Not to get into this debate again, but for a movie that hasn’t become part of the cultural language (like Citizen Kane or the Empire Strikes Back have), I think it’s always best to use spoilers. Especially when the surprise twist is obviously part of the film.
To me, a postscript is a way of saying, “there’s more to this story, but it’s not interesting enough or too unwieldy to be filmed, so we’re just going to tack a bit of text onto the end of the movie.” I can understand using it in a true story, since there are few proper endings in life, and a postscript can help tie the movie back into the real world. In a fictional movie, it just strikes me as lazy filmmaking. Film is a visual medium, so if there’s more a filmmaker wants to say, they should find a way of showing it. It’s not something that bothers me that much, it just takes me out of the movie.
Well, the passage of time has certainly made some postcripts unnecessary. Take **Goodfellas **, for example. (I can’t imagine this ‘spoiling’ a 16-year-old movie…so read no further if you don’t know how it ends!)
The postcript informs us that the Robert DeNiro character, Jimmy Conway, will be eligible for parole in 2004. This character is based on the real-life James ‘Jimmy the Gent’ Burke, who died in prison in 1996.
I had heard good things about and was looking forward to it.
But I came away feeling dissapointed. Normally I like movies about conspiracies, and in some ways I did like it. I felt Fiennes did a great job.
I think the two things that kept me from really liking the movie were:
1.) It felt preachy. I felt like I was watching a combination of Runaway Jury, John Q. and Erin Brochavich. And all those movies felt like they were hitting me over the head repeatdly with their message.
I spent the entire movie thinking of the bit in Team America:
Tim Robbins: Let me explain to you how this works: you see, the corporations finance Team America, and then Team America goes out… and the corporations sit there in their… in their corporation buildings, and… and, and see, they’re all corporation-y… and they make money.
Yes, Pharmacertical companies are evil! I get it! Frankly, I think the Daily Show made the point much better with their Faux Pharmacutical commerical.
2.) Racheal Wiess got on my nerves. She reminded me too much of her character in Runaway Jury, which also annoyed me for being preachy.
I felt if they had toned it down a bit it would have been a better movie. Am I alone in thinking this?
Shit! That was supposed to be it’s own thread.
Mods, please delete it.
Everyone else, Please ignore it.
Is there a cultural reference that i’m missing here?
Yeah, to a recurring skit on Saturday Night Live. The writers noticed how stupid the players on the “Celebrity” weeks of *Jeopardy * always were, and ran with it. The hilarious thing was that the characters in the skits were only milder dumber than the real thing.
Many thanks.
Once again, it’s a standard fictional device, used for a century and more. Nothing sloppy or lazy about it.
It also makes the movie appear more real, in that the characters had lives beyond what was shown on the screen. It says exactly what you just said: there are very few proper endings in life, even in a work of fiction.
I agree. In fact, I’ve been saying since I saw the film in theaters that it should have ended 30 seconds sooner.
They also poke fun at the dumbed down questions on the celebrity edition with made up catagories like “What ears do” and “colours ending in -urple.”
At least some versions DID have a postscript, describing the surrender of the last free remnants of the Lakota. There’s nothing about Dunbar, but it’s not too difficult to fill in the blanks. His chances of swaying the public while enjoying Public Enemy #1 status were not great.
Wings? Who’re they?
Paul McCartney was in a band?!?
Yeah, my mom played me some of his “classic” stuff that she grew up with - Silly Love Songs, My Love, and some totally fey duet with Michael Jackson where Paul Mc is actually arguing with MJ over a girl!
DisGUSTing!! I have absolutely no idea why people like this guy. My parents have no taste in music!
Er… forgot the “I’m kidding” smilie, lest the over-righteous get indignant:
Btw, I totally agree about the Unbreakable postscript ruining the entire setup.
What sort of super-villian gets arrested because of an anonymous tip? None. And super heros don’t phone it in, either. :rolleyes:
Eh… I wouldn’t have liked a story about that team. The best part about Friday Night Nights was the end. It wasn’t the cliched sports movie ending, but something far better (ok, a bit Rocky-esque, but even after Rocky it wasn’t used very often). You do a story about next year’s team and I’d snooze through it.
The stupidest one I know of was the end of Joan of Arc (by Luc Besson.) We had an entire movie that seemed to be entirely devoted to showing her as a revenge-bent looney who did not see God or Jesus but rather just saw such scenes out of her blood lust–though the big G may have forgiven her at the end for this. But all of to end with the indignant postscript, “And they wouldn’t make her a saint for hundreds of years!” WTF? You just spent two hours telling us why she isn’t worthy of being famous, nor even considered a good person, just to end up saying we should be pissed that she wasn’t sainted earlier?
All of which, to go home and find out that the real Jean d’Arc
did not have a raped sister, nor was her village ever attacked, so the whole reason the movie had this big WTF is because the only thing in the whole movie that had to do with the real person was the postscript.
Ahh, but might that not be the point?
Jackson’s character was not a “super-villain”, just a crazy guy with a terrible disease, and Bruce Willis’ character went on to lead a life as “just another guy” and didn’t become a “superhero”.
The postscript becomes the final plot twist.
CMC fnord!