The Most Pointless, Unnecessary Movie Postscript Ever?

Cafe Society
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I just saw the end of “Backbeat,” on VH1 tonight. For those who don’t know it, it’s a portrait of the Stu Sutcliffe-era Beatles.

It ends with Sutcliffe’s death from a brain hemorrhage in 1962, a year after he’d left the band, right as the Beatles were finally getting their first taste of stardom.

Right before the closing credits, we see this postscript (more or less): “The Beatles went on to score an unprecedented 20 #1 hits, and became the most popular recording act of all time.”
Well… gosh, thanks for that postscript! Without that tidbit of information, I’d have been tossing and turning all night, wondering what ever became of those guys.

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:confused: Who are the Beetles?

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ALEX TREBEK: I’m sorry, that’s incorrect.
CATHERINE ZETA-JONES: No, I’m asking, who are the Beatles? I’ve never heard of them!

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I don’t know about un-necessary postscripts, but I can think of a movie that badly needed a postscript and didn’t have one: the 2003 film Ned Kelly, starring Heath Ledger and Orlando Bloom.

If you haven’t heard of the film, don’t be surprised- I’m told it went straight to video in most places outside Australia, NZ, and the UK, and with good reason (it wasn’t very good, for starters.)

Anyway, at the end of the film after Ned Kelly has wandered out of the Glenrowan Inn wearing his home-made armour and had the crap shot out of him by the police, the film fades out on a shot of the injured Ned Kelly in a railway carriage being taken back to Melbourne.

Now, if you didn’t know anything about Ned Kelly (and most people outside Australia don’t), then you might conclude that there could be a sequel in the offing.

Wrong.

Ned Kelly was taken back to Melbourne, tried, and then hanged on November 11th, 1880 at Melbourne Gaol, a little under five months after the siege at Glenrowan.

Of course, the film makes no mention of this at all- you’d have to either know your Australian Colonial History, or care enough to look it up on Wikipedia to find out that Mr. Kelly’s career as a human tank prototype ended rather unpleasantly in a Colonial Prison in Melbourne.

Still, one day someone will get it right, much like that “Proper” version of The War Of The Worlds I keep hoping for, the one with Jeff Wayne’s music, set in the 19th Century, with Dreadnoughts and British Imperial Soldiers, and Martian Fighting Machines, and a decent budget, and good actors…

Although the chances of anything like that coming from Hollywood are a million to one, they said…

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Goodness, I thought I was the only person with this exact same fantasy! Perhaps we should form a pressure group. (Though perhaps we could lose a couple of the cheesier and more irrelevant numbers, such as No Nathaniel.)

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I concur totally! I’d also edit the Thunderchild sequence to reflect what actually happens in the novella, ie the Dreadnoughts beat the Martians, but lose the Thunderchild in the process…

I mean, Jeff Wayne’s theme music is just crying out to be played in Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound, with film of Martian Fighting Machines battling the Royal Navy playing out in glorious 70mm Cinescope! Bugger Snakes On A Plane, someone needs to be working on this, dammit! :smiley:

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Can’t think of a movie with an unnecessary postscript. Can think of one that badly needed one: Dances with Wolves.

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Really? What would the postscript include?
(I don’t disagree with you, just curious about your vision).

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One thing though, cliche though it is, they have to play “Mars: The Maker of War” from Holst’s The Planets. It’s a cliche that never really gets old in war movies (indeed, it’s fun to spot subtles uses of it in them, like I recently did while watching FireBirds, of all things). Plus, in this particular movie, it would actually be appropriate :smiley:

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Animal House. Maybe if they hadn’t had one, we’d have been spared all those others through the years.

The band Paul McCartney was in before Wyngs. :smiley:

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Seems like they might be doing just such a thing for a 2007 release - 100% CGI though, which worries me.

[Sorry for the egregious hijack of this thread, to which I have nothing useful to contribute.]

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Friday Night Lights

I thought the postscripty made a far more interesting movie than the one I was watching. Yeah, this team in the movie made it close, but still lost. HOWEVER, the next year’s Odessa Permian went on to win the title.

What made it more remarkable is they did it with a new quarterback (QB was a senior) and without two of their best defensive players (seniors Chavez and the sullen black guy).

A far, far more remarkable story.

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I felt kind of weird about there being a postscript at the end of “That Thing You Do!”, since it’s not a true story.

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Huh. Can’t believe I’m the first:

In Unbreakable [spoiler] Bruce Willis’ character is celebrating his first big win as a “superhero” with his guru on things superheroic, played by Samuel L Jackson. Jackson shakes Willis’ hand (Willis has the power to see your crimes if he touches you), and confesses to causing catastrophes in order to identify a superhuman. Jackson explains that he’d long ago identified himself as a supervillain, and that the universe must therefore have created a superhero for him to be the dark mirror of. Willis walks out, shocked and disgusted. Good ending.

And it’s totally blown ten seconds later by some text describing how Jackson was arrested due to an anonymous tip. Gah! Either let it hang or show us! We’re smart enoygh to guess that Willis wouldn’t let him get away with it, even if you don’t spoon feed us the information. [/spoiler]

Also, I’d like to preemptively defend the ending of AI. They’re robots, not aliens, and it’s actually a quite dark, perhaps cynical, ending if you really look at it.

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The postscript would have said what happened to John Dunbar and Stands With a Fist after they left the tribe. As things stood, I felt like I’d watched a 3 hour movie that ended in the middle.

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Why? It’s a common enough dramatic trope. It was used in American Grafitti and Animal House, for instance.

The concept also dates back to 19th century literature, where it was expected that the author do a “wrap up” explaining what happened to the lives of the characters after the plot of the book was resolved.

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The move is about 5 or 6 years old at this point isn’t? No need for a psoiler box.

I disagree about the post-script. The fact that it’s an “annymous tip” I think further plays into the superhero in the real world idea. There’s no show down between Mr. Glass and Burce Willis’ character. He doesnt bring him to justice himself. He drops on dime on him and the cops haul him away.

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Neither is “Animal House”, but I don’t think anyone would complain about those postscripts.

Wonder if I ought to change my screen name to “Senator Blutarsky”?

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Knowing what little I do about the fate of Native American tribes in the 19th century I always assumed such a postscript would be very short and depressing.

Dunbar’s mission to save the Sioux would have failed, the best he and Stands could have hoped for would be a long happy life together, but nothing would save the traditional lifestyle of their adopted friends.

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You never know: I once got dressed down here for not having a spoiler box when talking about The Usual Supsects.