Keanu Reeves, the acclaimed and versatile actor, has consistently showcased his talent and charisma in various film genres. With his striking presence and versatile performances, Reeves has become a household name and an icon of the silver screen. One of his notable breakthroughs was in the action movie Speed, released in 1994, where he solidified his status as an action hero.
The thrilling vehicular action in the film captivated audiences. But little did anyone know that the original idea for its ending would have taken the bus to Dodger Stadium. However, the team owners of the stadium disapproved of the film’s subject matter, leading to the alternate ending at the airport.
Graham Yost’s Vision For Speed’s Dodger Stadium Ending
Graham Yost, the screenwriter of Speed, initially envisioned the film ending with the bus at Dodger Stadium. Yost came up with the idea after considering a map of Los Angeles and identifying Dodger Stadium’s road that encircles the stadium through its parking lots. This location seemed perfect to him for the thrilling conclusion of the film.
“The original ending was just them getting off the bus and it just was a shorter script. I don’t know how well you know L.A., but I just looked at a map where could they drive around in a circle and I saw Dodger Stadium has this big road all the way around the stadium through all the parking lots. I thought that’s perfect.”
However, the idea would not come to fruition due to the disapproval from the owners of the stadium. The Band of Brothers writer revealed that the subject matter of Speed, which involved a terrorist plot, did not align with the Dodger Stadium owners.
“That was scripted and then the people who owned the Dodgers at the time owned the stadium and the parking lots. They said, ‘Yeah, no. We’re not going to have a terrorist film shot at Dodger Stadium.”
Graham Yost On The Airport Ending Scene Of Keanu Reeves Starrer Speed
As an alternative to the stadium ending, the film’s creators settled on an airport scene for the final climax. However, even Yost admitted that the airport ending lacked logical coherence. In this scene, the protagonist, Jack Traven, played by Keanu Reeves, sets up closed-circuit cameras to distract the antagonist and rescue the passengers from the bus. As the bus crashes into a plane and the antagonist proceeds to the subway with ransom money, Yost questions the big explosion and the lack of narrative consistency.
“So they scouted other ideas and they came up with the idea of the airport. That then allowed [director] Jan [de Bont] to have a big explosion which makes no f**king sense but it’s fun. It’s cool. You want to see something blow up. It’s this weird thing of, well, we’ve been waiting the whole time for this bus to blow up. But now it hits a plane and is it the plane blowing up? The audience doesn’t care. They don’t even care that you can see the tow cables rattling around on the pavement because we didn’t have enough money to paint them out.”
Keanu Reeves’ performance in Speed solidified his position as a renowned action movie hero. And though the original idea of concluding the film at Dodger Stadium was rejected, the actual ending scene was still able to impress fans, despite lacking a bit of logic.
Speed is available for streaming on Hulu.
Source: Script Apart
