Last night I was watching Training Day and it occurred to me that it I would have enjoyed it better had it not been for that forced fistfight at the end between Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke. Then I thought why not just end the movie with the gangbangers actually killing Ethan Hawke’s character in the bathtub. IMHO it would have made for a slightly better (if not more disturbing) movie. Cut out that whole Hollywood “bad guy always loses” ending.
Another one that came to mind was Desperado. The director should have taken a page from Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid and faded to black at the beginning of the final gunfight.
Anyway, are there movies out there that you would have liked better if you could just lop of the last ten minutes or so?
Dude, the beings at the end of A.I. weren’t aliens; they were advanced Artificial Intelligences. That movie had at least three endings; I wonder what kind of movie Kubrick would have made on his own. I always thought Kubrick and Spielberg was a bizarre combination.
Speaking of Spielberg, I would have liked Saving Private Ryan better without the bookending sequences with the elderly Ryan visiting the graveyard in Normandy.
Any number of recent action and/or horror movies could have done without having one more “climax” tacked on. I first started noticing this with Aliens. Once you’ve brought the audience to a peak of tension and then resolved it, you can’t just bring the same feeling back five minutes later.
Baldwin, you took the words right outta my mouth. I felt the same way about Saving Private Ryan. Way to screw up a perfectly moving and enjoyable and interesting movie.
The Abyss has about three endings. X happens, and you say, “That’s the end. That was OK.” But then Y happens, and you say, “OK, **that’s **the end.” And then Z happens, by which time you don’t care.
Blade Runner in the Director’s Cut ends a little earlier; it’s dark and ambiguous.
Old Yeller should end like this: kid pulls the trigger, gun goes off – Bang! bright red dog blood sprays the camera lens. Dimly, we see the gun reversed in the kid’s hands, so that it is under his chin. Bang!. Then fade to black. I realize I’m not going to get a lot of support for this.
City Hall, with Al Pacino and John Cusack, should have ended with Pacino’s last speech, not with the exterior scene of Cusack running for mayor. Ruined the whole movie for me.
I agree with Baldwin and Cranky…Saving Private Ryan would have a been a whole lot better without the opening and closing scene…but that seems to be a Tom Hanks thing…Cast Away would have been a whole lot better without the opening and closing scenes (and why the hell wouldn’t you have opened that package after all those years on the island…it coulda been a satellite phone, dental kit or a porno!)
Titanic…well, not a lot could have saved it from being nothing more than a good popcorn film, but deleting the opening and closing scene coulda helped.
Time Bandits. Perfectly good kids’ movie until the end. What did the kid do to deserve that ending? And why does Sean Connery just smile and wave at the kid as he is leaving?
I always thought the bookend piece in Saving Private Ryan was worthwhile. But maybe overdone.
The beginning could be left as it is, sure. But the ending. Just morph Matt Damon’s face into the old guys face and hold it. Then cut to the flag and fade to black. All the “Have I been a good man?” stuff needn’t have been there.