Good movies with bad endings.

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by metal134, Mar 20, 2017.

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  1. gururyan

    gururyan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Stillwater, ok
    Dreamcatcher
    I remember watching this and really enjoying it...until the entire movie shifted into a ridiculous action/alien movie. It was as if halfway through the movie they yelled "Cut!" and swapped out writers, director, crew, etc. with a completely different movie and yelled "Action!"

    The Village
    Had this been edited differently, it would have made the entire chase through the woods terrifying. The reveal in the floorboard of the costume let us know the beast was just one of them, dressed up. Had that been kept a secret, the long, intense chase through the woods would have been just that, intense. But nope, since we knew it was just one of the elders and not a creepy monster, the chase only had me looking at my watch. I was no longer concerned or interested. This one edit/spoiler takes this from a great movie to just meh.
     
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  2. Beatlened

    Beatlened Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dublin, Ireland
    Another vote for Vertigo from me. I heard so much about how great this movie was. I finally saw it and was enjoying it but that ending is terrible
     
    Lightworker likes this.
  3. The Panda

    The Panda Forum Mutant

    Location:
    Marple, PA, USA
    just curious if you saw the European ending on youtube
     
  4. Rocker

    Rocker Senior Member

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    You must have seen the theatrical version.... the extended cut is a massive improvement.
     
    Mike Rivera likes this.
  5. Keith V

    Keith V Forum Resident

    Location:
    Secaucus, NJ
    The Birds ending was way too ambiguous.

    Superman with the time travel thing was a cop out.
     
  6. Rocker

    Rocker Senior Member

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    Have you tried, ya know, looking it up on the internet? :p
     
  7. Lightworker

    Lightworker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Deep Texas
    The last five minutes blew the entire set-up. Worse yet...it seemed like an "add on" that
    was awkwardly appended to appease certain factions:

    [​IMG]
     
  8. Lightworker

    Lightworker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Deep Texas
    Vertigo: Like listening to Zep's epic "Stairway To Heaven" for the first time in 1971...only to have Jimmy Page's climactic six-string solo at the end replaced by a kazoo overdub.
     
  9. arley

    arley Forum Resident

    The first time I saw Chaplin's 'City Lights' I was in my twenties, and was furious at the ending--the Tramp looks wistfully at the girl he loved while she was blind, and she finally realizes it was he who helped her get her vision back--and it leaves you hanging. Didn't like it.

    With the passage of a few decades, I now find the ending sublime--sort of what Faulkner said, that the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.
     
    guy incognito likes this.
  10. milankey

    milankey Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, Ohio, USA
    Mulholland Drive. As near as I can interpret it, you watch it for like two hours and of course you buy into the story, then the last 20 minutes goes off in another direction that is supposed to be saying the first two hours was just a dream.:thumbsdow
     
    SomeCallMeTim and driverdrummer like this.
  11. TheVU

    TheVU Forum Resident

    What about Chinatown's ending left you sour?
     
  12. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    When I was asking the question, there was no Internet. And besides, asking the Internet leads to worse answers!
     
  13. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    That reminds me - Star Trek Into Darkness with its swapped-out Wrath Of Khan ending minus the presumed actual death of a beloved character. What a load of crap. It was bad enough when they went through 2 hours of shenanigans to get Spock back to life way back when - they didn't let Kirk stay dead for more than a scene.
     
  14. Halloween Jack

    Halloween Jack Forum Resident

    That ending is great for me. It feels like the greatest tragedy in history:
    Madeleine dies again?!
    . After all that obsession and struggle to make it work with Judy, putting aside the awful past and
    James Stewart getting over his phobia, the same tragedy strikes again.

    ...

    I second the ending of No Country For Old Men. It feels like the movie, in the last act, just dilutes itself into nothing but a boring thought. Critics loved it, though. And it's not actually a normal "thriller" film, so you kinda expect some kind of "spin" (like everything with the Coen brothers).
     
    Lightworker likes this.
  15. Keith V

    Keith V Forum Resident

    Location:
    Secaucus, NJ
    I agree about 2001

    I was so mad I sat through that.
    I was told "you have to read the book to understand it".
    I said "if I have to read a book to understand a movie then it's a lousy movie".
     
  16. Dr. Funk

    Dr. Funk Vintage Dust

    Location:
    Fort Worth TX
    More like heartbroken.
     
  17. My interpretation, after several viewings was that it was all alien stuff that we can't understand. Which, if one of us was suddenly dropped into the middle of somewhere else in the universe, is how we would probably experience it. No normal frame of reference so everything would basically be one big wtf? Or in other words, it can't be explained.
     
  18. Good point. Then again, the big blow-up seems to be King's standard "I've written this whole thing without once thinking about the end and now I'm here so . . . everything blows up" solution to not bothering to write outlines before he writes the book.
     
    Dudley Morris and ohnothimagen like this.
  19. Beatlened

    Beatlened Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dublin, Ireland
    The tragedy of the ending of Vertigo is one thing. It's how it happened that's farcical.
     
  20. TheVU

    TheVU Forum Resident

    Oh. You meant it was personally bad, not cinematically bad.
     
  21. jojopuppyfish

    jojopuppyfish Senior Member

    Location:
    Maryland
    All the Presidents Men.---->Always felt there was much more to the story.
    In fact, on the recent Blu Ray is a great documentary narrated by Robert Redford where they talk about Watergate......the hearings were fascinating.
    To me, its a great movie with a very odd ending.
     
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  22. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    I dunno - the whole thing with the boiler seemed to be an underlying threat through the whole book IIRC.
     
  23. metal134

    metal134 Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Canton, OH, USA
    Chinatown had one of my FAVORITE endings.
     
  24. Dr. Funk

    Dr. Funk Vintage Dust

    Location:
    Fort Worth TX
    Well...I don't want to spoil the movie for those who have not seen it. There was an argument between Robert Towne (screenplay) and Roman Polanski (director) on the ending. I would have taken Towne's side, but he lost.
     
  25. Yes, good point. I haven't actually read the Shining since it first came out so I forgot about that. It's other books where he did that, like Needful Things and Insomnia.
     
    dkmonroe likes this.
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