a thin line between bravery and stupidity"

You think the ultimate self sacrifice is less emotional than being an asshole?

What planet are you on?

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

She prolly doesnt fully understand what real emotion and self sacrifice truly is this early is here life.

Watch the movie again in 5 or so years and I bet you that your concept of the ending will change greatly.

"The Restless Mind - The curiosity of intellectual infancy"

i have a question about this movie. i only saw it in theatres, so i saw the ending where he goes back and tells the girl he hates her. then years later he passes her on the street.
someone said the alternative ending is him strangling himself in the womb so he is never born. how do they manage that, because i thought that he could only go back in time by reading the journals, and he went back to the time when the journal entry was written?

The pre-natal suicide means that he never affects anyone’s life. It has a connection to when he goes to a fortune teller who tells him he has no soul and should never have been born. His mother, also confessed to three prior miscarriages. In the last scene, as they observe what’s going on, she screams “not again!”, which suggests her prior ‘failures’ to give birth may have all gone down the same path, inheriting the gift/curse from their father. So Evan (and probably the other siblings) with the same ability had lived before without knowing their previous lives and after experiencing the negative effects of time travel, they all concluded that it would be best if they had never have been born at all. Evans pre-natal suicide was the 3rd stillbirth.

"The summit is just a halfway point"

They don't just change the ending.... there were a few scenes in the movie that lead to it.

As summit stated, there was a scene where he and his mom go to a fortune teller and she tells the mom that he doesn't have a soul.

She asks her what she means.

She says that he was never supposed to be born.

And the mom freaks out because she had 2 other miss-carriages during her pregnancy.

And so it is assumed that he had two other brothers (or sisters) that lived a whole life and decided to kill themselves just like he did.

Beautiful! That's a work of art.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

no.. the reason y he was an asshole was bcoz he knew that he messed everythin up. him killin himself, and him being horrible 2 her ended up doin the same thing, which was not messin dat girls life up.
im sorry, but i liked the first one. mayb i might hav the same feelings as y'all 2wards the subject soon enuff, but ryt now, the 2nd one sucked.

"There is a thin line between bravery and stupidity"

i saw the movie in the theatre when it came out. i thought it was fantastic. some people don't like the ending, but thats just it...it had to end.

No. People liked the director's cut ending. Not the shitty theatre one.

"Hating everyone protects me from elitism."

i thought the movie was still good with the theatre ending.

question: the movie is about the choices the main character makes and how those choices affect the people directly connected to him. isn't that the opposite of what the "butterfly effect" actually is?

butterfly effect: the phenomenon whereby a small change at one place in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere, e.g., a butterfly flapping its wings in Rio de Janeiro might change the weather in Chicago


not to take away from the movie, because i liked it, just wondering if it should have had a different name.

I thought Id just add my personal comments, I just watched the TV version and the ending was very average compared to the version that I watched some years ago on DVD, I thought I was going mad, I quickly picked up my laptop and did a google search to see if this film really does have more than one ending........ I pleased to see Im not going mad.

I agree with almost all off the posts above the DVD versions when he takes his own life before he is born is far better than the TV version, I dont care if everyone likes a happy ending someone mad a big mistake changing the end to this movie in my opion.