Dolittle's Shocking Dragon Ending Was Apparently Robert Downey Jr.'s Idea

It's only January but movie fans have likely already seen the most insane and absurd scene in all of 2020. Dolittle, Robert Downey Jr.'s first movie after leaving the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hit theaters a couple of weeks ago and fell flat on its face. The big budget family adventure could potentially lose $100 million when all is said and done, and the critical reception was even worse than the box office performance. What had people talking, though, was Dolittle's ludicrous final act, which featured Downey performing a colonoscopy on a CGI dragon and a bagpipe-induced fart.

That dragon scene is one that audiences won't be forgetting any time soon, but it may come as a surprise that the addition of the sequence didn't come from one of the several directors that worked on the movie over the course of its production. Pulling a bagpipe out of a dragon's ass as Dolittle's big climax was apparently all Downey's idea.

On Friday, The Hollywood Reporter published a piece that chronicles all of the issues behind the scenes of Dolittle. While everyone working on the film apparently got along throughout the entire process and there wasn't any sort of infighting, having the input of several different directors and producers led to a tonal nightmare. The first cut of the film from original director Stephen Gaghan wasn't enough of a family comedy, so Dolittle went through various reshoots and rewrites with help from a few different filmmakers and the team tried desperately to insert humor wherever they could. This eventually led to big changes in the story and an issue trying to figure out an ending.

According to multiple insiders close to the situation, it was Downey that came up with the idea for the dragon sequence, and he did so at the last minute. It doesn't seem like anyone pushed back against the idea too heavily, either. One source told THR, "When Iron Man tells you to do something, you listen to Iron Man."

That dragon scene will help Dolittle live in infamy, and it looks as though that credit goes straight to Tony Stark himself.