‘Poor Things’ Movie Made a Major Change to the Ending of the Book

The Big Picture

• Bella’s journey in Poor Things is a darkly comedic and bizarre exploration of womanhood and self-discovery.
• The ending with Bella’s abusive husband throws a misogynistic wrench into her newfound happiness.
• Emma Stone’s unhinged and free-spirited portrayal of Bella is key to the film’s success, alongside a star-studded cast.

There’s an inherent absurdity to the premise of Yorgos Lanthimos‘s Poor Things. A Frankenstein-like tale, it tells the story of Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a woman who is brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Amidst the humor and bizarreness is an emotional edge as Bella is forced to grow up rather quickly to meet the expectations of an adult. Her journey is an introduction to every part of the world, from its pleasures to the greed, cruelty, and cynicism that lie beneath, and she’s left to discover who she is and find her liberation. Balancing the whole film around the unhinged comedy and the deeper themes of womanhood and self-discovery was a challenge for writer Tony McNamara, but no scene proved more difficult than the ending of Bella’s journey.

“I think probably the last scene, the dinner table scene with Alfie when she goes back to her husband was difficult on a number of levels,” McNamara said during an interview with Collider’s Perri Nemiroff when he was asked about the film’s balancing act between humor and thematic heft. Poor Things takes an especially dark turn towards its end when it introduces Alfie (Christopher Abbott), the abusive, possessive husband from before Bella’s body’s death and brain swap. Although Bella seems to have found happiness through her betrothed, her girlfriend, and her sexual awakening, Alfie’s return throws one final misogynistic wrench into things, forcing her to confront a physical manifestation of all the worst things in the world she’s ever encountered.

How Bella reached her happy ending is darkly comedic and bizarre, but it was made all the more complicated with an entirely new and vitally important character entering the mix. McNamara says he had to go beyond the original book by Alisdair Gray to create something darker that still lined up thematically and tonally with the story. Most of all, the way Bella fights back had to fit the woman she grew into throughout the film:

“I was nervous because it’s weird to bring in a new character two hours into a movie who’s gonna be very intrinsic, so that seemed kind of risky. But also, I knew it was darker than where we had been, so I was like, ‘How do we keep the comedy? How do we keep it sort of unhinged and also make it feel emotional?’ Then I came up with the idea of, it’s not in the book, she never chooses to go back there, it’s a different ending, but I was like, ‘She should choose, because she’s fearless, to go find out where it was.’ And then once she’s there, I was like, ‘Oh, well, how do I make it funny?’ And then I was like, ‘Maybe it’s this weird guy and he’s got a weird co-dependency with his servants and they’re having an uprising.’ So it was just sort of, how do we make it odd and funny, like the rest of the movie, but in a slightly darker way so you’re a bit unnerved by the whole thing? So that was a tricky scene for me to kind of wrangle, I guess. To get the right pitch on.”

Emma Stone Was the Key to Making ‘Poor Things’ Work

Lanthimos was the perfect choice to bring McNamara’s screenplay to life given his experience in bringing unconventional, shocking, and darkly comedic stories to life, but the director also had no shortage of stars to perform the colorful and absurd balancing act Poor Ones aims for. McNamara gave much of the praise to Stone for taking the film to a new level with her unhinged, emotional, and free-spirited portrayal of Bella. The Oscar-winning La La Land actress is a favorite of Lanthimos, previously gracing The Favourite and Bleat and shooting another film with the director in secret ahead of their 2024 title together, AND. From threatening to punch a baby to conveying great sorrow, Stone runs the gamut of emotions and behaviors with Bella to show the often funny, yet deeply eye-opening nature of the journey.

Alongside Stone, the cast also features a villainous turn from Mark Ruffalo as the foppish former lawyer Duncan Wedderburn, who is responsible for making that final scene a reality in the first place. Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael, and Margaret Qualley round out the star-studded bunch.

Poor Things is in theaters now. Read our review here for our thoughts on Lanthimos’s latest and check out Nemiroff’s full interview with McNamara below.

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