As a fan of both movies and Michael Cera, I sometimes wonder how my favorite films would end if Cera were the lead role. Surprisingly, I don’t think it’d turn out so well. Have a look for yourself.

1. “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory” (1971)
How the movie really ended: The final act shows Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum) realizing he is a complete jerk and kleptomaniac for stealing all of Willy Wonka’s (Gene Wilder) candied goods. Wilder then yells at Ostrum making him go fetal and invites him on a glass elevator ride in an ending sequence that is filled with so much metaphor it’ll make your nose bleed.

How the movie would have ended: Cera, self-actualized and clad in a hooded sweatshirt despite it being mid-July, coyly enters Wilder’s half-room. Stumbling to speak, he stutters over his every word until Wilder outs him for being a “nancy boy.” Cera stares at the camera for 12 seconds non-consecutively and sheds a single tear. Fitting his oversized headphones onto his ears, he leaves the room via the back door, bypassing the glass elevator, opting for an escalator made of vanilla chocolate and symmetry.

2. “The Simpsons Movie” (2007)
How the movie really ended: Homer saves the day by riding a motorcycle he somehow learned to drive, and disposes of a bomb that was set to make each and every citizen of Springfield explode.

How the movie would have ended: Cera, somehow less animated now than before, despite being a literally animated character, slowly and awkwardly careens his way onto the motorcycle which he has no clue how to drive. He gives saving the day the ol’ college try and – surprise – succeeds in the most bizarre, camera-pleasing way imaginable. Cartoon Jonah Hill comes out of nowhere, for no reason other than the fact that he is Jonah Hill, and he is in everything.

3. “Goldfinger” (1964)
How the movie really ended: Sean Connery, thick accent, thick chest hair and thick skull, keeps Fort Knox from blowing up, but not before killing everyone in sight in the most creative, imaginative fashion possible.

How the movie would have ended: Michael Cera, in an exercise of inauspicious, yet painfully comedic storytelling, runs around Fort Knox like a chicken with its head cut off. Both he and the audience are then reminded that he is Michael Cera, the most profoundly typecast actor of the 21st century, and the movie promptly ends without any further explanation. Playing over the credits are the tunes most commonly linked to Pitchfork Media’s “Forkcast,” combined with spliced-in clips of Cera joking with castmates that he “almost died, man!”

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