Forgive me for ranting, but…when in God’s name did they make that unwritten rule that you can’t have the hero DIE at the end of a movie?? Even worse is that old “Boo hoo he’s dead…oh wait he’s alive!” syndrome made famous by “E.T. The Extraterrestrial” and carried on in everything from “Independence Day” to “The Abyss”.
Case in point: I just watched the 1999 movie A Dog of Flanders (oops, better insert the standard SPOILER WARNING here) – cute movie, but the kind where I have the habit of shouting, “Oh look, he’s DEAD!” every time Nello falls down freezing in the snow. Finally, he curls up with his mangy dog in front of that Rubens painting he didn’t get to see before, and in the morning who is standing there but Peter Paul Rubens himself, the dead artist…huh? That’s weird. Well, Rubens says “Come with me,” and Nello looks back to see his body on the floor…AH, HE DIED!! YES!!! Sure enough, there’s the funeral, and the angelic visage of his mother & grandpa who both died earlier in the film…
But it was all for naught. Nello starts wishing that he could live the rest of his life, and…he wakes up! IT WAS ALL A DREAM!!! And they live happily ever after, I suppose…
Here’s was really tears it, though. I checked IMDB and apparently this movie’s based on some classic children’s story where THE KID REALLY DID DIE AT THE END – so why did they change the ending?? Are we now teaching our children that death doesn’t really happen to nice people? And it’s only “temporary” if it does?
Maybe if we let Bambi’s mom get whacked in a few modern children’s movies, we’d have less violence in our schools. That’s all for now, thank you for letting me vent.