Steven King’s
It
And that applies to both movie and book.
As is also the case with Stephen King’s The Stand, btw.
Shaft. The only movie I’ve considered asking for my money back on.
I would have to say In The Cut.
I haven’t yet read Susannah Moore’s novel. (Next on the list, come to think of it.)
Still, the entire construction of the what had gone before led to an entirely different ending. This would be okay, if it were the usual sort of misdirection – but no, it was very subtle, arty stuff that all added up to something necessarily happening at the end that didn’t – quiet apart from gross plotting. Quiet little writerly signifiers – eliptical little paratextual hints.
Then the ending arrives and there’s this very by-the-numbers Hollywood ending. Not a clever surprise twist – more like a baroque musical composition that progressed toward a logical, mathematically precise conclusion, and then ended with a ragtime banjo flourish and a Vo-dee-oh-dee-oh–doh! WTF?
I was unsurprised to find out that the book has the entirely different ending I was expecting from the movie.
The weird thing is, the Hollywood ending is flat and predictable as hell, and I was anticipating an “unpredictable” ending. If that makes any sense at all.
I could not disagree more. It was a perfect, if not impossibly simplistic means of discharging (get it?) an insanely complex situation. How best to untie the Gordian Knot, if not hack right through it? In fact, it is the only ending Stephen King ever got right.
Yeah, I’d definitely agree that The Stand had an incredibly disappointing ending. Huge letdown after a very good book.
Extremities starring Farrah Fawcett, James Russo and Alfre Woodard. From a successful stage play, it sets up an interesting moral dilemma involving a rapist and his victim and then proceeds to make the moral dilemma moot by introducing another element.
Hey, if you guys are not going to bother telling us WHY you thought the endings sucked, or put the endings in spoliers, at least include a link toMovie Pooper in addition to the IMDB so that we have some way to see what the heck you are talking about. Thanks.
I went there for High Tension (Haute Tension) and couldn’t figure out why the OP thought it as such a terrible ending. Same for Shaft. What was so bad about it?
Most of the films of Fritz Lang. He had a very bleak, fatalistic vision that wasn’t well received in Hollywood… and so they tacked on happy endings that completely ruined the mood of what had gone before
WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (1945) has Edward G Robinson as a college professor whose wife is gone for the weekend, and who completely by accident gets involved with a woman in trouble (Joan Bennett) and a very sordid situation, including the accidental death of her boyfriend. The “real” ending is (DO NOT read this if you’re thinking of watching the movie!!!) that he thinks he’s sure to be found guilty of murdering the boyfriend, so takes an overdose of sleeping pills. At the same time, a small-time crook is killed running from the cops, and they think that’s the guy who murdered the boyfriend. Joan Bennett calls EGR to tell him it’s OK, but he’s dying and doesn’t answer the phone. So he’s needleessly killed himself. Pretty bleak, eh?That’s an ending that sucks in a good sense, as an artistic statement, depressing though it may be. And then (DO NOT read this if your thinking of watching the movie!!) it turns out to be all a dream. Major, major disconnect and totally reverses the whole movie.
Also, in Lang’s YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sydney are pushed into trying to escape from the cops, although they’re basically innocent. At the end, they’re killed a la Bonnie and Clyde. But then a heavenly voice calls to them saying, “You’re free now!” Ugh.
Yes, I understand how it was set up and what it signified, but the ending of Magnolia, which ran for over three hours, had me fuming.
AI was a good movie ruined by a horrible, tacked-on ending. It should’ve ended underwater.
Chasing Amy. He really should have just let it go.
Do you mean Holden or Smith? If you mean “Holden should have just walked away instead of emasculating himself” then I disagree. It was an essential part of the character, humiliating as it was. If you mean Smith, how so? I thought the whole movie was damn near perfect.
Really? Okay, the frogs were bizarre, but when I think about the ending, that’s not what comes to my mind. I found the reunions very moving.
Reading this immediately made me think of the original release of Blade Runner. In the obviously tacked-on ending:
Deckard finds out that Rachel doesn’t have an imposed life span and they are seen laughing and driving into the sunset.
The Director’s Cut got it right.
Holden. His actions and decisions at the end of the movie were just painful to watch. Probably because, as I sometimes place myself in the shoes of the character, he took a tack that I would have avoided. IIRC*, he had a chance to further his relationship with Alyssa, yet he just couldn’t let the whole ‘3-way thing’ go and made a bad decision because of it. That part just pissed me off for some reason.
It was a good movie overall; just the ending made me made.
*It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, and I only saw it the one time, so my interpretation of events may be somewhat off.
Lord of War. In the film, Cage’s character becomes a gun runner in order to get rich so he can win the girl of his dreams. He manages to not only win her, but becomes wealthy enough that he doesn’t have to sell guns anymore. He doesn’t give up selling guns, even though his wife leaves him. Then he gets busted for it, is set free, and goes back to running guns. At the very end, there’s a blurb saying that the US is one of the leading exporters of weapons in the world, and that the film is kind of, sorta, based on real people, but not really.
Oh, hell yes. That scene makes me wince every time I watch it. Holden is such a putz. Hits too close to home, it does. 
So how did the director’s cut end?
(Thanks to C K Dexter Haven, Tuckerfan, and Scruloose for the explanations.)