I remember reading that the original ending had Indy dying at the end and I reckon the newly shot scene that was added was when PWB punched him to ring him back. amirite?
shareThat felt like a reshoot when I was watching it. The whole bit ended so abruptly.
shareBeats the original ending that horrible Kathleen Kennedy wanted.
shareWhat was her original ending?
The one KK wanted showed the young Indiana Jones getting killed in the past, the older one from the 60s faded away, and Helena picked up the fedora and took on the role Indiana would have, doing all the same things he did, but better.
Lucasfilm shot 5 different endings, all with similar events to the one above, where Indy dies and Helena takes on the role in his place, and none of them got a test audience approval score higher than 35% In fact, the one that made it even that high was a version where Indy sacrificed himself to save Helena, and then she takes his hat and becomes the new female Indiana Jones.
You could imagine how angry Bob Iger was when he saw the finished film with the original ending. He called KK and demanded she change it, or he was going to fire her. Lucasfilm had to rush to make a better ending than the one Kennedy wanted, so that's why we have that really quick, abrupt one in the final film.
To be fair, I think he was planning on firing KK anyway, after what she'd done to Star Wars, but he had to build a case to support his decision first.