I dunno, I keep hearing that the ending of 2001 is incomprehensible, but I sorta got this out of it without any trouble (without the use of hallucinogenic drugs ;)):
The whole movie is about the aliens, for their own purposes, forcing the pace of human evolution. The last scene is the aliens taking humans - namely, the astronaut dude - to the “next level” of evolution - whatever that is - just as they, in the distant past, had raised up humans from apes.
I also didn’t like the ending to The Mist but only because it was too sudden.
As SOON as they run out of gas, he shoots everyone? I don’t buy it. They would hang on as long as they could first, then it would be a last resort.
Other than that, I liked the idea, just not how fast it happened (even though i liked the book better).
Hmmm. Of the movies already mentioned, I actually liked the endings of:
Blair Witch Project - A very powerful, scary final image.
No Country For Old Men - A quiet, philosophical coda after all of the earlier bloodshed and anarchy.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail - This has grown on me. I hated it when I first saw it, but now I appreciate that it’s so absurdist and abrupt, and is set up so well with the murder of the historian by the mounted knight and the police investigation earlier.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence - Sometimes you gotta jerk some tears; note how the bear’s head droops in sadness after he climbs up on the bed.
2001: A Space Odyssey - For the reasons Malthus said. Makes perfect sense, given everything that came before.
The Game - Very farfetched but fun. The only change I’d make: After Michael Douglas and the girl get in the car and drive off, the camera pulls back and you see two motorcyclists. A voice comes over the helmet radio of one of them: “Begin Phase Two.” Fade to black. That would’ve been all kinds of awesome!
I hated the endings of:
The Matrix Revolutions - So… we’re in a life-or-death struggle with the Machines, but because Neo’s willing to go all Christlike after Trinity dies, everything’s cool again? Ugh.
The Abyss - A wonderful movie that stumbles badly at the end. The extended edition is even worse, with giant waves poised at the coasts to destroy humanity. Double ugh.
L.A. Confidential - A brain-damaged Russell Crowe is just going to ride off into the sunset with Kim Basinger? Yeesh.
Time Bandits - The kid’s parents just got blown up by the Concentrated Chunk o’ Evil, he’s alone in the world, God has washed His hands of him, and no one will believe the story he has to tell. Um… yay?
Hey, I liked that one. I was all set for a typically happy ending, and had the rug yanked neatly. 
Besides, he finds out that Theseus works for the local fire department. That’s got to be worth SOMETHING.
I happened to see an old film called The Limping Man that has to be among the worst ever. Lloyd Bridges was the lead, an American who travels to the UK to discover his wartime girl friend is mixed up in a Hitchcockesque spy plot. The film is fairly good until the ending, which is appalling.
[spoiler]Bridges is fighting with the bad guy in the balcony of a theater. They’re at the rail, and no doubt someone is going to fall. Then Bridges waked up.
It’s all a dream on the plane flying to London. He meets his girlfriend and all is well – no spy ring.
The stupidest thing about this is that the cop-out ending was unnecessary – you just had the bad guy fall to his death and everything resolves. Someone who evidently knew nothing about storytelling decided that the “all a dream” twist was clever.[/spoiler]
Agamemnon. But I take your point.
I don’t think that was in the play, but Shaw’s introduction to the play does mention them setting up a flower shop, and makes it very clear that Higgins would not end up with Eliza.
Mid-space, actually.
Though the movie is not as explicit as Clarke’s novel, the ending is clearly a bookend to the change of Moonwatcher caused by the aliens.
And it is much better on the big screen than a small screen, but better still in Cinerama which is how I first saw it. And anyone who watches 2001 on a phone should be banished from the company of any person who loves movies.
What? You’ve never heard of waterguns?
Empire Strikes Back. That wasn’t an ending, that was a goddamn chapter break.
I agree. What interesting thing is going to happen to him after he leaves the dome? He spends a couple of years suing the corporation for his share of royalties from the show, realizes that the woman he’s been pining after for years is a real person, and that they have very little in common (and that’s she’s probably more than a little crazy), he has a nervous breakdown from being constantly under the media eye (which is something he’s not prepared for in the least, despite his upbringing), and ends up taking the money he gets from the show and moving to Borneo.
Ending it with him walking off the set was the best possible way they could have closed the movie.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I recall liking the end of the film. The scene of the protagonist standing under an alien sky, with a giant ringed planet rising over him was fantastic. Although, I did wonder how long it had been since the experiment started that made all the people vanish. Probably not a lot of food or potable water on that mystery world.
For some reason, I always get Christopher Plummer and Christopher Guest confused. Makes for some interesting double-takes in threads like this.
I’ve seen 2001 sober, but I’ve never seen it in a theater. Amazing film, and the ending was never that mystifying to me - well, the first viewing was, but I was maybe ten at the time. Watching it again when I was in high school, I thought it was plain what was happening: Bowman is experiencing an evolutional leap in cognition, similar to the one experienced by Moonwatcher at the beginning of the film. In particular, he’s no longer bound by a linear perception of time - hence the scene of him standing in a room with his elderly self on his death bed. The “star child” at the end I took to be largely a visual metaphor - there’s not a literal giant fetus orbiting Earth, but rather, the gestational form of a new race of human beings - what that race looks like, and what it can do, is impossible to show, because its nature is as incomprehensible to us, as we are to the tribe of ape men from the film’s opening.
Matrix 3.
'Nuff said
They started out the preview trailers in disappointing fashion. In the summer of 1979 there was advertisements to "see this movie (“10”, I think) and you will get to see a preview for the Star wars sequel. So they showed the clips, people were wowed by the Millenium Falcon going through an asteroid belt, Darth Vader using the force to snatch away Han Solo’s laser pistol etc. Then at the end "Coming to a theater near you in the summer of 1980’. Audience moaned and booed. They weren’t expecting to have to wait a year, maybe three months.
I was going to post it, but see you already did, thanks.
Join the club! The first Matrix was sheer genius and good violent fun; the second had some serious problems, and the third was just a total mess.
out of africa. i said, “and?”
I thought the first one sucked. I never bothered with the others.
Everybody always seems to misquote the end of this movie. The line is “where the devil are my slippers.” He doesn’t tell her to fetch them (and there’s no suggestion that she does), just asks where they are. That’s a subtle distinction, I guess, but an important one. jIn the whole movie, when does Higgins ask anyone for help, about anything. That he’s willing to ask Eliza anything means he accepts that she does have a mind of her own.
I can accept the ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail because Life of Brian has one of the best endings of any movie, ever. Python movie endings, on average, were pretty good.
Let me add Le Salaire de la Peur. Yves Montand has just survived a harrowing, nail-biting drive transporting unstable explosives over mountainous, gravel roads. Relieved and well-paid, he’s travelling back home when……a tire blows out and he’s killed.It just comes out of nowhere. I guess a 1950’s French film couldn’t have a happy ending. Lots of people hate the remake, but I like it, and thought it had a better ending.
I’ll 5th or 6th The Mist.
I’ve always assumed that was director Frank Darabont, who was coming off the feel-good films Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Majestic, saying, “Oh yeah? You think I can’t do dark? I’LL show you dark!”. And yeah, going completely overboard with it. I don’t mind a bleak ending, but this one just seemed so forced, so deliberate. Hated it.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Every fucking second of this movie was a travesty (which is inexcusable, considering how great the source material was, at least the first series), and they killed off Quatermain and did a little voodoo dance to suggest he could be brought back in a sequel. A sequel! Howard the Duck will get a sequel before this festering abortion ever does!