It never struck me as out-of-place. It’s alluded to earlier in the film, and when I saw the director’s cut which chopped the forest ending and left nothing in its place, I was somewhat taken aback.
The creators of The Departed pulled the same bullshit. The mole gets shot at the end of that one, instead of the superior ending you mention.
Speaking of which, there’s my old thread about John Grisham’s bad endings.
I got the impression that all the beehives spontaneously appeared on the island in the middle of the film. But IMHO for most people the ending doesn’t matter because they will be able to control their retching long enough to get to it. But I’m weird – I thought it was so awful that it turned the corner into being hysterically funny.
And BTW, I LOVED Burn After Reading, and I imagine that about 80% of domestic intelligence work is pretty much just like it.
Excellent choice! What a couple of maroons. Shit, at least they could have thrown in some lesbian action. 
What two women going down not lesbian enough?
Ya’ know, allegorical lesbian scenes never did much for me.
Actually, yes it was. It would seem that Kubrick was trying to hint at the aliens, but he doesn’t give the audience enough information to form any kind of reasonable conclusion, resulting in a confusing acid-trip of an ending. Conclusion: it was a poorly-directed ending.
Can’t handle Disney’s Beauty and the Beast either?
I had waited over 20 fucking years for one of my favorite short stories to be turned into a movie. Having seen too many movies fuck over books that I loved (I’m looking at you animated Lord of the Rings and Maximum Overdrive), I was incredibly leery of watching it, but as the film went on I became more and more enthralled with it. It won me over completely (especially the nutjob performance by Marcia Gay Harden) and I turned off my disconnect, suspended my disbelief, and learned to love the movie.
Then BAM!, that piece of fetid garbage passing as an ending. Words can barely express how much I hated that ending, from the rampant stupidity of once intelligent characters to the ultimate “we’re just fucking with you now” by the filmmakers when the “reveal” was revealed. It wasn’t just different from the book, it was stupid, nonsensical, and changed the characters to fit some kind of dumbass twist ending.
I hated it then. I hate it now. Sure it’s no Santa Sangre, but that ending was absolutely horrible.
Yeah, I was going to mention that one. The whole green forest thing is actually stock footage from the cutting room floor of Kubrick’s The Shining. And the movie was meant to end at the elevator from the beginning. Scott was pretty much forced to add that ending from what I understand.
Another movie with a stupid ending: Pay It Forward.
Yeah, let’s kill Osment’s character at the end of the movie. Why? Umm…well, really no good reason. The murder doesn’t fit with the overall theme. And it doesn’t add anything poignant. And there wasn’t any comeuppance effect. (Cf. American History X.) It seems they decided that they just wanted the audience to really feel something coming out of the movie because ending it on a happy note would be just too Hollywood.
Except the attempted emotional manipulation was so blatantly obvious that the only emotion it elicited from me was eye-rolling.
Of course, the theatrical ending of Dodge Ball was actually the better of the proposed endings. Apparently the director wanted to end it with Vince Vaughan’s character losing to Ben Stiller’s, because life isn’t all about happy endings and we don’t always achieve our dreams.
Maybe true…but in a movie that is meant to be ridiculous and pulls it off pretty well, trying to add some deep meaning at the end just seems out of place. In a rare instance, the production company changing the ending was a good thing. Leave poignancy for poignant movies.
I’m still torn as to which of the Army of Darkness endings was better.
Since it’s the only Bond film worth a second look, you’re not allowed to say bad things about this movie.
Besides, what the hell else is George Raft supposed to do? Practice throwing playing cards into a hat? 'Cos I’m pretty sure that’s Jimmy Cagney’s thing.
Maybe Robert Mitchum’s.
That happens also in Penny Dreadful, one of the “8 Films To Die For” shown at the first After Dark Horrorfest. I guess I’ll spoilerbox it, but it’s really lame:
Killer stalks and just generally mentally tortures a girl for the whole movie. She finally gets away, the killer gets hit by a car on the highway. Yay, she escaped, killer’s dead. Except, of course, HUGE musical sting, and the killer sits up very suddenly and she screams. And the screen goes black and the credits roll. HUH? The movie just stopped right in the middle of the conclusion! That’s not an ending! ugh…
Speaking of Robert Mitchum, I’ll add Night of the Hunter as a film with a lame ending. It’s the only suspense movie I’ve ever seen that works in reverse – it starts out very tense and then ratchets down the tension continuously until it ends with a fizzle.
