Review of How it Should Have Ended

Created by Tommy Watson and Daniel Baxter in August 2005, How It Should Have Ended rights the many wrongs that have been forced upon us at an expense of $11 for each cinematic mishap. Baxter, whose award-winning illustrations pepper the site’s clever, animated complaints, has worked with such high profile clients as Microsoft, Penguin-Putnam, Forbes, and the New York Times and with his own storyboard design company, Simple Cap Storyboards. While there are other people who work on the site (like Kiddo the Dog) who write reviews, the cartoons are primarily written and drawn by Watson and Baxter.

Watson and Baxter’s alternate endings to popular movies are brief (30 to 60 seconds) and funny. Their solutions to flaws in storytelling are sometimes obvious (yes, Superman should have thwarted Lex Luthor’s bombs between being told about them and being confronted with Kryptonite) and sometimes hilariously astute (yes, Gandalf should have just flown the ring to Mordor via eagle since he flew the eagle straight there at the end anyway). Each one is done in Baxter’s curious and somewhat renowned illustrating style

. Other destinations on the site include comic strips by Baxter and movie reviews by producer Tina Alexander. While months can pass before a new cartoon is released, there is a nifty status sheet on the homepage that keeps fans abreast of progress on new episodes, listing work done on the script, artwork, animation, and final editing in graphed percentages
As far as video sites are concerned, the status feature on the homepage is great. With sites like this that promise to update “once in a while,” you never know if a site is permanently offline or work on the next big release is lagging because the creators’ day jobs are getting in the way of artistic progress. So it’s great to see a website that shows you that while its updates may be rare, they will continue in the future.