Man delights not me - Withnail and I's wrong ending

After recently reading Withnail & I: From Cult to Classic by Toby Benjamin - a gorgeous new book about the making of the brilliant movie - I'm once again convinced that the film's original ending would have been a terrible, terrible mistake, because it would have been a total fucking bummer.

As it stands, the film has one of the greatest endings in cinema - Withnail performing an immense Hamlet in the rain, an epic performance only seen by some wet and pissed-off wolves. He now knows, beyond any doubt, that he will never play the Dane, but he shows the uncaring world that he also knows he would have been fucking great, if given the chance.

Of course, anybody who knows anything about the making of Withnail & I knows this was not how the movie was supposed to finish - in earlier drafts, Withnail finishes his performance, heads back home, pours the last of his fine wine down the barrel of the shotgun from the farm and blows his bloody head off.

This was always a potential fate for the failed thespian, but that kind of finality is desperately not needed. We know Withnail isn't going to be the next Gielgud and that's he going to fade away into obscurity, he doesn't need to head it with a shotgun blast.

And, most importantly, it would have been an absolutely depressing way to end the movie. For all its depth and pathos, Withnail & I is still an outrageously fun story, with diamond dialogue and an intellectually thrusting attitude to life, and it does end on that high of a performance.

While they are completely different cinematic spheres, it reminds me of the last James Bond film, which ended with 007 making the ultimate sacrifice, and the last few minutes of the film were spent in mourning for the dead killer.

Which is just a bizarre fucking way for a James Bond film to end, who wants to walk out of the latest 007 on a downer? That's not what they're for, and fundamentally misunderstands the appeal of the super-spy's adventures. 

Nobody walks out of Withnail in a low mood. It can leave you pensive or morose, but it goes out on such a high, one that would have been fucked up the arse by a shotgun ending.