I was just watching this Jackie Chan flick, Rumble in the Bronx, the other weekend and thought, “Boy, that’s a stupid ending!”
Granted, it’s a martial arts flick, which means it’s primarily focused on the fight scenes. Still, there was no appreciable resolution to a lot of loose ends.
~ ~ ~ ~
Two main subplots are going on
- A local street gang (teens? they’re more like mid-to-late 20’s – why the hell aren’t they working for a living?) is shoplifting and vandalizing Keung’s Uncle’s corner grocery store.
- Real syndicated criminals stole some diamonds and, while trying to evade the police, hid them inside a wheelchair owned by Keung’s young friend.
WTF!?!? Keung (Jackie Chan) eventually goes to the street gang’s hang-out and beats about a dozen guys and girls. Then he scolds them. Then he finishes by saying, “I hope next time we meet we’ll be drinking tea instead of fighting.” Somehow that’s just so amazingly touching to the gang leader that he suddenly considers Keung a friend instead of a rival who stole his girlfriend (the wheelchair kid’s older sister) and kicked the teeth out of all his henchmen?
Before we can contemplate that question, a gang member bursts in saying, “They killed Tony! They’re looking for diamonds and we don’t know what the hell they’re talking about!”
So Keung realizes where the diamonds are, manages to get them, manages to involve the police, manages to contact the syndicate ringleader, and manages to offer to exchange the diamonds for (I don’t remember what) in an attempt to trap the syndicate thugs and their ringleader. Naturally, the exchange goes sour and much action ensues – it’s a Jackie Chan flick, after all – and ultimately this involves a real hovercraft, which is debilitated in a spectacular way.
Then (just for the extra film footage?), Keung, the grocery store manager, the street gang leader (now a friend?), and the cops take the (semi-restored) hovercraft for a spin, zipping across the golf course where they chase down and overtake the syndicate ringleader, literally running him over and sandblasting his shorts off. The movie ends by freezing Keung and the others grinning in the control room of the hover craft.
~ ~ ~ ~
WHAT!? The cops are right there! What do they do with all the criminals?
At least show the syndicate thugs getting cuffed, at least show the street ruffians handing over a check for damages and lost merchandise. What happens to the kid’s wheelchair, and which guy does the kid’s fickle sister choose? Having run over the ringleader, do the cops just figure “Well, that’s enough punishment for a guy who had a dozen people killed over a handful of diamonds. Let him find some new pants and walk outta here.”?
–G!
Everybody’s acting tough,
words get spoken
And someone pulls a knife in Bobby’s face
He turns away but it’s too late,
he’s gotta face them on his own
. --Brian Howe (with Bad Company)
. Boys Cry Tough
. Holy Water
For understandable (but not good) reasons the end of the animated Lord of the Rings was awful. Right in the middle of a battle Gandalf throws up his sword and declares victory. Movie over.
Not exactly a bad ending technically, because it was only fifteen minutes into the film, but Shutter Island was over for me when I figured out the stunningly obvious gimmick the entire waste-of-time plot was built upon.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who was disappointed by the end of Blazing Saddles. Fourth-wall-breaking can be funny, but it has to be incorporated into the work as a whole: Woven in, rather than sewn on, as it were. When you have an entire movie in its self-contained world, and then suddenly the ending is all wall-breaking, it’s jarring.
And not exactly a film (though I’m sure it’s been filmed at some point) is Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour Lost. Right up until the last scene, it’s your fairly standard light Shakespearean comedy, with stupid people falling madly in love at first sight and hijinks ensuing, and then all of a sudden the princess gets a message that her father has just died out of the blue and she and her entourage have to go home for the funeral, so they can’t have the inevitable weddings. Where did that come from? And why?
Yeah, what’s with Disney? The queen in Snow White falls off a cliff too.
Wasn’t that due to a lack of money, time, or studio support? Looong time since I’ve seen it, but I remember liking it and the sequel, but still disappointed.
It would be better if they all did the Goofy “aah-hoo-hoo-hooey” sound.
It was probably one of two plays. There is contemporary mention of a play called Love’s Labours Won.
Although the Wiki article on it mentions other theories for what that could refer to, I find it blindingly obvious that there was a Shakespeare play called Love’s Labours Won which carried on from Love’s Labours Lost, and either the folio and other records of it were lost or it was simply so bad that early compilers ignored it, much like many people would like to with current film sequels.