Stupidest Movie Endings?

[HubZilla]

I've stated this here before, but this one really angered me: Friday Night Lights

Leave before the ending card. You'll then realize you watched the wrong underdog movie.

The next year, the team WINS the State Title. This is more remarkable as they're replacing all the stars on offense and defense from the previous year. Think the 49ers winning it all the year after Montana, Rice, and Lott suddenly retired.

[CalMeacham]

Originally Posted by Deeg

For understandable (but not good) reasons the end of the animated Lord of the Rings was awful. Right in the middle of a battle Gandalf throws up his sword and declares victory. Movie over.

Actually, the ending of Bakshi;'s Lord of the Rings was recut after its initial release. The version I saw shortly after its opening in New York City was NOT the same as the version I saw later in the local cinema (Yes, I saw it more than once). The original ending didn't occur at that point, or, I suspect, where it does on the video releases (although i haven't seen those). It looks as if the existing ending is the result of a studio recut.


I can't find anything about this on Wikipedia or the iMDB, but, believe me, they changed the order and cutting of scenes at the end.

[Lightnin']

Originally Posted by Ibn Warraq

Really?

I thought that ending was great.

For that matter, so did Stephen King who IIRC, said he wished he'd thought of it first.

Obviously his years of drug use totally rotted out his brain, because (at least in my opinion) the novella ending is so much better than the big ol' Fuck You we got in the theater.

Originally Posted by Grestarian

I was just watching this Jackie Chan flick, Rumble in the Bronx, the other weekend and thought, "Boy, that's a stupid ending!"

...

Then (just for the extra film footage?), Keung, the grocery store manager, the street gang leader (now a friend?), and the cops take the (semi-restored) hovercraft for a spin, zipping across the golf course where they chase down and overtake the syndicate ringleader, literally running him over and sandblasting his shorts off. The movie ends by freezing Keung and the others grinning in the control room of the hover craft.

Don't forget the lovely view of the New York Mountains we get in the background of that scene...

[Mavic Chen]

Originally Posted by Hoopy Frood

I'm still torn as to which of the Army of Darkness endings was better.

The S-Mart one is better, it's the one I saw first (at the cinema).
The other one is better for a sequel but it was pretty clear there was never going to be one, and it was a downer ending with no action.

[OtisCampbellWasRight]

Originally Posted by Diceman

Actually, yes it was. It would seem that Kubrick was trying to hint at the aliens, but he doesn't give the audience enough information to form any kind of reasonable conclusion, resulting in a confusing acid-trip of an ending. Conclusion: it was a poorly-directed ending.

Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke intentionally made the ending of 2001 confusing. They were even quoted as saying something to the effect of "If you didn't leave the theater saying WTF, then we didn't do our job." I'm too lazy at the moment to go to imdb to find the exact quote.

[Lightnin']

Originally Posted by Mavic Chen

The S-Mart one is better, it's the one I saw first (at the cinema).
The other one is better for a sequel but it was pretty clear there was never going to be one, and it was a downer ending with no action.

I asked Bruce Campbell which ending he preferred, and he said that he thought the post-apocalyptic ending was better.

[thelurkinghorror]

Originally Posted by Lightnin'

Don't forget the lovely view of the New York Mountains we get in the background of that scene...

Or the skyscrapers of Washington, D.C. Or:

Austin Powers: "You know, it's amazing how the English countryside looks in no way like Southern California." Scene of deserts and such.

[Deeg]

Originally Posted by Two Many Cats

Yeah, what's with Disney? The queen in Snow White falls off a cliff too.

I've heard that children's movies prefer falling deaths because you can imply the death without actually showing it. Pixar's Up uses the same trope.

Originally Posted by thelurkinghorror

Wasn't that due to a lack of money, time, or studio support?

Yes. My understanding is that the LotR ran out of money (which also means they ran out of studio support) and they wrapped up the production as best they could.

[KneadToKnow]

Originally Posted by Two Many Cats

Yeah, what's with Disney? The queen in Snow White falls off a cliff too.

It has its own trope and everything.

WARNING: TVTropes link.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

I'm still annoyed by the end of Blazing Saddles, myself.

About the first half dozen times I watched the movie I couldn't even remember the ending because it feels like it has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. It's an anticlimax and not very interesting. Ending a crazy comedy like that is very hard. Few of the Marx Brothers' movies have satisfying endings either. They just sort of stop.

Originally Posted by Hottius Maximus

After watching "Burn After Reading" I just asked myself WHAT THE HELL was THAT all about!? Totally senseless!

