I rented the movie ‘Up in The Air’ with George Clooney, the other night. I must say this is a great movie because it has a sad, realistic ending. I really do not care for Hollywood endings; because that is not real life. In the end, George, DOES NOT get the girl!!! This is why Romeo & Julliette, and Great Expectations are great! People want to see atrocity. People want to see other’s tragedy! Pip does not get Estella…and Charles Dickens was masterful…
I saw it when it came out to theaters a few years ago. I enjoyed it, but I also felt like I needed to be older/more experienced to really appreciate it. I think I was 24ish then?
You’re new so you don’t know this yet, but if you’re going to reveal the end of a movie, please use spoiler tags. Some haven’t seen it and may want to when it finally comes to Netflix instant or whatever cable type channel they have.
I hated hated hated the movie.
It was this Oscar winning film with all the hype. I popped it in and watched a horribly lonely unhappy George Clooney meet someone who changes his whole outlook on life, excites him to be a person again! He changes his philosophy about travelling and work and love! and then!!..
She used him the whole time and life sucks for everyone again.
Would it kill anyone to make a good movie with a goddamn happy ending??? My life sucks. It really really really sucks. I want to watch a movie to take me away from the tragedy it is for 90 or whatever minutes. Then I watch a promising movie where everything turns to shit simply because…well hell I don’t know why.
Sir: People want to see tragedy as I have stated. We want the broken heart; as we are meant to suffer. Watching a happy ending will only make you more upset and depressed like me. It is movies like this that give up hope; please believe in the film I am speaking of. I watched it 2x drinking more and more each time…and woke up feeling better (after a few ambien.) Enjoy the pain; it lets you know you’re alive…
The thing is, everything doesn’t turn to shit. Yes, his love life doesn’t exactly work out perfectly, but he does change his outlook on life completely. It’s kind of a redemption story - he realizes that his sister doesn’t have it so bad after all. There are lots of movies with happy endings, but I’m glad that some movies deviate from that standard formula of boy meets girl and they live happily ever after.
sad flower, please don’t be so hard on yourself. You have not been messing up all over. No one told you off, it can just take a little time to learn all the intricacies and little rules here. You’ll lean that we are nice for the most part, but it might also serve you well to develop a little thicker skin - sometimes people say things in jest here without meaning to hurt your feelings, especially since they might not be aware of your emotional state. Also, I suppose Rushgeekgirl identified you as new based on your join date (in the upper right corner of every post) or because she read your thread in MPSIMS. Welcome to the boards!
Thank you for your response; as it means a lot to me. I was attacked on the MPSIMS forum on my thread ‘A very sad Xmas for me…’ It was horrible. And now the thread is locked. You can see what they said about me if you do not believe me…I just can’t take much more…
You weren’t attacked, sad flower. You were offered mostly positive opinions and advice, and a little criticism. Because you’re feeling bad you’re only looking at the bad stuff. Try to concentrate on the good.
I would venture to disagree with you on a lot of that.
People like tragedies for the drama of the story, not because everyone knows that everyone must suffer and we watch it so that we can just be sad. There’s no catharsis in that, it just reminds people of the depression in their lives (provided it’s prevalent enough to effect them)
They neither give us hope nor show people to believe in film. I really believe that a film that inspires gives more of a feeling of being alive than a film that incites pain, it lets the audience want to be that person versus realizing they are that person.
The movie was also not marketed in any way as a tragedy, it fools the audience into a false sense of security because not only do the trailers and the press for the movie play the movie off as a quirky pseudo-coming-of-age story, the pacing of the movie itself just lulls the audience to sleep, makes them excited for the transformation of a character…and then goes in a 180 direction.
I had already read the thread, which is why I wrote the bit about the thick skin. All the talk of “reported for forum change” and the like can sound very scary, but it’s not a big deal having a thread moved. Please do try to concentrate on all the helpful comments and advice as opposed to the few who were less than supportive.
I’m sorry you’re feeling bad, I really hope things turn around for you!
In conclusion: please stick around, you’re doing fine here, and don’t take everything so personal.
Sorry that post was a bit brief in places - I accidentally posted it when i was still writing on my phone and had to rush to sort of finish it in the 5 minute edit window that we have here.
Also, concerning marketing: should every movie have an alert: Caution, contains unexpected events? I thought that’s what stories were for.
My complaint wasn’t about the marketing at all, it was more along the lines of this part of your statement. ALthough still disagreeing with it. Clooney’s character was the only one who believed in the “impersonal bleakness”, everyone else from his sister, his hookup, his protege, hell even his random neighbor looked down on his life and said “there’s more than just you”. The movie betrays it’s own message to basically say "yeah we teased you this whole time about the foolishness of true alone-ness…it’s actually how life is…gotcha!
I say that part up there to lead to this part here. No of course not. Part of the fun of movies is sudden plot changes/drama/the “holy shit no way!” moment, and a lot of the times the “what a twist!” endings are the best; I just think the twist in this movie wasn’t that Bruce Willis is dead the whole time, or that…thing that happened in se7en (less known movie)…the twist was a turnaround from the assumed point of the movie.
Obviously everything about this movie is my own opinion and being the over emotional sap I am I enjoy happier endings than twisty sad ones and I feel with this movie I was lead to believe I was watching a story about a guy who grows up and has a true classic “bad to good” type arc, yet what I got was a story that shows every piece of evidence towards kinship and love…then takes that away from the character the audience is supposed to relate to the most. That’s the part I applied it to me when I said that my life sucks, I am completely alone and all this movie does is show me that I should just get used to it because love happens to everyone but me. Taking it out a couple degrees the audience is doing the same thing and this movie it just a giant let down to me because of that
The movie is not a ‘let down’ because you can not have everything in life. Everything in life ends badly…that is why things end. If things were going good, they would not end. Clooney was a self-serving idiot in this film and got what he deserved; just as I was abondoned by Erika…I deserved it because I am a whore…a shy whore…but a whore…and a loveless one at that…
I don’t want a happy ending. I want to see people suffer like I have. I want the worst that God can give; because he is a bad God…This is why I am upset over Xmas to begin with…on the other thead I had that was shut down…
You’re falsely assuming that this work of fiction has a message. Perhaps the plot plays on our expectations that more trite fiction may indeed have been redemptive, but actually there was no redemption: that’s what made it so damn good.
IMO “Up In The Air” was a great movie. It’s job is not to transmit some moral or attitudinal uplift to the unhappy lumpen. It is an object of art and exists in that context, people can take away all kinds of things, but it does not owe anyone anything.
What I took from it was that there are many ways to happiness, and the purportedly sad and lonely life he led was really not all that sad or lonely if viewed from a different angle, and he made peace with that.
It’s not the white picket fence, but it’s not half bad either. People have to make peace with their life choices, just because that choice doesn’t include becoming a couple with another person doesn’t mean you can’t have peace or happiness in your chosen lifestyle. Lots of dopers have made peace with exactly that choice.
Well then all of that would be why YOU like the movie. The crux of my argument was that I don’t believe that those are the reasons other people like it