So what are they called? You know, at the end of movies when they have pictures of the characters and then mention what happens to them in the future. A couple of questions and comments that have been running through my head.
What was the first movie that did this? It seems like most copy the style of what was done in Animal House. Was there a movie that did it before then?
There are times that I like it or at least don’t mind it and other times I hate it. When it is a comedy and done for comedic effect I don’t mind. It is of course copied from Animal House and usually not done well but it doesn’t automatically annoy me.
What does annoy me is when it is done in dramatic fiction. For instance the movie Flyboys which happened to be on TV the other day. The characters are fictional. They have no life beyond the film. Don’t tell me the guy went on to own a cattle ranch in Texas. No he didn’t, he didn’t exist.
In films based directly on real events and people I not only don’t mind it I expect it. The best example I can think of is the movie Gridiron Gang which was based on real people and also a previous documentary. At the end of the movie they not only told about what happened to the people involved, they did it over footage of those involved.
In movies that depict real people it can be disappointing when they gloss over important details that don’t jive with the movie. *Men of Honor *was also on TV the other day. At the end they have end credits that explain the rest of the Navy career for Carl Bashear. They neglect to mention that the woman shown in the movie as sticking with him through thick and thin was wife #1 of 3. They also fail to say that Robert Deniro’s character was completely fictional.
So give your thoughts, the best and worst and anything else.
Then you don’t understand the point of good fiction: to make the characters seem real. Doing a “What happened to them afterwards” adds to the verisimilitude.
The actions of the characters in the movie are just as fictional as what they did after the events being portrayed. They don’t show real events. You don’t object to that, do you?
As for “no life beyond the film,” the credits are a part of the film, aren’t they? You’re still in the theater watching the same movie. You haven’t put another movie into the DVD. It’s part of the same film.
Using your reasoning, you never watch a sequel because, after all, the characters there would have life outside the original film.
In “Band of Brothers”, it’s done as a voice over by Capt. Winters with a scene of Easy Company playing baseball. I think it really works because we know that these are all real men, and by the end of the miniseries, we have come to care about what happened to them later in life.
That follows the last chapter of the book which tells about their lives in greater detail. Except for Albert Blithe which the book and the mini series both got wrong.
I think David Lee Roth became a pimp, Eddie Van Halen went crazy and Alex Van Halen became a gynocologist at the end of “Hot For Teacher”. I don’t know what became of Michael Anthony, kind of like in real life.
