The ending to Narc.
I don’t think the orignal ending of Blade Runner was a copout. It’s supported by earlier scenes and chopping it leaves the movie incomplete.
Who’s the cat who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about?
Shaft!
Damn right.
The first movie I saw that didn’t cop out was one I saw as a kid. I’d already learned that mvis will set up your expectations, then nt deliver. Dinosaurs are just lizards with fins glued on. Helicopters don’t crash on-screen – hey crash of-screen, or they fluy low and you see an explosion. Even cheap model-work is better than that. So I didt expct much of Hollywood.
Then I saw Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers. Whoa! Not only fully animated fyin saucers, but at the climax, you see them destroying Washington, D.C. – Clipping the Washington Monument in half. Breaking through the dome of the Capitol Building. Bashing in the facade o the Supreme Court. All in loving, painstakingly animated detail.
The Terminator delivered in all sorts of ways – good effects, literate writing, science fiction-savv plot. But the best thin was the utter ruthlessness of the Terminator. Too damned many movies in which “Love s the answer”, or you dramatically appeal to the robot’s programming, or some such nonsense. ut The Terminator was pure in that it never violated the ideal it set down. “You can’t talk to it. You can’t reason with it. And it absolutely will not stop until you are dead.” An by gum, that’s what it did. (In the sequel we got a “sensitive” Terminator, but Cameron did it on his rules, and still gave us another ruthless killing machine. The effects werre better, and he had a lo more money, but the original is truest to the vision put forth by Kate Wilhelm’s “The Killer Thing” and Philip K. Dick’s "Second Variety"and Robert Sheckley’s "Watchbird"and Harry Hrrison’s “The War With the Robots” and all the other assassin robots of literay science ficion.
Darn - came here specifically to mention Last American Virgin. The ending really elevates this movie from Porky’s style teen fest to a much higher level of film. Whatever happened to Diane Franklin? Loved her and then…nada.
I suppose Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out with the ostensible hero and his girlfriend both getting killed just as they are about to get away qualifies, as does the original Night of the Living Dead. And William Wyler’s The Collector, with Terrence Stamp’s kidnap victim dying at the end, with no comeuppance for Stamp.
Funny – that ending is clearly a copout. Kubrick painted himself into a corner, so put up a bunch of handwaving and bright shiny lights to hide the fact he had nothing to say.
The Maltese Falcon
Johnny Got His Gun
Charly
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Don’t Look Now
The Wicker Man
The Purple Rose of Cairo
A Handful of Dust
Withnail & I
Requiem
In the Bedroom
…all have tough, downer endings.
That movie also has a great last line: "Forget the Alamo."Maybe it helps if you’ve lived in Texas.
In the great Stanley Kubrick movie Paths of Glory, according to Kirk Douglas, Kubrick wanted to have a happy ending where at the last minute, the sentence is reversed and the men are saved. No kidding. This makes me suspect that Kubrick, like Spielberg, was an excellent director who couldn’t write to save his dick. Fortunately, they didn’t do that, and the movie ends with the French soldiers, scapegoated by their monstrous commanding officers, executed as examples. One of them, who suffered a skull fracture in a fight and is semiconscious when he’s tied to the post, is slapped awake so he’ll be conscious when the firing squad kill him.Great movie.
Oh, let’s not forget the original version of ***The Vanishing *** (if nobody has yet mentioned it!)
Old Yeller.
A boy has to kill his rabid dog.
Miller’s Crossing. A happy enough ending, in that Tom manages to solve the bad guy problem, but… it’s not all conveniently hunky dory. He doesn’t end up getting the girl (she ends up pretty much despising him), and he doesn’t go back and return to how things were with Leo in the beginning.
Nope. I have to disagree. Clarke wrote a more expanded explaination (and then expanded even further and more pointlessly with 2010: Oddessy Two) while Kubrick realized that no comprehensible answer would be adequate; he leaves the door open to discussion; ditto with Tarkovsky’s Solyaris and it’s more recent (and thankfully abreviated) remake. Far reaching stories should require the reader to answer the question, rather than provide a pat answer.
I’m glad The Scrivener mentioned On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, which is far and away the best Bond flick ever made, despite the questionable qualities of the principle and the generic nature of the plot. My exgirlfriend–a woman not prone to great emotional response–actually had a tear in her eye. 'Course, it’s hard to see how it could end differently–a married Bond just isn’t filmable–and subsequent movies basically ignored the consequences, turning Bond into even more of a cartoon, but the development of the relationship and the outstanding presence of Dame Diana Rigg in the roll of Tracy made this film a vertiable classic. The only Bond film since to even come close is The Living Daylights, and then as much drawing upon it’s The Third Man and Lawrence of Arabia references as the more literary interpretation of the character.
Stranger
Ooohhh…A Boy and His Dog. Heh.
Stranger
See, this is what I complain about in the other thread that inspired this one. Since when does “tough, downer endings” = not “copping out”?
How about Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors? The positive resolution of the lighter parallel plot serves primarily to throw the bleakness of the main Martin Landau plot into higher relief.
The original Bad News Bears.
The thing is that some movies should have happy endings and some movies should have downer endings. But happy endings are more popular. So the temptation is to tack on an out-of-place happy ending. There’s little motivation to tack on an unhappy ending that’s out of place and they’re fairly rare.
Sure, but that’s not what I’m seeing in this thread at all. I’m getting the distinct impression that some think that the presence of a “downer” ending is in of itself a sign of “realism” or “quality.” At the very least, I see a preference FOR the “downer” ending for ANY movie that could accomodate either, and that’s what I think is unfair.