Originally Posted by Uncle Jocko

Yeah, but JK Simmons' scene at the end almost made it all worthwhile.

Almost.

[Boyo Jim]

That was the whole point! A huge bureaucracy wasting gazillions of dollars that has no idea what a genuine threat is as opposed to nonsense, spending half its time covering its own ass, and even afterward having no idea if what it did was for the better or not. I loved that movie! It was the blackest of black comedies.

[KneadToKnow]

For those who don't like the endings of Holy Grail, Blazing Saddles, Burn After Reading, and the like, I strongly recommend you never read Tristam Shandy. And probably avoid its recent movie adaptation, A Cock and Bull Story.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by Boyo Jim

That was the whole point! A huge bureaucracy wasting gazillions of dollars that has no idea what a genuine threat is as opposed to nonsense, spending half its time covering its own ass, and even afterward having no idea if what it did was for the better or not. I loved that movie! It was the blackest of black comedies.

I liked the ending for that exact reason. The problem was that the rest of the movie wasn't any good. Despite the fact that the case is over-the-top great, a plot summary of the movie is better and funnier than the movie actually is.

[Seanette]

Originally Posted by Boyo Jim

That was the whole point! A huge bureaucracy wasting gazillions of dollars that has no idea what a genuine threat is as opposed to nonsense, spending half its time covering its own ass, and even afterward having no idea if what it did was for the better or not. I loved that movie! It was the blackest of black comedies.

Which movie was this again?

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by Seanette

Which movie was this again?

Burn After Reading.

[Seanette]

Originally Posted by Marley23

Burn After Reading.

Thanks, I'd lost track.

[drewtwo99]

Burn After Reading was an exquisitely good movie from beginning to end, and I believe it was Brad Pitt's absolute best performance right next to 12 Monkeys.

The ending was just the icing on the cake.

[Smid]

Originally Posted by JKilez

I heard that they were setting it up for a sequel. They had a script all set for Monty Python's Second Holy Grail Film, but it was rejected.

You are being sarcastic right? You have to be.

In the days before the concept of sequels, they were planning to do 'Monty Pythons various medieval sketches Part II'?

Right.

[Sr Siete]

Let me tell you about the 1994 Robert "T2" Patrick vehicle Zero Tolerance.

Now, I watched it on the telly a few years back and I can barely remember any of the plot, but it had one of the most hilariously retarded endings of all time.

In the movie, Patrick spends lots of bullets killing off members of a drug cartel who murdered his family, except the leader. He captures the leader and brings him to DEA headquarters or whatever, and gives the old clichéd "I'm not killing you because that would make me you" line, and then, wait for it, then the drug lord grabs a gun from one of the cops, tries to shoot Patrick, and Patrick, I kid you not, roundhouse kicks him through an improbably placed window sending him to his death.

My God, it was like a deleted scene from The Naked Gun but completely straight faced.

[JKellyMap]

This one's a bit different, because it's a documentary, and it's old (1970): Gimme Shelter, about the Rolling Stones tour and the anti-Woodstock disastrous concert in Altamont, California.

In an otherwise positive review from the time of the original release, the reviewer mentioned that the last scene in the film shows people walking along highways TO the concert. He wondered if the directors (the Maysles brothers) intended to imply that we're all doomed to revisit the hell of Altamont over and over -- and if so, this would invalidate what was good about the film.

I thought this was an interesting observation, but after hearing the DVD director's commentary (that particular scene isn't discussed), I think it was simply just because people went to the concert in the daylight, so that was the only footage like that they had (the commentary DOES discuss how, in general, available lighting limited what they could film and how on numerous occasions.)

[Koxinga]

Originally Posted by Deeg

I've heard that children's movies prefer falling deaths because you can imply the death without actually showing it. Pixar's Up uses the same trope.

And the villain was holding onto a single balloon, giving plausible deniability.

[Grumman]

Originally Posted by Deeg

For understandable (but not good) reasons the end of the animated Lord of the Rings was awful. Right in the middle of a battle Gandalf throws up his sword and declares victory. Movie over.

The end of the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings was also awful. Or should I say, endings. People watching your blockbuster should not be left with a final impression of "Why. Won't. It. DIE!?"

[Dave Hartwick]

I've mentioned this film before here as the most deus ex machina ending I know: The Bad Seed, one from the 50s. It's not a bad movie-- at least in my memory, I haven't seen it in a long time. The ending is so terrible that it actually makes it more interesting.

[SpyOne]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

I'm still annoyed by the end of Blazing Saddles, myself.

