Unnecessarily happy endings (1 Viewer)

[Seth--L]

I didn't like "Cold Mountain," but the ending made sense. It showed how no one can escape war, but ultimately 'the family' (as in society) lives on.

 

[Joe Karlosi]

 

[AlexCremers]

So is Wages Of Fear, whether you like the ending or not.

 

[Haggai]

Seth--L: regarding L.A. Confidential, I don't think it's the fate of the character per se, but rather:

...the fact that he survived being shot at point-blank range by Dudley Smith! Surviving the first shot from Dudley, from a distance, after which Bud briefly comes back to life to stab him in the leg, was credible enough. But to have him survive the point-blank shot right after that seems like a bit much. Overall, it works OK that he survives, but the way they did things in the shoot-out made it seem too unlikely that he does.

In the book, Bud leads a group of cops who intercept an escaping train from a prison, and he has a knife fight with one of the arch-convicts who's guilty of several key murders throughout the book. Exley sends them on the mission, but he isn't physically involved in it--VERY different from the movie, and in the book, Dudley actually survives, there's no shootout or final reckoning with him. This big fight in the book is also where Vincennes gets killed. Bud is almost killed in the fight, but he does survive it (albeit in terrible shape), so when he shows up alive in Lynn's car at the very end, it isn't so jarring.

As for Wages of Fear, I did think it was a brilliant movie all the way up to the ending, which was disappointing in that it seemed to come out of nowhere.

 

[Seth--L]

Haggai,

I understand, but the final moment between the three characters is so underplayed that it doesn't matter. It's not quite a 'happily-ever-after' ending. Or in otherworlds, the film does not try to get an emotional response from the audience about Lynn and White going off to live together. As she puts it, some guys win awards, others get prostitutes. So the film didn't go out of its way to keep him alive.

 

[todd stone]

how was the perfect storm a happy ending? they all died...

 

[Richard Kim]

Surprised nobody mentioned the end of Speilberg's War of the Worlds yet in which Tom Cruise's son, who we thought was killed earlier appears at the end with his family at their house, which was completely undamaged by the alien attacks.

 

[Rhoq]

Richard - you beat me to it.

That scene, though I just knew it was coming because it's to be expected from these Hollywood disaster flicks, was so anti-climactic to me. It would have been more powerful if...

Ray had to tell the Ex that Robbie was killed while trying to help the military fight the alien invaders.

Maybe she could have dropped to her knees hysterical, while the camera zooms out and Morgan Freeman did his closing narration, though much darker than his "the aliens never had a chance" speech.

I think I would have enjoyed the film much better had it ended on a darker note than the family-friendly way it did.

 

[andrew markworthy]

I'm surprised that so far nobody has mentioned the equally annoying cliche of Eastern cinema to have a miserable ending with at least the hero dying in the final reel. When I first started watching Eastern movies this made a refreshing change, but now it's just as irritating as the hero surviving against impossible odds.

Re: the ending of War of the Worlds:

I wonder if they filmed two endings - one in which the son is there and one in which he is not, and then they let a few discrete test audiences decide?

 

[Rhoq]

Andrew - you might be right. If that's the case then I think it would be safe to say that "test audiences" suck. LOL

 

[Magnus T]

delete

 

[AlexCremers]

I have to mention not the happy but the sappy ending of 'Schindler's List'. The whole movie Spielberg managed to refrain himself from such sentiment and then BANG: The dreaded "I could've done more" scene. The sad thing is that it did absolutely nothing for the movie. It only took away a little bit from the magnificence. OTOH, the real ending, where the real survivors appear, is nothing short of brilliant, so all is forgiven.

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Alex Cremers

 

[Juan C]

In my opening post I mentioned Se7en as an example of a movie with an ending honest to the general tone. Well, it seems even that was affected to some extent by Hollywood saccharine. I quote from Richard Dyer's excellent book on the movie, published by the BFI:

***SE7EN SPOILER WARNING***

 

[Holadem]

Not for me. Granted I saw it years ago long before I started watching movies with a more ciritical eye, but I thought it was a much needed emotional release from a harrowing film. Nottin wrong with that. Not all overt displays of emotions are evil. This one was MOST certainly earned.

--
H

 

[EricW]

i think Tarantino makes a good point in the True Romance DVD that the movie determines the ending.
in his script:
Christian Slater dies. but the way Tony Scott shoots the movie, it's okay to have him live.


that's the way i feel about Redford's The Natural:
i read the book as a kid, and i think the original ending was he doesn't hit the home run and he lives the rest of his life in shame or something


i say judge the movie as the movie and don't compare it to the book or it's original script. true movie fans can make the disinction that the movie is NOT the book.

 

[Paul_Stachniak]

In my opinion, and off the top of my head - A.I. and War of the Worlds.

 

[andrew markworthy]

WHAT????? This is one of the most moving scenes in cinema history. If you think that's a sappy ending you missed the whole point of the film. It is to show that no matter how vile the oppression, no matter how seemingly unsurmountable the odds, doing something, no matter how apparently small, is better than nothing at all. A simple statement of how many people Schindler saved and how many people are alive today as a result, would be a bare statistic without the visual proof.

There is an analagous situation in an early edition of This is Your Life (a Brit TV programme in which a famous person is surprised into appearing on a show celebrating their past achievements - I think you guys have an equivalent version). This particular programme celebrated the life of a French woman who helped Allied airmen who had been shot down during WWII escape back to the UK. At the end of the programme, the presenter said that they had some of the men she had helped escape in the audience, and would they please stand up. The entire audience stood up. Now that is a moment of utterly stunning impact. No doubt you would say it was a sappy thing to do and they shouldn't have done it.

 

[AlexCremers]

You act surprised ... even though much has been written about it. Well, the strawberry syrup, in which this scene was drenched in, temporarily warped me out of the movie. The audience should've been the ones heaving a breakdown, not Oskar Schindler. Keep the scene. Give Oskar the ring. No problem. But let the actors play it so that we fall on our knees. I really don't think it's the most moving scene in the history of cinema. But it's probably one of the most regretted ones, at least according to all the reviews I've read. You think all the reviewers missed the point of 'Schindler's List'? Every masterpiece has it flaws, even 'Schindler's List'.

I do think that the appearance of the real survivors is one of the most moving scenes in film history. They were the ones making the point clear that you mention in your post (how many people are alive today as a result). They made it very clear.




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Alex Cremers

 

[Dan Szwarc]

How about the "Edited for home video in the US" version of Brazil?
In the original, the main character IMAGINES the escape at the end, when he really went insane before his lobotomy. But in the common video US version, they edit out the insanity part and you just think he escaped (not to mention chopping 1 hour out of the film in general).

 

[andrew markworthy]

Oh God, Alex, sorry, sorry, sorry - I thought you meant the whole end of the movie. It turns out we are on the same page. As for 'I could have done more' specifically, I grant you it was a bit well, saccharin, but I thought it forgivable.