Ahh. Disregard the first part of my post. I was thinking of the newer Planet of the Apes which was decent. And you got to see Draco Malfoy get the shit kicked out of him. No joke, I somehow blocked out the Monkey Lincoln movie.
At the end of Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn, they
don’t destroy Jared-Syn.
I mean, how hard is that to figure out? At least Penn & Teller got it right.
This one?
The first dream is a recap of the plot of the movie. Found some money and lost it.
The second dream is about death. His father has ridden ahead of him, prepared a place ahead for him to join him, and then come back for him.
I’m amazed we’ve gotten this far without anyone mentioning the TV-movie version of Stephen King’s It. I mean, okay, the ending in the book wasn’t great either and I can understand why they couldn’t have a bunch of 12-year-olds having group sex in a TV movie, but seriously–the movie was good, and spooky, and a really good adaptation of the story until they brought in the
laughably bad CGI spider as the final baddie
and then the whole thing just turned into a big joke.
I’m surprised… surprised that anyone finished the book or watched the end of the movie.
Hey, now. I love “It,” both book and movie. It’s my favorite Stephen King novel, and I think aside from the ending, the movie did a really good job of translating the creepy to the screen. To each his own, I guess.
The end of 2001 was many things but it was not half assed.
S’ok. We all have our likes and dislikes. Some King books, and most movies based on them get on my nerves. Sometimes I get into the characters and their running internal dialogue, and sometimes not.
I thought it referred to the destruction he caused himself, not that he would be destroyed. It’s still a shitty title.
Re: the Mist’s crappy ending:
I’ve never seen that clip until today - it will now play in my head if I ever watch it again - I’ll just change the channel after the walkover.
Thank you for that.
I, too, grew up watching Python, and was a big fan of the show before I saw the movie. I still don’t like the way the movie ends. Yes, I have no doubt it was written that way in the script before they started shooting. It still feels like a cop-out.
On TV, they’d have a series of nameless, ill-defined characters who would only be seen for maybe five minutes, tops, and then vanish entirely, never to be seen again. And that worked great, for that format. In Holy Grail, you have a set of distinct, recognizable protagonists with a clearly defined goal. While the intent of the movie was pretty clearly, “Let’s do a bunch of loosely connected sketches on the theme of medievalism and Arthurian myth,” by connecting the sketches with an identifiable story, it’s hard not to become invested in that story to some degree. When the story goes nowhere, and entirely lacks any sort of climax, there’s an inevitable let down.
I think the problem really becomes apparent when you compare it to other Monty Python movies. Life of Brian has the classic Python comedy aesthetic, but tied it to a story that was genuinely compelling, and built to a satisfying conclusion. Even The Meaning of Life, while lacking consistent protagonists or central plot, still has a structure that builds towards a strong conclusion. Knowing that they could do Python comedy within the framework of a functional narrative, it makes Holy Grail feel a bit of a missed opportunity. I would have loved to see an Arthurian movie, with the Python humor, that actually delivered on the story.
My long, rambling discussion of the end follows. That’s awesome about the first dream being a recap of the plot, KneadToKnow!
[spoiler]From a few posts back (slight edits):
Again, the ending makes sense, but isn’t what I was expecting, nor was it as satisfying as an Al Pacino Scarface-type sendoff for Chigurh. Stupid ending, bad ending? I don’t think so, but not one the movie was leading up to, IMO.
Slight hijack: Reading the text of Sheriff Bell’s dream above, It just now clicked for me that No County’s author, Cormac McCarthy, again uses the concept (and exact words) “carrying the fire” in The Road to represent people who are trying to live good lives in evil worlds*. In No Country, Sheriff Bell must decide between continuing to fight evil men like Chugurh, the murderer in Bell’s opening story, and the killer in the story Bell’s uncle tells him from his wheelchair, or to retire.
Anyway, taking all that aboard, the true climax of the movie is when Bell returns to Llewelyn’s room at night, not knowing if Chigurh is inside waiting to kill him. The Cohens do a great job of placing us in Bell’s mind - is Chugurh really in the room, or is he in another place entirely? Bell might very well be dead in a few seconds, but his duties demand he open that door. I can totally understand why the stress of the job takes a toll on him and he “wakes up”, realizes he’s an old man like his father in a very rough country and retires.
*Several times in the book and movie The Road, the Man and the Boy tell each other they’re “carrying the fire” i.e. they’re still good people in a cold, dark world like the one in Sheriff Bell’s dream of his father. The Boy also asks someone else at the end of the story if that person and his family “carry the fire” as a way of confirming their trustworthiness.[/spoiler]
Sorry, not to put too fine a point on it, but this scene made a lot more sense once I was told who the movie was really about. The first time I saw it I was confused why the Cohens/McCarthy put it there, but it pretty much sums up the points I was trying to make above.
Sheriff Bell goes to visit his shut-in uncle, the one with all the cats.
“I feel overmatched.”
“What you got ain’t nothin’ new. This country’s hard on people. You can’t stop what’s comin’ - it ain’t all waitin’ on you. That’s vanity.”
Minnie Driver starred in an indie film called The Governess many years ago. The plot is that she’s Jewish and applies for a job as a governess for a wealthy family, but has to pretend she’s not Jewish to do so. She does so, much angsting ensues, all the members of the family have art-film quirks, etc., etc.
Eventually she returns home, and discovers that, with absolutely no relevance, warning or foreshadowing:
Her family has all died of cholera
I’ll throw in a vote for this year’s Savages, based on a pretty good pulp novel by Don Winslow. The ending was pretty dark:
One of the main characters dies of a gunshot wound, and the other two commit suicide
But the movie turned it into a ridiculously off-key happy ending, complete with a character rewinding the action from within the movie.
When people scornfully talk about a good book getting Hollywood-ized, this is exactly the kind of thing they’re talking about.
There was this movie called “Identity” with John Cuasack and Ray Liotta, but I can’t bring myself to describe the ending. Suffice to say it was like “Shutter Island” meets “Murder on the Orient Express,” but less believable than either.
Actually, it had a lot more in common with the script proposed by Charlie Kaufmann’s brother in Adaptation.
Thelma and Louise.
The original cinema ending to Bladerunner was frickin’ horrible. Suddenly the entire aesthetic of the movie vanishes and we’re flying over a brilliant green forest on the way to a lovey-dovey dream home somewhere? Like the (probably apocryphal) tale that Harrison Ford’s voice-over was deliberately bad, to underscore his and Scott’s hatred for what they were forced to do to the movie, I often suspected the ending was deliberately jarring to try to make the studio reconsider. Fat chance.
I have nothing to add except that I first read this as Wangs of Fear. 