Why Brad Pitt fought for the infamous ending of ‘Se7en’
There are some movie moments that completely crush audiences through shocking endings that avoid convention and stray away from the norms of a Hollywood ending.
It could be the final scene in La La Land, an anti-love story in which the characters we’ve been rooting for the entire time do not end up together. Or it could be Lars Von Trier’s affinity for darkness through endings that point towards the fact that humans are inherently selfish and goodness does not exist. It’s an uncomfortable truth that we don’t want to face, but through the power of cinema, many directors direct our attention towards a side of life we’d prefer to look away from.
But it’s a trick that David Fincher has certainly mastered over the course of his career, with a knack for shock endings that obliterate any sense of hope we might have and leave us hanging on the most sinister of threads. From Zodiac to Fight Club, the director knows how to mess with our minds, either leaving us with no answers or an ending that makes us reevaluate the events of the entire film.
While he has been known to do this on many occasions, there is perhaps one film that is most notorious for this, with a bleak ending that destroys any semblance of hope and presents us with the idea that evil will always win. But while it might be infamous now, there was a time when studio executives strongly advised it to be cut, with Brad Pitt intervening and using his power to prevent this from happening.
‘What’s in the box?’ might be one of the most cutting lines in cinematic history, with the tortured screams of Brad Pitt’s character echoing throughout the final scene in Se7en as he is confronted with the awful fact that is beloved wife is dead, with her head most likely sitting in the box that sits in front of him.
Kevin Spacey is terrifying as the restrained and soft-spoken murderer, with a subtle glee as he revels in the pain he has inflicted on Pitt’s character as the final confrontation rolls around. But while the film is now known for its bleak ending, when signing onto the project, Pitt had a suspicion that the studio might not like it and would eventually threaten to cut it for being too controversial.
When discussing this, the actor explained how he stepped in during the early stages of production to make sure this wouldn’t happen, saying, “When I signed on to do the film, I had it in my contract that the ending had to stay. Because I’d experienced on something before where something that was controversial got cut out and to me, that’s why we go to movies. And so it was in my contract, and sure enough, when the movie came out there was this push to like, ‘you know, it would be much more likeable if the dogs’ heads were in the box’. Nope. It’s certainly shocking and really upsetting”.
Unfortunately, studios are not known for wanting to take risks, something that is evident by their discomfort over an objectively great ending that did so through its inability to play it safe. But it seems as though Pitt came in handy and pulled through for the sake of the story, preserving an ending that never should have been doubted in the first place.