But the biggest mess-of-an-ending, how-the-hell-do-we-finish-this-film has to be the 1960s version of Casino Royale. It's noisier and mmessier than Blazing Saddles. George Raft flipping a coin? The Frankenstein monster? Woody Allen with atomic burps?

I was going to mention this one.
I heard an interview with one of the writers, and he said that one day they suddenly realized that while their writers included some great and funny film writers (Woody Allen, Terry Southern, Billy Wilder, Joseph Heller, and Peter Sellers among them), "Not ONE of us knew how to write an ending!"

[SpyOne]

Originally Posted by Ashley Pomeroy

There's a canon of 70s New Hollywood films with abrupt and/or silly downer endings from that period - (snip) Vanishing Point. (snip). Yes, you were trying to make us leave the cinema filled with an ineffable feeling of loss. It worked when Vittorio De Sica did it. But you, quasi-indie mainstream New Hollywood of the early 1970s, you were not quite Vittorio De Sica. But you tried, I'll grant you that.

I didn't think that was the point of the end of Vanishing Point at all.
Vanishing Point was one of a handful of 70s films where the central characters were criminals, and (as with a Chinese film mentioned above), the standards of the times required that the criminals not "get away" in the end. A few brave films had the characters badly wounded, so folks could presume they rode off into the sunset to die, but the vast majority had the characters killed, often abruptly just when it appeared they were in the clear.
Although I guess the point of Vanishing Point was that Kowalski was at the end of his road; that even he knew there was really no other way for the story to end.

[RikWriter]

Originally Posted by Grumman

The end of the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings was also awful. Or should I say, endings. People watching your blockbuster should not be left with a final impression of "Why. Won't. It. DIE!?"

I disagree, but the ironic thing is, most LOTR book purists dislike the ending to ROTK because it wasn't long ENOUGH, ie it skipped the Scouring of the Shire. You can't please everyone. I thought it was great.

[Mavic Chen]

Originally Posted by Lightnin'

I asked Bruce Campbell which ending he preferred, and he said that he thought the post-apocalyptic ending was better.

Pfffft what do actors know

[Chronos]

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Tolkien only ever wrote one beginning, and never wrote an ending. Of course, the one beginning he wrote was The Beginning, and he couldn't write The End because it hasn't happened yet.

[Detroit]

The Fog (the 80s version). It's over. Adrienne Barbeau and her enormous fake breasts are safe and then Hal Holbrook, playing Father Malone is stupid enough to say:

Father Malone: Why not six, Blake? Why not me?

Whereupon the dead lepers show up and drag him off to hell. Dumbest ending (and question) ever!

[Two Many Cats]

Originally Posted by Detroit

The Fog (the 80s version). It's over. Adrienne Barbeau and her enormous fake breasts are safe and then Hal Holbrook, playing Father Malone is stupid enough to say:

Father Malone: Why not six, Blake? Why not me?

Whereupon the dead lepers show up and drag him off to hell. Dumbest ending (and question) ever!

I remember seeing this in the theater when it came out. I was with my best friend. When the Father turns around to find the dead lepers, my friend said out loud, "He should have big red eyes!"

Whereupon the leper opened up BIG RED EYES.

We laughed our asses off.

[Skammer]

The theatrical ending of Brazil was horrible. The hero sprouts wings and flies away. What crap.

OTOH the director's cut is fantastic.

[Robot Arm]

Originally Posted by Skammer

The theatrical ending of Brazil was horrible. The hero sprouts wings and flies away. What crap.

OTOH the director's cut is fantastic.

I'm not sure which theatrical ending you saw. There was Gilliam's original version of the movie, which was shown in Europe. He cut a few minutes out to satisfy the contractual time limit for distribution (such as it was) in U.S. theaters; but the changes didn't affect the ending. And while the legal squabbles were going on, Sid Sheinberg (head of Universal Studios) had his editors working on a different version with a happy ending, and many, many other changes as well. The "Love Conquers All" version, as it is known, was shown on TV at least once, but not in theaters that I'm aware of.

[fachverwirrt]

Originally Posted by Smid

You are being sarcastic right? You have to be.

In the days before the concept of sequels, they were planning to do 'Monty Pythons various medieval sketches Part II'?

Right.

The days before the concept of sequels? When was this magical time?

[Giles]

Originally Posted by fachverwirrt

The days before the concept of sequels? When was this magical time?

Just before Homer wrote the Odyssey.

