Are you kidding me? The finale is triumphant!
Unlike Paths of Glory (which lead but to the grave).
ETA: Oh, and A Royal Affair, which ends with a kind of spoiler warning of its own as we see the view from the scaffold from the hero’s own eyes, blurred by tears.
ETA2: And who can forget the original Wicker Man? Although, he did get a pretty legit, old-fashioned martyrdom out of it.
Sucker Punch. A young woman named Babydoll is committed to a hospital for the mentally insane by her stepfather to stop her from talking to the police about how he murdered her sister. Prior to the murder, the stepfather had murdered the girls’ mother and sexually abused them both. He bribes asylum orderly Blue Jones to forge psychiatrist Vera Gorski’s signature to have Babydoll lobotomized
In the end, Babydoll does receive a lobotomy.
“No Country for Old Men” - Anton Chigurh murders Carla Jean.
That one’s a double downer because the sheriff has already failed once at that point. Enough to have properly “lost” by any conventional measure.
The Karate Kid. They had that cheater Daniel-san win the tournament by cheating. Johnny, played by William Zabka was the real Karate Kid.
Morant and co. were not heroes. They were murderers.
Brewster McCloud
Brewster achieves his dream of flying, but crashes to the ground and dies ie end.
The Departed
Leo gets killed out of nowhere at the end, but at least his killer gets offed.
The Long Good Friday
Shand, on old-fashioned London gangster, thinks he has solve his problems by killing a couple of IRA members who have been getting in the way of his plans. Thinking all is well, he gets into his chauffered car and, as it pulls away, discovers it has been commandeered by IRA assassins. The movie fades out with him knowing he’s a dead man.
Well, sure McMurphy may have gotten the last laugh with Chief making his escape but Ratched claimed two lives in the process. The hero may have won the battle of wills but lost his life in the process along with Billy.
Hamlet.
Trying to remember a quote I read many years ago…
“The tragedy is not that Hamlet dies, but that he dies just as he has become ready to assume the mantle of kingship.”
That’s a fair interpretation, and one I don’t mean to dissuade you of, but consider… don’t many heroic victories come at great cost?
And are you sure you haven’t lost track of who the hero is? Not McMurphy: Chief. Chief finally found the strength, already within himself, to break free of his cage, formed around him as much by himself as the machinations of The Man. He found his voice. He did right by his good friend McMurphy in an act of mercy, and then inspired his fellows in the wake of the traumatic loss of a companion (Billy).
???
As I recall the other Cobra kid cheated by breaking Daniel’s knee. Daniel was definitely the hero in that movie and he won.
~Max
Thinking about One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest reminds me of the Mad satire of it, in which one inmate asks the question that’s long bothered me.
Inmate 1: The Chief’s escaping!
Inmate 2: Why are we getting excited? The Chief was in here voluntarily!
Hey look everyone! @TriPolar is actually Barney Stinson!
I can’t believe I forgot Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid! The origin of the “Bolivian Army Ending.”
Yeah, the term ‘hero’ isn’t at all as simple as it once was.
The novel First Blood ends with both Rambo and Teasle (the Brian Dennehy character) dying. Whichever of them you consider to be the hero, they both lose.
Came in here to post this one! Oh man, when I first saw Silent Running as a kid, I stayed up and cried all night afterwards. That last scene with Dewey and the watering can… wow, it ripped my heart out.
Or maybe it was the Joan Baez song over the closing credits. 