The end of Snake Eyes comes across as a kind of post script. After spending the entire film trapped in a casino, the final few scenes offer an uncharacteristically limp climax followed by a hurried final wrap up of the events that transpire after the casino’s demolition. This was not always the case.

The lost ending – scrapped because test audiences didn’t like it and are generally not to be trusted – consisted of an enormous tidal wave sweeping through the casino at a most opportune moment, killing all the bad guys. This version (described by Carla Gugino as “awesome”) was full of costly special effects, and even caused Gugino to come down with pneumonia. DePalma, in a recent interview with The Playlist hypothesized that this deus ex machina ending was so poorly received because “people don’t believe in that [laughing . They don’t believe in God looking down from above and saying, ‘The only way to deal with this is a flood. There’s so much corruption here, let’s wipe it all away and get an ark out and start from scratch.’ ”

Jury’s still out on that one…