[Rich Mann]

I didn't see any mention of High Tension.
The writer(s) must have been counting on the audience to have forgotten crucial scenes earlier in the film by the time of the twist ending. It simply couldn't work.
Roger Ebert said of it (something like), "They left a plot hole so big you could drive a truck through it, and then they drove a truck through it!"

[Sarabellum1976]

135 posts and NOBODY has mentioned Dr. T and the Women?!

Richard Gere plays Dr. T, a popular and wealthy gynecologist, and the film mainly depicts all the women in his life. His secretary (Shelley Long) secretly has a crush on him. His wife (Farrah Fawcett) is in the loony bin because she was apparently treated TOO well by her family (??) and her sister (Laura Dern) is a lunatic Betty Crocker. His two daughters (Kate Hudson and Tara Reid) are bickering because one knows that the other one is actually gay (but is getting married to a man, in a lavish society wedding very soon.) Dr. T embarks on an affair with his golf pro (Helen Hunt) and suddenly...

a tornado picks him up, in his open convertible, and drops him 500 miles away, unharmed. In Mexico.

Where he is needed to deliver a baby.

Which is filmed in full documentary style. Head coming through vagina, the whole nine yards.

THE END!


I am not kidding one bit.

[CalMeacham]

One just occurred to me. Disney's The Sword in the Stone. TSitS was originally a free-standing kid's book by T.H. White about King Arthur growing up. It's a great read. T.H. White later rewrote it (not for the better, IMHO, although it's still great) as the first part of his retelling of the Arthur legend, The Once and Future King, which I highly recommend. It's been a while since I read either versuion, but IIRC, it end with Arthur pulling the titular Sword out of the Stone and being revealed as the long-hidden King.

The book takes liberties with White (as Disney always does), but the parts where Merlin transforms Arthur into various animals to learn lessons about the world are done pretty well. Once he pulls out that sword, though, they had no idea how to end the damned thing. "Blow me to Bermuda!" Merlin had yelled in despair, before the sword-pulling, and gets transformed into a rocket, his pointy wizard's hat the hose cone, and blastys off, in a particularly non-White bit. Arthur finds himself sitting in a huge empty hall on his throne, oversized crown on his head, not knowing what to do. Every time he opens a door, his is hailed by the people, and closes the door again in fear.

Suddenlt Merlin returns from Bermuda, dressed in Bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, a cap, and dark glasses (a joke that would be repeated, except with a Goofy hat, by the genie at the end of Aladdin). Arthur is understandably confused and confesses his problem to Merlin, who dismisses his fears and makes an offhand comment about television, which further confuses Arthur. (I have read that this is a take-off on a Pepsi ad from the period, but I honestly can't recall any television ad resembling it). The camera pulls back, because apparently now that the goofily dressed and oddly out-of-touch Merlin is back everything will be all right, ending the film not vwith a bang but with a whimper.

[UncleRojelio]

Every time we have these threads I always feel the need to mention The Forgotten. Most of the movie has Julianne Moore searching for her missing child. Throughout the movie it begins to look like she might be losing her mind. Did her child ever actually exist in the first place? Is it an huge conspiracy?

SPOILER:

No! Aliens!

WTF?

[Floater]

Did someone mention Monty Python and the Holy Grail yet? I have seen it a number of times but only once have I been lucky enough to enjoy the full ending - this was in a little artsy cinema run by a film enthusiast. All other times the copies have been cut after just a couple of seconds of organ music. BTW someone mentioned a black screen, but my recollection is a sign with the word "Intermission".

[Detroit]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

One just occurred to me. Disney's The Sword in the Stone. TSitS was originally a free-standing kid's book by T.H. White about King Arthur growing up. It's a great read. T.H. White later rewrote it (not for the better, IMHO, although it's still great) as the first part of his retelling of the Arthur legend, The Once and Future King, which I highly recommend. It's been a while since I read either versuion, but IIRC, it end with Arthur pulling the titular Sword out of the Stone and being revealed as the long-hidden King.
....

Suddenlt Merlin returns from Bermuda, dressed in Bermuda shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, a cap, and dark glasses (a joke that would be repeated, except with a Goofy hat, by the genie at the end of Aladdin). Arthur is understandably confused and confesses his problem to Merlin, who dismisses his fears and makes an offhand comment about television, which further confuses Arthur. (I have read that this is a take-off on a Pepsi ad from the period, but I honestly can't recall any television ad resembling it). The camera pulls back, because apparently now that the goofily dressed and oddly out-of-touch Merlin is back everything will be all right, ending the film not vwith a bang but with a whimper.

