Unforgiven is both a love letter to and total demystification of the genre. It portrays the Old West as a violent, savage place while Eastwood’s Munny is no hero. In almost any other Western, the final shootout is framed as a cathartic release where the bad guys finally get their comeuppance; in Unforgiven, it’s a clumsy, nasty shootout.
The film still ends on something of a hopeful note, as a post-script implies Munny used his money from the job to start a new life with his children away from their failing farm. However, there was an alternate Unforgiven – which was inspired by a Wayne Western – ending that Eastwood later cut.
Unforgiven’s “Beautiful” Ending Wasn’t Needed
Speaking with Yahoo, Unforgiven screenwriter David Peoples reflected on how his script – originally titled The William Munny Killings – featured an additional ending scene. This saw Munny return to the farm and reuniting with his children. When his son asks if he killed anybody, Munny just lies and proclaims “Naw, son, I didn’t kill nobody.” Peoples confirmed that Eastwood shot this ending “beautifully,” and it was included in an early cut of Unforgiven he viewed. However, this scene was snipped before the film hit theaters in 1992.
Speaking with Eastwood about his reasons for cutting Unforgiven’s alternate ending, Peoples stated “He said he thought that it was a beat too many, and he wasn’t going to use it.” The writer himself said the scene was based on the ending to The Godfather, where Al Pacino’s Michael lies to Kay (Diane Keaton), denying involvement in the killings of other mobsters. To Peoples, Munny’s lies are so he can mask the shame of going back to his former ways and taking more lives, and underlined the ending shootout wasn’t a triumphant one. Since Unforgiven had already made that clear, Eastwood was wise to remove the reunion scene ending.
Unforgiven’s Alternate Ending Has Never Been Released
Even in an era where deleted scenes and alternate endings for classic movies often made their way onto special edition DVDs or Blu-rays, Unforgiven’s other ending has never been released. That said, deleted scenes for any Clint Eastwood movie, and like Christopher Nolan, he probably believes that once a scene is cut out, it doesn’t need to be seen again.
Peoples hasn’t seen it seen either and claims “I don’t know what’s happened to it,” but regardless, he feels Eastwood’s final cut of Unforgiven is “… a beautiful movie.”
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