The most outlandish one I can think of is Spielberg’s WAR OF THE WORLDS, a nightmare of death horror and destruction, complete with outlandish family values happy ending that had the audience screaming “BULLSHIT!” at the screen when I saw it.
cf. The entire oeuvre of M. Night Shyamalan.
The difference being that Shyamalan’s films aren’t even interesting before the alleged surprise ending, they’re just boring from start to finish.
I was being sarcastic. I don’t think any of his films are great at all. Signs was effective enough, and Unbreakable is probably the most adult take on the superhero/comic book film, but if I was a producer, I would have passed on both of them.
Fat Girl. I thought the film was great up until the scene were the mother and two daughters are sleeping in the car. It just seemed to take the meaning out of the film for meat that moment. If you’ve seen the movie I hope you know what I’m talking about I just don’t want to give anything away. I know the thread is for movies that were almost ruined, but this is the first thing that came to mind when you mention bad endings.
The outtakes at the very end of “Being There”, as the credits are rolling.
Criswell, haven’t they eliminated the outtakes from BEING THERE? The last few times I saw it, the credits rolled against a background of static and television interference.
I am laughing so much over the Shyamalan comments. If there is an overrated director it’s got to be him.
David, yeah, Fat Girl has one of those over the top endings that you either go with or you don’t. I just loved that actress, when she was kissing the railing at the pool and the side of the diving board, going back and forth between them. Originally, Breillat was going to shoot a different ending, where the girl is taken for a gynecological exam after what happens to her — I’m curious, would that have made it any better for you?
i’ve have to say “The Departed”… i really liked most of the film… well acted, well made… but then the end just really blew it for me… it didn’t even make any sense for that random character to kill dicaprio’s character, and expose himself to damon’s character. that character would likely not even know that damon was nicholson’s man, just like damon didn’t know he was… he might also know that damon killed nicholson’s character, in which case he would want to kill damon, not rescue him… and even IF he did know that damon was nicholson’s man AND didn’t know that damon killed nicholson… with nicholson dead, there’s no reason at all for this guy to expose himself to anyone else… there’s no reason for him to kill dicaprio’s character… plus, taking a character that we have invested emotion into (dicaprio) and having them killed all of a sudden by some random guy that we don’t even know at all (random guy B from the board room) was just a cheap way out, to me… just didn’t think it worked well at all.. i loved the movie up to that point… and then when that happened i just said “you’ve got to be kidding me”… and that was that… ruined it for me.
RETURN OF THE KING. The audience I originally saw it with appeared to be doing the wave for the last half hour of the film. “Is it over? Should we get up? Oh wait, there’s more. Quick, sit down!”
And don’t give me this “it’s true to the book” stuff. As the first two movies showed us, Walsh, Boyen, and Jackson were more interested (and rightly so) in a filmic translation than a page-for-page adaptation. They just kept drawing it out until all of the grandeur had been fully deflated. This was our first real peek at what was in store for us in KING KONG.
Bloody tragic. And all the more so, considering the great heights that had preceded it.
samuryan… interesting… actually, that’s the only one of the LOTR films that i was really pleased with the ending off…. yes, i’ll agree, the first time i saw it they did make it seem a couple times as if it was over before it really was…. but, i think of those 3 films as really one film…. in my opinion, in a story that big you can’t just have a big climax and then end 5 minutes later…. you’ve been on a big 10 hour journey… you need a decent amount of “cool down”…. and after the first time.. i really enjoyed the slowed down pace of the end… and i wouldn’t have it any other way…
Haute Tension comes to mind. Great film up until the last 15 minutes or so. Stupid pointless twist almost ruined the whole film for me.
A.I. immediately came to mind, with that contrived “alien” ending. And, also, the most recent Indiana Jones movie, with its “alien” explanation ending (though the Indy movie wasn’t close to half as good as A.I. was up until that ending). Hmmm…I wonder what else these two films have in common?
LEWIS886:
I completely agree that if watched (as I’m sure was ultimately intended) with the two previous installments, the ending is well-paced and rewarding. I suppose it’s not fair of me to fault the filmmakers for the audiences inability to book a 12-hour marathon every time they want to visit Middle-earth. Nevertheless, I think we could’ve shaved an easy 20 minutes out of that theatrical cut.
FRED O.:
I thought the “alien” ending (they were actually robots, the advanced ancestors of David, not aliens) led to one of the most haunting and heartbreaking finales in modern film. Cutting out that ending, which the entire film had been progressing toward, would’ve been akin to leaving out the last shot of CITIZEN KANE… in my (obviously a bit warped) opinion.
Mystic River seemed like a complete cop out to me at the end. I thought 3/4 of it was great and then… (sigh)
Apocalypto. I was disappointed that Mel would work so hard for historical accuracy and blow it in the last moment of the film. A quick wrap up and an easy solution. Unless of course he cared nothing for the fabled ancient culture and created a dazzling story about the end of a man’s life (just because the explorers had interrupted and prolonged his capture from the blues doesn’t mean he was free from Europe’s white terror from upon the water).
The dominating cultures were long dead by the time Spanish dominance had stumbled upon the western shores; however understandable at the native’s awe as the mythical Quetzalcoatl walked again among them. If mel was going historical he was crapping out, if he was going fantastic, why not use the panther. We all wanted it.
