The Departed is certainly one of Martin Scorsese’s finest motion pictures of the twenty first century partly because of its stunning ending, however one studio demand would have completely ruined the movie if the director had listened. The 2006 crime film is an thrilling cat-and-mouse thriller about an undercover cop and a gangster working for the FBI, and so they’re each making an attempt to uncover who one another is. The movie famously ends with virtually each main character getting killed. Scorsese received his first — and to this point solely — Academy Award for Finest Director for the movie, and it received the coveted Oscar for Finest Image, too.
Nonetheless, based on Scorsese, Warner Bros. wished the Departed ending modified after being upset throughout a check screening. The filmmaker commented, “After which the studio guys walked out, and so they have been very unhappy as a result of they simply didn’t need that film. They wished the franchise. Which implies: I can’t work right here anymore.” Whereas Warner Bros. didn’t get the franchise it wished, the studio may not have gotten the Academy Award for Finest Image with out the present harrowing finale, and a much less brutal ending would have made the film a lot worse.
It’s onerous to imagine {that a} studio would make calls for on Martin Scorsese, because the celebrated filmmaker had been thought-about one of many greats lengthy earlier than 2006. Nonetheless, Warner Bros. nonetheless made requests, not that Scorsese listened. The studio wished not solely Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), the undercover cop, to outlive but in addition wished Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), the gangster who infiltrated the FBI, to outlive, too. The thought was to go away the door open for a sequel, however that wouldn’t have been potential with each essential characters killed off. But, having them survive wouldn’t make any sense both.
If each characters survived, the story wouldn’t have unfolded naturally, and as Scorsese put it, within the eyes of the studio, “It wasn’t a few ethical concern of an individual dwelling or dying.” The Departed ending is nearly farcical in the way in which each character is brutally murdered, however each character has additionally been on edge for months and feelings are working wild, and when these characters have a hair set off, there’s just one potential consequence. The film depicts how grueling and demanding it’s to be undercover, on both facet, and with that in thoughts, there was just one method The Departed may finish.
Like so a lot of Scorsese’s motion pictures, The Departed is actually about how crime doesn’t pay, nevertheless it additionally tells a fable about how the nice guys don’t all the time win. If each Billy and Colin survived, the message wouldn’t have labored. Whereas The Departed is an American remake of Infernal Affairs, which has plenty of sequels, Scorsese advised a really completely different story along with his remake. Moreover, the film is actually referred to as The Departed, and probably the most talked-about Easter eggs in motion pictures is the a number of “X”s that may secretly be discovered proper earlier than a personality’s dying, which renders any concept of a sequel moot.
Whereas the principle characters have been killed in The Departed, one character survived; Workers Sergeant Dignam (Mark Wahlberg). He was suspended with pay after blaming Sullivan for the dying of Captain Charlie Queenan (Martin Sheen). The subsequent time Dignam seems is within the final scene when he shoots Sullivan within the head after studying that he labored for Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Warner Bros. tried to make a sequel with Dignam because the lead, and The Departed 2 was pitched by Wahlberg and The Departed screenwriter William Monahan. Not a lot has been revealed about The Departed 2, however Wahlberg opened up concerning the pitch and the way he was merely accompanying Monahan.
The actor commented, “I went into a gathering with Invoice Monahan at Warner Bros. to pitch the sequel to The Departed; he wished me to go together with him. This was after it had received Finest Image, it was a giant success and all that. Let’s simply say the pitch didn’t go very properly.” Wahlberg talked about {that a} Departed prequel was being talked about, too. Nonetheless, it’s for the perfect {that a} Wahlberg-centric sequel by no means occurred. Whereas The Departed‘s screenwriter was hooked up to the venture, Martin Scorsese wouldn’t have been concerned within the sequel, and it probably wouldn’t have been anyplace close to as positively obtained as the unique.