This is about what goes on in a movie or TV show, or book or a play if you’d like, that on the surface seems OK, or not that bad, but when you think about it, it turns out to be an awful thing.
Finding Nimo. At the end Marlin, Nimo, and others persuade some sharks that fish are friends, not food. Correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t the sharks just been persuaded to starve themselves?
OK, this next one is kind of sad to start with, but it gets worse if you think about it.
Grandpa Abe Simpson. Yeah, it’s bad enough he’s a feeble old man stuck in a nursing home, but he started out as a strong capable Army sergeant, becomes a neglectful father and husband, and finally ends up a pathetic old man.
I just watched Avatar on DVD. At the end… MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW !!!
The humans are forced to leave the planet, except for Jake and two other guys who helped him. Now, Jake is transferred into his Avatar body permanently, so he’s OK, but the other two guys are basically screwed. Humans can’t breath the Pandoran air, so they’re basically going to be under house-arrest, wandering around the mostly-empty base for the rest of their lives.
Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (by design). The characters in it are desperate for a connection with another person, and it doesn’t happen. The final scene shows how absurd it is to think two people can be happy with each other - it’s just a fairy tale. The only way to find happiness is to die.
A couple years ago, someone pointed out to me how depressing the ending of Back to the Future is when you look beyond just what the movie shows.
The movie’s old enough that I doubt it will matter if I box my spoilers, but I might as well do it anyways.
[Spoiler]Marty ends up back in 1985 and his formerly loser parents are now “cool” and his family is much happier than they were before he went back in time. The problem is that this isn’t his family any more. Sure they look the same and are genetically identical, but Marty has no shared history with any of these people. His childhood memories are of his loser family, not the new, cool one; he knows literally nothing about the people his family has become. How could he possibly have a normal relationship with any of them? They expect him to know them and he just doesn’t.
Now look at it from their point of view. Your son comes home one day and suddenly knows nothing about anybody in his family. Sure, Marty remembers their family history (as his time travel only changed things starting with his parents) but he has no actual memories of any of the people he’s known all his life (as far as they know). How long will it be until Marty gets taken to a psychiatrist to figure out what’s suddenly “wrong” with him?
A similar but much more extreme example is the recent film Source Code.
The bombing may have been averted, but the teacher’s personality seems to have been erased from history. The soldier knows no-one in his new life at all, and is not equipped to hold down his job. Marty at least knows his family somewhat, their changed circumstances won’t have completely altered their personalities.
And, what happened to the alternate Marty who *did *grow up with the cool parents? We saw him go back in time, and then he’s just… gone forever? I guess he was obliterated by other-Marty’s meddling too. Tragic, really.
For that matter, they’re “not screwed” unless some 8’ blue alien chick is looking for a new experience. Except no level of kinkiness is likely to allow the Na’vi to breath human base air.
Ha! I just had the same realization a couple nights ago after seeing Hot Tub Time Machine; which was surprisingly funny, btw.
[Spoiler]At the end, we see John Cusack going home to find that his wife is now the cool chick he spent a couple of hours with in the past, and we’re supposed to be all happy for him, because he’s now with this great person instead of his bitchy “old” wife. Then we see behind her all these photos of their life together: their wedding, vacations, and so on. I suddenly realized, he missed out on all that! He doesn’t have any of those happy memories of their life together. Yeah, he gets to be with her from now on, but man! I’d be destroyed if all of a sudden, the only thing I could remember about my husband was the first two hours of meeting him.
And in fact, he and the other guys have no memories at all for the past 25 years or so. They remember the way things went the first time, but anything that’s changed this time around (and there will surely be a hell of a lot) will be completely lost on them. And since their lives are all so much better now, it’s even more sad that they didn’t get to experience them. [/SPOILER]
When in human history have we discovered something massively valuable in a place populated by low-technology natives, and when the natives put up resistance, we just leave them alone? Never, that’s when. So humanity had one defeat, big deal. The humans will return with more people, more weapons, and pound the Smurfs into blue paste. All the Na’vi have done is delay the inevitable.
I find it kinda hard to be sad about that, personally. The Na’vi weren’t exactly pushing my sympathy buttons, despite Cameron’s obvious goal of doing do.
Agreed. I find the worse implication the idea that Earth’s natureal resources have been nearly depleted. If humanity doesn’t have the resources to return to Pandora with a bigger force to take what they need, the main character’s actions have just more or less doomed humanity, all because the Navi wouldn’t let them mine a mineral that the they (the Navi) apparently have no use for.
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansbury is a classic of American theater, especially about the experience of Blacks. The ending is a real audience pleaser, but if you think about it, it doesn’t begin to resolve the main plot issue it deals with.
[spoiler]The main thread is that the family is moving to the suburbs into an all-white neighborhood. They are not wanted there, and the neighborhood sends an emissary (played originally on Broadway by John Fiedler) to try to buy them off. The family tells him to get bent and, at the end of the play are leaving to move to the new home.
Only the racism that caused the neighbors to send Fiedler is still there. The family will be facing far more than a mousy little man (Fiedler had a long career of playing mousy little men, like Mr. Peterson in The Bob Newhart Show, the administrator in the Star Trek episode “Wolf in the Fold,” and doing the voice of Piglet in Disney’s Winnie the Pooh films). Things could get ugly very fast.[/spoiler]
[Spoiler]the new timeline wife doesn’t have the memories he does. They each have one timeline’s memory; it’s not like he didn’t have a life up to that point. *And * they still spend the rest of their lives together, as better people.
Given the choice, John Cusack would probably prefer this way to what he had. At least, from here on out, he’s with a happier, more loving wife.
[/Spoiler]
Terminator 2 is depressing.
Since Ahnold destroyed the original chip, the punk kid won’t grow up to be the amazing John Connor who’ll save society. He’ll just remain a punk degenerate and waste his life.
As per the deleted scene, John Connor grows up to become a crusading Senator – and a great dad! – in a world where Skynet never set out to eliminate human error.
At the end of pretty much ever action movie, regardless of how much I enjoyed it, I leave the theater thinking “…and then the cops showed up, arrested everybody and they went to jail for the rest of their lives.”
When a DVD of Snow White was released some ten years or so back, I decided I wanted to see it, not having done so since my fairly early childhood. I watched it, and yes, the animation was truly amazing. But.
Snow White sleeps on her bier, with all the Dwarfs and all the animals having pretty much abandoned any life beyond sitting vigil on her. That’s how badly they want her back. So glory be, Prince Charming gallops up, hops off his horse, kisses the lovely Snow White and…
Lickety split, less than 30 seconds later, Snow White is on the horse with the prince, galloping off never to return. The animals and Dwarfs are left totally deserted, the center of their lives having left without so much as a backward glance.
IIRC the 2000 movie Frequency had a couple of major plotholes, but it did address the problem of changes to the past and memories not matching the new reality. The main character did not travel through time, but was able to communicate via radio with his father 30 years in the past and provide him with information that would change the way things had happened. When a change took effect, the protagonist was suddenly hit with a rush of new memories. He kept his memories of the original timeline, but additionally had memories of his new, alternate past.
