Al Pacino reveals the original ending of ‘The Godfather Part III’
The Godfather star Al Pacino has reflected on the original ending of the third and final instalment of the epic crime series and the reason why it was changed.
Notably, The Godfather Part III arrived in 1990, which was 16 years after 1976’s celebrated Part II was released. It concludes the story of the protagonist and the don of the Corleone family, Michael Corleone, played by Pacino, as he attempts to legitimise his criminal empire and find redemption.
It is set against the backdrop of Pope John Paul I’s 1978 death and the Papal banking scandal of 1981 to 1982, which are linked to his business dealings.
The ending of the third part of the film series concludes with Corleone’s daughter Mary, played by Sofia Coppola, the daughter of director Francis Ford Coppola, being tragically killed in an assassination attempt on him. The film then finishes with Michael dying of old age years later.
In his recent memoir, Sonny Boy, which was released in October, Pacino revealed that the original ending was much different from the final one, with Michael actually dying in the attempt on his life. “At the film’s conclusion, Michael would get assassinated on the stairs of the church,” he explained. “He rolls down the steps and comes to rest on the ground at the bottom.”
He continued: “Kay, his ex-wife, rushes to his side. She looks into his face and asks him, ‘Michael, are you dying? Are you going to die?’ And Michael looks up at her and he says, ‘No.’ And then he dies. Phenomenal ending. A brilliant callback to the first Godfather, as Michael ends his life with one last lie to Kay.”
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Pacino admitted that problems arose for the original ending after Robert Duvall and Richard S. Castellano refused to return as Tom Hagen and Peter Clemenza, respectively, which he dubbed a “big miss”. The latter died in 1988.
“With so much of the film depending on [Duvall’s] character, none of us knew what to do without him,” Pacino recalled. “Francis and Mario had to reconstruct the story, but they were brilliant writers and changed the whole script around. Even the ending that I loved so much had to go – instead, Michael would die of old age, in solitude, after his daughter, Mary, is killed in the attempt to assassinate him.”
The Hollywood icon also discussed Part III being panned in comparison to the original duo, pointing to Michael’s pursuit of redemption as one popular gripe. He suggested that the audience wanted him to continue being ‘The Godfather’. However, he maintained that his arc in Part III humanised him and allowed him to break out of “his almost traumatised state of numbness.”
He concluded: “That one line of his which has sort of become lore and that people still remember from Part III, when he says, ‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in,’ sums up Michael’s need to get out of that state, those chains that bound him.”
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