The DVD for Andrew Davis's latest action film The Guardian has a few extras for fans. There is a making of feature, a spot on the real coast guard heroes, deleted scenes and an alternate ending. This alternate replaces the tragic finale with a happy ending. Spoiler warning below:
Interview: Andrew Davis on The Guardian DVD
"I was unaware of how popular alternate endings were," said Davis. "This was done as a kind of safety valve for ourselves. We didn't really want to use it but it was one of those situations where it was just too depressing to have Randall die. We wanted something in our pocket so we didn't have to go back and do it. And we never even tested it with the audience because the scores were so high with the current ending. But yes, the folks that sell the DVDs love alternative endings."
Kevin Costner seems to love dying in movies, so imagine him having to shoot the smiley, laughing alternate ending. "He wasn't happy. He wasn't happy. It was something where he agreed to do it, and actually there was another section of it where he comes back and kisses Sela [Ward] and all of that stuff that was even harder to do. But I think that he understood what it was all about. Actually, it was pretty cute, they used that little smile in one of the trailers."
Not everyone was a fan of the film's philosophical take on a coast guarder's death. Wouldn't it have worked just as well to test the young recruit's ability to save his mentor? "But he does prove that. At the same time, Randall knows that it's not going to hold. As a matter of fact, when we shot the scene, I very consciously added the day off that we had to see that in fact the cable was going to break, that his dying was not for naught. There was real meaning to it. He knew what was going to happen. They both would have gone down."
Judge for yourself on The Guardian's DVD, streeting January 23.
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