Why the THEATRICAL Ending of Little Shop of Horrors is SUPERIOR

Comments · 578

• JA

  @jasoncook7378 · 3 years ago (edited)

  Here is what i think the studio should have done. When Seymour is told, "Every household in America..." They should have Seymour imagine the original ending. Maybe cut it down for time but that way we would have the best of both worlds.

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• SA

  @SagooBoy · 3 years ago

  I will admit I am a sucker for a happy ending, especially when the lead character already had a hard enough life. But what I do like is when the audience is at least given the option to watch both versions so they can make their own assement, and the directors' hard work and effort do not go completely to waste and unseen.

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• JO

  @JosephSciola · 3 years ago

  I think the biggest thing holding the original ending back is losing the section from The Meek Shall Inherit. That sets up Seymour’s willingness to keep on killing, which makes his fate more deserved.

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• Z2

  @z2yn · 3 years ago

  A lot of comments have said it, but I want to emphasize how different Seymour is on stage and in the movie.<br><br>Musical Seymour feels like he&apos;s close to being a NiceGuy™, complimenting Audrey with her black eye as if it&apos;s pretty - like it&apos;s hardly noticeable. While in the movie, Moranis makes it look like he doesn&apos;t know that it&apos;s a black eye, he&apos;s that naïve that he thinks it might be make up.<br><br>When the plant talks Seymour into killing Orin (before he sees Audrey being slapped), Moranis again delivers the motorcycle part like he&apos;s a little kid - something he can&apos;t imagine and would feel great and amazing. He&apos;s full of a wonder and thinks the plant might be &quot;good&quot;.<br><br>In the musical, Seymour seems to thoroughly enjoy it and relish in the thought of making people jealous with him on a bike and looking fancy. It comes off as more adulterous.<br><br>In general, the relationship between the plant and Seymour in the musical feels like they&apos;re both on the same page or on a similar power level until the plant surpasses him and he underestimates it.<br>In the movie, Seymour is constantly controlled by the plant.<br><br>There&apos;s also the difference of Seymours constant fear and misery at his situation in the movie - as opposed to how Seymour poses with the leather jacket, thinking that it will make Audrey like him more. Immediately imitating Orin.<br><br>I personally view this as musical Seymour being like the plant - consuming the people he&apos;s killed. He at first becomes Audrey&apos;s boyfriend, showing a lot more confidence, but still being mostly himself. Then he turns more and more into Mushnick, becoming the owner of the shop.<br><br>He starts, although he doesn&apos;t realize it, to scare Audrey, which felt to me like a parallel to her relationship with Orin. Movie Seymour never lets his feelings out on her (there&apos;s this scene where he&apos;s doing finances and the plant provokes him - he goes ballistic and scares Audrey, making it sound like she provoked him.)<br><br>Movie Seymour comes off as more likeable - someone stuck in a bad place who tried to escape it and got used at every turn until he breaks out of it. Musical Seymour is that at first and then gets corrupted and consumed by it, using others just as much as they use him.

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• LU

  @lucyt6971 · 3 years ago

  Ellen is a wonder, nothing can explain her interpretation of Audrey, her vocalisation and unprecedented style in this role. From the look, to the lisp, the key changes and returns...it&apos;s a tour de force. No one can take on this role and win. She made Audrey. She will always be Audrey.

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• AL

  @alexanderchippel · 3 years ago

  I think an aspect of the movie that&apos;s also overlooked is that Seymour doesn&apos;t really do anything wrong. <br><br>Okay he does a lot wrong, but everything he does is done so passively, and in a way where it&apos;s very obvious he is woefully unprepared in dealing with the current situation.<br><br>When Orin dies, it&apos;s it takes like a minute. And Seymour looks like he doesn&apos;t even know what&apos;s really going on until he dies. <br><br>When Mushnick dies, it&apos;s because he leans into what&apos;s clearly a giant mouth with teeth and Seymour let&apos;s out of little &quot;Sir...&quot; before Audrey II eats him. He basically tired to warn him, but he was too nervous and terrified to do anything about it. <br><br>And I think that&apos;s the major difference between the movie and the play. They say it&apos;s just the ending but it&apos;s really the entirety of Seymour&apos;s arc. <br><br>The play is s story about the dangers of hurting others for your own benefit. He willingly kills two people, and then he ultimately gets what he deserves when he loses it all and dies. He&apos;s borderline Machiavellian in the way he contemplates helping Orin, and how he tricks Mushnick into getting into the plants mouth. <br><br>The movie is about the dangers of stumbling into something really, really good, and then just accepting that as the way it is while just standing around being complicit in bad things that happen around you, and not having the courage to stop. <br><br>It&apos;s a lot easier to get attached to a character that is passive and let&apos;s bad things happen, then it is to get attached to a character that actively and willingly makes things worse.

