There was growth. He gives up his precious miles as a gift to his sister and new husband. He learned that the mindless accumulation of those points essentially ruined his personal life. It may be too late for him, but he now sees the mistakes he made.
Correction. It seems a complete waste to build TWO of the thing for just one trip/drop!
But that was hardly growth, and giving away his miles is barely a recognition.
Maybe I need to rewatch it, but I didn’t see anything he needed to grow out of. He seemed like he was happy being a single guy, travelling the country. He seemed to like his job (even though it would suck for most people) and found no particular reason to settle down and have a family. He wasn’t a bad guy nor did he mistreat people.
Then he falls in love and decides he wants to settle down with her. It turns out that his love and trust for her was misplaced* and he has to overcome his hurt. I don’t see anything wrong with his life as it was.
*Yes, I do believe she deceived him. Even though she said that it was just hooking up on the road for sex, if that’s what she wanted, she never should have went to his sister’s wedding. It was pretty obvious that Clooney was falling for her and she should have come clean before it got to that point.
His job was to fly around the country and fire people. People who excel at this job tend to lack empathy. That’s why he could do it, because he didn’t empathize with the people he was firing.
The woman he fell in love with was one-upping him, that was the twist. Or even showing him how empty his own life was, because even his female compatriot had a family at home, something she must have cared about in some way, that put the lie to how he was living. She was cheating on her family to sleep with men on the road, while he was throwing his everything into something that effectively meant nothing. Then it was all gone for him.
A lot of people have unpleasant jobs. You could say the same thing about judges or coroners. If he had the same job, but was married, IMHO that wouldn’t be any different.
The movie seems to suggest that being a single guy isn’t good. You should find yourself a good girl, settle down, and have 2.4 kids.
[fun fact]
When a US Naval vessel is taking on supplies via underway replenishment, there are all kinds of ropes and hoses connecting the two ships, and in case of emergency they must perform an emergency breakaway as the ships separate.
At the end of a normal underway replenishment, rather than calmly coil the ropes up nicely and such, they do a training drill, announcing “Emergency Breakaway!” on the 1MC, the PA system, as all of the lines are released.
At this particularly exciting moment, as the replenished ship departs in a sea awash in foam, it is tradition that the ship play their theme song loud and clear.
When I served on the USS Nimitz, the carrier from the film, the theme song was the dramatic theme song from “The Final Countdown”.
Three guesses what song the Enterprise used, and the first two don’t count!
[/fun fact]
But how else would the heroine reconcile with her father’s death?
All that work, all those billions of dollar spent, all those lives lost were totally worth it for Jodie Foster to resolve her daddy issues.
I wonder what movie had the most lives lost and most money spent simply to give one person a happy ending and the film unequivocally treats this as a good thing.
Do you mean something like John Landis and Twilight Zone:The Movie, or something more like John Wick?
Gotta be I Am Legend for me. The visuals of a deserted and decaying NYC are amazing and Will Smith’s Neville really shows how lonely and hopeless he is, and the scene where he puts down his dog is a real tear-jerker.
Then they get to the end, and instead of doing something faithful to the book or to the Charlton Heston version, they ripped off the ending of Signs with the “the last thing his dying family member said to him turns out to be prophetic advice” thing and had Neville kill himself in a way that makes no sense and renders the title meaningless.
The alternate ending is a little better, but still relies on the same deus ex machina.
And I’m OK with the way it was used in Signs, because that has the excuse of being a story about one man’s faith in the divine, which uses the trappings of science fiction to build a narrative, but in I Am Legend it just comes straight out of left field and isn’t thematically tied to anything else.
I believe Duel was the precursor to Jaws, Both Steven Spielberg movies, which also featured a mostly-unseen antagonist who is relentless in his pursuit of Martin Brody in particular. We don’t really know the motivation (except that sharks seem to like to eat people), and the whole story is about a relentless pursuit.
Exactly. I think people look at giving the miles away as the turning point, but like I noted, it was his realization that he has no home and that for all his life all he has are these miles and he kind of regrets he never did more with personal relationships. So he gives his personal miles away to his family. And then at the end he walks away from his luggage. It’s left open, but we hope that means he walks away from that life.
I immediately thought of that John Cusack end of the world movie where he ALMOST doomed all of what remained of humanity to save his ex-wife and kids. Oliver Platt was absolutely 100% right even though the movie played him as the worst villain. Gimmie a minute… …
OK, the name of the movie is 2012. I think this movie fits Asuka’s question but doesn’t fit the topic of this thread because I did not enjoy this movie. I wanted to throw eggs at the supposed hero throughout the whole thing.
Oh My God, that was a bad ending! The begining and middle part weren’t all that, either, but that ending? Geez, Hollywood!
I seem to recall Silence of the Lambs had a real bad ending too. Jodie was this smart, tough agent 7/8 of the film, then all training and rational thought go straight out the window!
That might explain the sequel (to Jaws), but I daresay you’ve mixed up the roles in the first installment, if we are to draw parallels to Duel. Is it not Brody who relentlessly pursues the shark? Does not the shark just go about as a force of nature, doing what it does and eatin’ things, while Brody is the one who inserts himself into the shark’s element and pursues it relentlessly, even inexplicably (at least from the shark’s POV)?
What do you mean? (a) Clarice was an FBI trainee. She was pretty smart and resourceful, but still totally green (b) which of her actions are you talking about, precisely?
Yeah the deus ex machina of the two main characters being one? Just say “and it was all a dream” if you can’t think of a good ending.
A lovely man’s club type of movie like Goodfellas ruined by Holliwood again.
I can’t speak for Gato, but I think she was an idiot for following Buffalo Bill down into his basement without calling for backup, first. She wound up in a blacked-out basement, unable to see a thing, while a guy with night-vision glasses had a gun aimed at her head. By all rights she should have been dead and Bill escaped.
The Passion of the Christ or something else religious? Unless there’s some sci-fi with a galactic body count?