I was watching The Sum of All Fears the other night, which is a pretty decent flick. In the original Tom Clancy book, the villians were Arab terrorists. In the movie, they shifted it over to some politically-correct villians -- old-school Russian Communists and a global white conspiracy group. (?)

Particuarly in light of 9/11, this seemed to me to be a bit preposterous. What, did they think we could not seperate reality from fiction? They really need to drag the Russians out of the closet full of mothballs to give us a convincing enemy? This may not be PC, but I think if anyone terrorist wanted to explode a nuke on US soil, it would very likely be someone from an Arab country. I think this is a major-league cop-out.

What are some other examples of Hollywood cop-outs?

I would agree. I actually really loved this movie, but it would have been more interesting if they had kept the original villans.

Well duh! The whole movie is a cop out. It sucks. Patriot Games and Clear and Present took liberties with the source novel, but kept the basic essence of the story right. Sum of All Fears changed so much that it just plain ISN'T THE BOOK ANYMORE. It is Sum of All Fears in name only.

P.S. Most H'wood films with budgets over $60 million have cop-out endings, this thread would be shorter if we named the ones that didn't.

Sony removing the WTC from the Spiderman movie and posters.

They didn't remove it from the movie.

How about Shrek. The beautiful woman princess just happens to be the exact same 'green ogre' race as Shrek.

Not only is Shrek's ending a cop out, it's one of the worst endings ever.

1. The original cop-out happy ending of Blade Runner.

2. The tacked on ending that ruined the whole point of the original in "The Vanishing".

That's the winner!!!! What a catastrophe!!!

Isn't The Contender considered a cop-out ending?

That's an understatement. A few weeks ago at a screening of The Stoneraft, director Sluizer was answering questions afterwards. Of course, someone brought up The Vanishing.

And Sluizer agreed that it was a catastrophe. First, he and 20th Century Fox agreed on a similar ending to the original. Between that time and production, Rupert Murdoch bought it out or whatever and the entire philosophy changed. It got so bad, Sluizer said, that Fox was threatening to kick him out of the country. Sluizer was pretty much beaten into submission. He said that because they wanted a sex scene he filmed one so out of hand just to make sure they didn't want it at all.

Anyways, how did the American version end? (in spoiler tags) I couldn't get through 5 minutes of it. Thanks.

How about that crappy Play it to the Bone movie. I swear just as the fight began I knew what was gonna happen, but I prayed they wouldn't be that stupid.

Then it happened what a cop out.

Well, if you watch the Clancy Commentary on the DVD, his opening line is "Hi, I'm Tom and I wrote the novel they didn't read" or something very similar to it. That was an indrecible commentary track btw. I think Tom was more pissed it was changed to the Neo-Nazi/fascist thing, cause in his words, "that's bulls***, that would never happen".