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• ST

  @steveandjeanniefrith236 · 3 years ago

  I like both versions but changing Seymour to more of a cowardly shy guy instead of an angry incel meant he deserved a chance to redeem himself by killing Audrey 2.

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• JU

  @JustWill6969 · 3 years ago

  I wholeheartedly agree with your point about the lack of Seymour&apos;s agency in the directors cut but there&apos;s a few more reasons I think the ending fails:<br><br>1. They replaced Ya Never Know with Some Fun Now. This is probably the least important change but it&apos;s still worth noting. In Ya Never Know Seymour is clearly shown to be enjoying the success the plant is giving him whereas in Some Fun Now we see him bleeding his fingers dry and looking miserable. Him enjoying his success gives him more motivation to continue feeding the plant.<br><br>2. They cut the song Now. This is a big one. In Now, Orin begs Seymour to help him get the gas mask off and he willfully sits by and lets him die, showing his agency in Orin&apos;s death.<br><br>3. They cut the adoption subplot and Mushnik&apos;s death is different. Another big one. In the play Mushnik fully adopts Seymour and begins calling him son. In the film he&apos;s just some greedy asshole that he works for. In the film Mushnik sees Seymour cutting up Orin&apos;s body while in the play he only finds a dentist&apos;s uniform in the garbage. In the film Mushnik has concrete evidence of Seymour&apos;s guilt and uses it to blackmail him, whereas in the play he only suspects Seymour and asks him to come with him to the police station to explain things so his &quot;conscience can rest easy.&quot; In the film Mushnik holds Seymour at gunpoint and accidentally walks backwards into the plants mouth. In the play Seymour actively tricks Mr. Mushnik (his adopted dad) into getting directly in the plants mouth even when he had no concrete evidence of Seymour&apos;s guilt.<br><br>4. In the film they cut Seymour&apos;s soliloquy from Meek Shall Inherent in which he debates letting the plant die but ultimately decided to keep feeding it so Audrey will continue to love him, thereby setting up his faustian bargain that ultimately ends in her death.<br><br>The lack of all these things makes Seymour a more likeable and unassuming character, and when combined with his helpless death in the directors cut it leaves things feeling totally unjustified. <br><br>(Sorry for any typos. I&apos;m very passionate about this topic.)

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• HO

  @HobGungan · 2 years ago (edited)

  I&apos;d love to do a combination. Audrey thinks she&apos;s dying but has a &quot;I&apos;m getting better&quot; comedic beat, the salesman comes in, Seymour confronts the Mean Green Mother but II starts to get the best of him, AUDREY saves HIM, destroying the weed, but they miss the one seedling that the salesman finds, so Seymour and Audrey must go on the radio to warn people Don&apos;t Feed The Plants.

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• OP

  @OptimusPhillip · 2 years ago

  Just in general, I don&apos;t think Mean Green Mother belongs in the director&apos;s cut. In addition to everything you say about Seymour&apos;s agency and character arc, having a big showstopping number immediately before the finale number seriously bloats the movie. They really should&apos;ve just done a straightforward adaptation of the &quot;Bigger than Hula-Hoops&quot; scene from the musical.<br><br>Come to think of it, there&apos;s a weird sort of circular serendipity to the inclusion of the Mean Green Mother sequence. Everything that makes it a detriment to the original ending makes it a great template for the revised ending. The way it unceremoniously beats down on Seymour sets up a great underdog moment when Seymour finally finds the plant&apos;s weakness. And the showstopping song that was completely unnecessary in the original ending now fills the void that the omission of Don&apos;t Feed the Plants left. It&apos;s almost uncanny how well it all worked out.

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• RO

  @rogersstinson4019 · 3 years ago

  Well to be fair, the only reason that the original ending is so long is because the restoration crew used the black and white print as their guide. And according to one of the people who worked on the film, they were planning on shortening ending.

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• MR

  @MrIveyIsBonkers · 1 year ago

  Let&apos;s also not forget that both Orin and Mushnik are MUCH less likeable in the movie than they are in the play... Orin is visibly shown abusing his patients with sadistic glee, and they got rid of Mushnik making Seymour his son, which makes him seem less open and sympathetic to it all (even if he had done it just to get some extra shekels). And through this intense abuse, it also paints Audrey in a much brighter light too. I don&apos;t see her so much as an airhead but more of a naive childlike woman who really only wants the simple things in life... I think seeing what she dreams of in the song &quot;Somewhere That&apos;s Green&quot; really paints her in a more sympathetic way than it does in the play, where it&apos;s more silly than anything.

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