I was watching the recently procured movie The Abyss tonight, and am against stunned at how well this film is put together. James Cameron has written and directed some of the biggest and most spectacular blockbusters in cinematic history (Aliens, Terminator 2, True Lies, Titanic), deftly weaving awesome, groundbreaking special effects with solid, gripping stories but none really approach this film for its completely enveloping, multi-layered story. Compelling, multi-dimensional characters, an unpredictible story (with just enough cliche bits to keep you munching your popcorn), outstanding performances, and special effects that are as impressive today as they were 17 years ago. What I like best, though, is the ending, where Bud types to Lindsay, “Dont cry baby. Knew this was one way ticket, but you know I had to come. Love you wife,” before he dies, having sacrificed himself to save the others. I understand there is another cut of the movie that extends it with some nonsense with some deus ex machina about aliens who save Bud and bring the rig to the surface, but I can’t see how that would be an improvement.
Okay, so that ending is actually the cinematic ending. (And the Special Edition stretches it out even more with some nonsense about the aliens threatening humanity for being violent or somesuch that totally makes no sense.) But I like to stop the movie right at this point and savor the poignancy of his death. The “real” ending (either one) seems to me like a total cop-out; if I were going to extend my ending, I’d have the Navy discovering the trashed rig with the asphyxiated crew, and a note or log entry indicating how they suffered and died to protect humanity (and then a skeptical senior admiral decrying it all as delusional nonsense, but that’s just because I’m a cynic.) Anyway, the movie would have been far better if they’d just killed it there.
What other movies would have been significantly better if they’d stopped the ending? (Someone’s naturally going to cite The Return of the King and its excess of exposition, but try to be more original than that.)
Cast Away, anyone? They seriously could have ended the movie at any one of 15 points, but noooo, it kept going, and going, and going, like the energizer bunny on crack…except more boring.
Good one, I forgot about that. I could have bought it with either the kid dying or living (and Sinise’s character getting away cold and being “out there” as this overhanging threat) but the true ending was just standard revenge/copout fare.
I believe I read that The Abyss was meant to have a different ending and be longer, but the budget got cut. So I guess we’ll never know. But looking at the extended version of T2, I think that another Cameron goodness is knowing what scenes to edit out.
Anyhoo, I think that the movie which would have most benefitted from an early ending would be Heat. There was no point continuing after Val Kilmer drove off leaving his wife behind. (And certainly everything that followed after was pretty meh.)
Blues Brothers is up there in my favorite movies of all time, but the last 30 minutes are totally unnecessary and boring. I always stop watching after the band brings down the house.
Yeah, but they had to have the big face-off scene with DeNiro and Pacino, so you knew that was going to happen. Besides, it gave Pacino the opportunity to say:
I’m angry. I’m very angry, Ralph. You know, you can ball my wife if she wants you to. You can lounge around here on her sofa, in her ex-husband’s dead-tech, post-modernistic bullshit house if you want to. But you do not (hits television) get (hits television) to watch (hits television) my (hits television) fucking (hits television) television set! (rips television from the wall)Classic Pacino scenery-chewing. It’s a surprise when you watch The Godfather and see him actually act in a subtle and nuanced manner. (Ralph, by the way, was George Mason from “24” playing his patented weakling-sleezeball.)
Well, yeah. It also needed more Tina Fey, but that goes without saying. I was hoping that Pretty Persuasion was going to be a non-evicerated version of Mean Girls, but instead it was just…pointless. I guess Heathers is still the gold standard for high school-themed dark comedies (Better Off Dead… doesn’t count 'cause it’s actually a parody of teen movies in the guise of a dark comedy) even though it has aged quite poorly.
Gone With the Wind was a great movie in its day, and it has held up very well. It should have ended with Rhett Butler’s line: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” :::roll credits as Rhett walks slowly away:::
Mystic River should have ended 10 minutes earlier than it did. It should have ended with the scene when Sean Penn finds out from Kevin Bacon that he had the wrong guy. Everything after that was crap.
I also seem to recall that Gangs of New York went on far too long.