I remember thinking "what a dumb ending". Another terrible Disney ending was the Jungle Book. After he was rescued he suddenly sees a human girl and, with goofy grin on face, goes off with her to civilization. (They were both made in the 60s so I guess the same writers worked on both.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Labtrash

The Mist.

Fucking Hollywood.

Agreed. The worst ending ever.

[CalMeacham]

Originally Posted by Detroit

I remember thinking "what a dumb ending". Another terrible Disney ending was the Jungle Book. After he was rescued he suddenly sees a human girl and, with goofy grin on face, goes off with her to civilization. (They were both made in the 60s so I guess the same writers worked on both.

Some were the same. The guy most responsible for SitS (Bill Peet)wrote kids books of his own. I didn't think he was associated with Jungle Book, but, according to iMDB he was -- but was uncredited. And, yes, he did the story.


Another poster on this Board complained vociferously about the Disney Jungle Book and its complete variance from Kipling's story. Disney reportedly didn't like the story and had it changed to something livelier and with more conflct (and, one assumes, jokes and performances). I agree that the story isn't satisfying (especially if you've read Kipling). But I did love it when I saw it as a kid.

[CalMeacham]

From iMDB trivia on Jungle Book:

Walt Disney told his animation crew to "throw away" Rudyard Kipling's book, "The Jungle Book" because the original concept storyboards were too dark and dramatic. During pre-production, Disney assigned animator Larry Clemmons to head story development on the project. He gave Clemmons a copy of "The Jungle Book," and told him, "The first thing I want you to do is not read it."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061852/trivia

[CalMeacham]

Although farther down they say this:

When Walt Disney rejected original screenwriter Bill Peet's submitted screenplay, Peet quit the project.

No wonder he was uncredited.


Maybe his treatment was closer to the book. But you evidently can't hold him responsible for The Jungle Book's ending.

Every story idea was supervised by Walt Disney including the ending in which a girl entices Mowgli to go to the man village. Animator Ollie Johnston hated that ending because he felt it was lazy and tacked on but the more he worked on the sequence the more he began to feel it was the right one. Later Johnston said that he was glad that Walt didn't listen to him

[Hottius Maximus]

Originally Posted by Uncle Jocko

Yeah, but JK Simmons' scene at the end almost made it all worthwhile.

JK Simmons is awesome.

I Agree. JK Simmons is an awesome character actor; the best kind, in my opinion.

[Hottius Maximus]

Originally Posted by Dave Hartwick

I've mentioned this film before here as the most deus ex machina ending I know: The Bad Seed, one from the 50s. It's not a bad movie-- at least in my memory, I haven't seen it in a long time. The ending is so terrible that it actually makes it more interesting.

I would have to agree with you on that. I don't know if you have ever seen the play or not, but the ending of the play is MUCH BETTER than the ending of the movie.

[Hottius Maximus]

Originally Posted by AClockworkMelon

You aren't very familiar with the Coen brothers, are you? I thought it was amazing.

Actually I have seen most of their films. Some I enjoyed (Fargo, Blood Simple, even Barton Fink, as slow as it was). I thought Big Lebowski SUCKED BIG TIME! And I actually was enjoying Burn After Reading until the ending.

[Lochdale]

Originally Posted by Miller

Not seem many films, have you?

You're totally right. The ending was a real cop out.

[Miller]

Originally Posted by CalMeacham

Although farther down they say this:

No wonder he was uncredited.


Maybe his treatment was closer to the book. But you evidently can't hold him responsible for The Jungle Book's ending.

An animation professor I had a few months back mentioned Bill Peet in a few of his lectures. According to him, there was a huge amount of friction between Peet and Disney over the way he'd end his films. Disney would regularly strip out most of the second act, feeling that the kids would get bored by the slower pace. This made Peet plenty pissed, since he felt that it ruined the pacing of the films, making them just sort of end abruptly, instead of rising to a natural conclusion. Jungle Book was the straw that broke the camels back.

[Gyrate]

Originally Posted by Floater

Did someone mention Monty Python and the Holy Grail yet? I have seen it a number of times but only once have I been lucky enough to enjoy the full ending - this was in a little artsy cinema run by a film enthusiast. All other times the copies have been cut after just a couple of seconds of organ music. BTW someone mentioned a black screen, but my recollection is a sign with the word "Intermission".

There was an "Intermission" screen with cheesy organ music but in the middle, not at the end. If your screenings ended there, they were only showing one reel.

Note also that all the film credits were at the beginning of the film, complete with Swedish subtitles, so there was no need to have any at the end.