Last night on Netflix I watched the movie “Chef” with Jon Favreau and an all-star cast. And I really really enjoyed it, right up until the end where it seemed like someone decided “Hey, we’ve got about five minutes to wrap this thing up and give it a typical Hollywood happy ending.” Favreau also wrote and directed it, so I wonder if that was his decision and if not, what a director’s cut would look like.
What movies have you really enjoyed up until the last five or ten minutes, and what was it about the ending that turned you off?
Wonder Woman, the first one with Gal Gadot (not sure if there’s older WW movies to be honest). Perfect right until the very end when it turned into a goofy CGI punch fest that did not fit the rest of the movie AT ALL.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Singing Moon River was already a bit too much sloppy sentimental kitsch, but the happy ending really annoyed me. Truman Capote’s book and my idea of Audrey Hepburn deserved better. Liked the cat, though.
Another one that has always bothered me was “Primal Fear” with Richard Gere and Edward Norton. It’s been a long time since I saw it, but I remember that after the surprise twist at the end, they spend the next several minutes explaining the twist, just in case you didn’t get it. It seemed like a real insult to the viewer’s intelligence.
It was innovative and funny on the TV series when the sketches had no proper endings but at the end of an excellent movie it seemed like a lazy cop out. Could say the same about Blazing Saddles.
A Boy and His Dog starring Don Johnson is an intriguing walk around a dystopian Earth until the very end when we learn the message is the only thing girls are good for are fucking and eating and fucking is overrated. This may not be the movie’s fault at all but the source material.
Wolf tells the story of Jack Nicholson gradually coming to terms with his lycanthropy. It ends with a shot of a wolf howling at the moon. It would have been awesome, except that the wolf is obviously an animatronic puppet.
The Wind: a 1928 silent melodrama starring Lilian Gish which is beautifully shot and acted but marred by an improbable happy ending which was apparently forced on the director and star by the studio. As per Wiki:
In the original novel, the heroine is driven mad when the wind uncovers the corpse of the man she has killed. She then wanders off into a windstorm to die. According to Gish and popular legend, the original ending intended for the film was the unhappy ending, but it was changed due to the studio’s powerful Eastern office decreeing that a more upbeat ending be shot.[5] It is rumored that this tampering caused Seastrom to move back to Sweden. Mayer’s biographer rejects this on account that the “sad ending” is not known to exist in any form, written or filmed. Regardless of whether an unhappy ending was originally intended, in the resulting film the “happy” ending replaced the original ending against the wishes of both Lillian Gish and Victor Seastrom.
I thought the first Transformers live-action movie was a surprisingly fun action-adventure romp.
Then, at the end, the experienced military professionals abandon their heavily fortified and prepared defensive position in a remote area in order to engage the giant alien murderbots in a running battle using heavy artillery in the middle of a crowded city. For reasons. Also, the Big Bad gets the McGuffin everyone is fighting over, and…it overloads him? Or something? For reasons? And that was Our Hero’s plan. Because he knew that would happen? Somehow? For reasons?
Yeah, this one was a weird turn. We get Steve Trevor’s impassioned speech about how big and messy and complex the world is, and how you can’t end a war just by finding the One Bad Guy and killing him. Which I thought was really well done. Then…Wonder Woman finds the One Bad Guy, kills him, and ends the war.
Definitely Wonder Woman. It was sort of like someone said, “This is a superhero movie and Federal Law requires a fight scene at the end.”
I’m blanking on the name, but there was a movie where a woman was being stalked by a killer and, at the very end, she killed him and his identity was revealed. Except that the shot was from below the chin and the face was unrecognizable. Siskel and Ebert even had to explain who it was in their review.
Every Fantastic Four movie ever made. Everything plays out enjoyably until Doctor Doom turns up in some weird costume and starts chewing the scenery. That character is completely unfilmable.
The last scene in Pride and Prejudice (2005) ends with a cheesy scene where now-married Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy are just lounging at his estate, declaring how much they love each other. Tonally it’s completely at odds with the rest of the movie, and the film would have been remarkably improved by just ending it one scene earlier. I later found out that it was a scene added specifically for the US - and was cut from the UK version after preview audiences “found it unintentionally humorous”.