@Samuryan
The ending(s) to the LOTR trilogy is love-it or hate-it. Personally, I thought it was the perfect ending for the trilogy IF you watched the whole 10-hour saga from start to finish, no breaks…for the 3-hour ROTK, however, it may seem like a little much.
@Jay Leighty
I somewhat agree with you on Mystic River. Maybe this was Eastwood staying true to the book, but I HATED how Laura Linney’s character all of a sudden becomes Lady Macbeth in the final scenes. It didn’t really fit with her story-arc and kinda made the end of the movie just plain weird.
As for my vote for “ending that ruined the rest of the movie?” Well, Shyamalan was already mentioned (I liked Sixth Sense and had no problem with Unbreakable, but the end of The Village turned a decent psychological thriller into sheer absurdity in the worst possible way). I also didn’t care for the ending to Garden State (a forced happy ending that didn’t fit with the rest of the film).
I’ll also throw in the end to Closer. The first time I saw it I liked how it ended…but then I saw the play. The play’s ending is WAY better…now when I see the film I can’t really understand why the big change.
LOTR had a decent ending. It just took Jackson too long, about 20 minutes or so, to do it. John Boorman did the same thing (have the protagonists sail off into the west to Valhalla/Avalon/Paradise/Heaven/etc.) in like 15 seconds with Excalibur. Granted Jackson had more to include (getting rescued by the eagles, going home, Sam getting married, Frodo and co sail off into the west, then finally Sam Orlando Bloom and his Dwarf lover go) he still shouldn’t have used say more than 5 minutes of screen time, probably less.
Ron B, for me it was actually the implausibility in Mystic River of a man killing a child molester, after suffering from a childhood trauma for decades at coincidentally the exact same time on the exact same night that his friend (who was witness to said trauma) had his daughter killed in what appeared to be an obvious murder but was actually a fluke accident.. (sigh). I can dig coincidences in a movie that’s full of them throughout, that embraces fate and serves as a parable (a la Crash, Slumdog Millionaire, even the absurdly yet consistently unrealistic August Rush), but I hate when a story strives for grit and realism (and achieves it) for nearly the entirety and then pulls off a ridiculous coincidence without even really foreshadowing it simply because the writers wanted a twist. The Lady Macbeth thing was odd but didn’t bother me near as much probably because the movie already lost it’s creditbility with me. I’m rambling and running on here but damnit, this is cathartic. I agree that Eastwood did his typical excellent job and am sure the dumb, cheating, pointless… #$%^& ending was merely a fault of the original novel. I feel better now.
i thought the sex scene interspiced with the flashbacks to the terrorist killings in ‘munich’ nearly derailed the experience for me. but i still very much liked the film despite that audacious scene
Minority Report
AI
Spielberg likes to take complex philosophical questions and answer them with shallow kneejerk humanism. Minority Report called for a darker ending. And what the hell was up with those aliens in AI?
I have no idea what the ending of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN was about.
Sure, I understand that here you had your lawman, your good guy, more-or-less tossing up his hands and saying, “There are some evil sons o’ bitches in this world, and the good men may well never stop them…”
In terms of plot-arc, or story-arc, I wondered if this was the best possible ending for the Coen’s picture… but hey, who am I to question their artistic intent?
….if this was the best possible ending…
One of the best film endings ever.
@DLB
The first time I saw No Country For Old Men was before I saw any Sergio Leone westerns, so I had that same reaction. Then when I came back for it after seeing GBU and Once Upon A Time In The West, I saw No Country as an attempt to see how the ‘Real man’ character Bronson refers to as a dying race would go about functioning in a modern world.
The answer seems to be, modern approach to law enforcement has no way to deal with that kind of man. Without a corresponding Bronson to Chigirn’s Frank, he can do whatever he wants. But also, with the scene with the wife at the end, those contrived codes of ethics those ‘Real men’ function by are exposed as a load of garbage and an excuse not to take responsibility for one’s actions.
I do not like the end of “There will be Blood.” What a spectacular film! but the end totally took me out of it. it seemed like an actor improv workshop. “explore your characters, I’ll start the camera… don’t hold back, guys!” I look forward to seeing the film again someday, and hope I have a different reaction.
Knowing…
The (reshot) ending to Roeg’s THE WITCHES.
Justin Biberkopf
Has anyone had this experience of watching and loving a film, right up until some cheesy moment at the end? I don’t mean like does the plot end happily or sadly. I guess I’m thinking here of The Assassination of Richard Nixon, a rather downbeat film which I liked. At the end, after the botched hijacking, where Sean Penn is just taken out by the Swat team, it’s so powerful. Then the film cuts to this lame scene of him when he was alive, running around his apartment flying a toy airplane. I was like no. Oh, and another one — Last Days by Gus Van Sant, who I love; at the end, after the rock star’s body is found, his “friends” who have been sponging off him fly into a drug-fueled paranoia attack and decide to leave for L.A. There are these great close-ups of their empty, sunglassed faces in the back of a limo driving on the freeway. Boom. Perfect way to end. The hypocrisy, the abandonment. But then we cut to this sequence where police investigators are poking around the boat house, and it’s just so mundane. Is there some unwritten rule that, no matter how daring and brilliant a film might be, it has to have a mundane ending?