# Worst "cop-out"/"reset button" plots? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 28, 2006, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097 "2006-11-28T18:16:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/41 "2006-11-29T14:11:57Z")
[**Teh Forgotten**](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356618/) This movie had a great kidnapping mystery going on and then all of a sudden … oh noes! … ALIENS!!! Suckiest cop-out of all time. ---
**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/42 "2006-11-29T14:14:54Z")
[QUOTE=UncleRojelio] [**Teh Forgotten**](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0356618/) This movie had a great kidnapping mystery going on and then all of a sudden … oh noes! … ALIENS!!! Suckiest cop-out of all time. [/QUOTE] exactly. You sit there trying to figure it out, but once that \ is introduced, well, anything goes and then what’s the point. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/43 "2006-11-29T14:48:45Z")
[QUOTE=Voyager] The first Superman movie, where Supes flies backward around the world to rewind time before Lois buys it. Truly pitiful. [/QUOTE] Are you trying to tell me that if I reverse the spin of the earth, time won’t go backwards? I’m pretty sure that was real, because I heard the Earth slowing down. [(linky)](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=140878) ---
**Author:** ![susan\_foster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@susan\_foster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan_foster)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/44 "2006-11-29T15:01:29Z")
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers] _The Matador_ had a really promising plot twist brewing, and then pissed it away. [/QUOTE] At the end of The Matador, I turned to my dad and said “What the hell?”. It was just getting to be a movie…and it ended. Susan ---
**Author:** ![sciurophobic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/45 "2006-11-29T15:09:03Z")
[QUOTE=Diceman] Even worse, the movie completely changed the ending of the story. In Frank Baum’s books, Oz is a real place, and Dorothy’s adventures are _not_ a dream. [/QUOTE] And in the book Dorothy had to go to Glinda (who was not the Good Witch who met her in Munchkinland) to find out the secret of the silver slippers. ---
**Author:** ![Push\_You\_Down](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/push_you_down/32/9095_2.png) [@Push\_You\_Down](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Push_You_Down)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/46 "2006-11-29T15:32:56Z")
[QUOTE=susan\_foster] At the end of The Matador, I turned to my dad and said “What the hell?”. It was just getting to be a movie…and it ended. Susan [/QUOTE] What was the problem? ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/47 "2006-11-29T16:00:48Z")
[QUOTE=Peter Morris] Well, Bond persuades Pussy Galore to change sides. The Fort Knox soldiers aren’t really poisoned, they are just pretending to die to lure Goldfinger into an ambush. Raiders may not be a reset button, but it is a cop out. [/QUOTE] Riiiighht…Bond “converts” Pussy Galore from lesbianism (someone contact Fred Phelps) and she suddenly changes sides…or, Pussy, realizing that Goldfinger is “totally mad, you know”, takes the opportunity to snitch on her employer and get immunity for her previous actions. And while the nerve gas may have been fake, the bullets weren’t. If Bond had just gotten into contact with the CIA earlier, they could have stopped the whole thing. What was with the laser, too? After making such a big deal about it (you’re thinking that they’re going to use it to cut through the walls of the Depository, but instead they just cut through a garage door that could have been more easily removed with explosives.) I wouldn’t call _Raiders_ a cop-out; the idea that Indiana Jones could really do anything to stop the German army is, frankly, a little outlandish. The opening the Arc sequence is a _deus ex machina_ in the literal sense, but since the Arc is “a transmitter, a radio for speaking to God,” it’s not surprising that the resolution involves a supernatural entity, and in any case the end result is fully telegraphed: Colonel Musgrove: Now, what’s that supposed to be coming out of there? Indiana: Lightning. Fire. The power of God or something. Major Eaton: I’m beginning to understand Hitler’s interest in this. Brody: The Bible speaks of the Ark leveling mountains and laying waste in entire regions. An Army that carries the Ark before it… is invincible. The irony, such as it is, is that Indiana puts himself and Marion at great risk and peril, travels three quarters of the way around the world, outwits Hitler’s henchmen at every turn, and yet, if he’s stayed home brushing off old Mayan artifacts the world would be no worse off. It’s no more a cop-out than _The Maltese Falcon_. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![ArrMatey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/arrmatey/32/3522_2.png) [@ArrMatey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArrMatey)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/48 "2006-11-29T16:24:00Z")
The last book of Steven King’s Dark Tower series. I could go on for pages as to why I found this to be a bad book, but the end itself… Won’t spoil it. But those of you who’ve read it know exactly what I’m talking about. Heck, when King himself puts in a warning in the penultimate chapter that folks probably won’t like the ending… It’s a sign. I kept feeling like King had written himself into a SERIOUS corner, and turned to one of the worlds’ most horrible cliches to save himself. ---
**Author:** ![Sir\_Prize](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d2c977/32.png) [@Sir\_Prize](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sir_Prize)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/49 "2006-11-29T17:47:02Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] It’s no more a cop-out than _The Maltese Falcon_. Stranger [/QUOTE] In the Maltese Falcon, Spade figured out who killed his partner. If he hadn’t he would still be under suspicion. He also got all the killers of other people arrested. Spade did it. Indy had no part in stopping the Nazis. ---
**Author:** ![Labtrash](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/labtrash/32/528_2.png) [@Labtrash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labtrash)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/50 "2006-11-29T17:47:57Z")
Speilberg’s _War of the Worlds_ Tom Cruise’s dipshit kid runs off into the mother of all fireballs, and shows up in Boston alive & well?!?! WTF!?!?! ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/51 "2006-11-29T17:52:20Z")
[QUOTE=Cisco] …Sitcoms are notorious for it, too. It’s a cardinal rule that everything has to be back to normal by the end of every episode. One major exception was _Roseanne_, wherein her lottery win was stretched out for a whole season IIRC, until it turned out to be a . . . yup, dream. [/QUOTE] Actually the entire series from the 3rd season on turned out to be Roseanne’s novel. It was Roseanne (the actress)'s revenge for having creative control taken away from her and having the whole lottery thing foisted on them. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/52 "2006-11-29T17:55:46Z")
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train] The irony, such as it is, is that Indiana puts himself and Marion at great risk and peril, travels three quarters of the way around the world, outwits Hitler’s henchmen at every turn, and yet, if he’s stayed home brushing off old Mayan artifacts the world would be no worse off. It’s no more a cop-out than _The Maltese Falcon_. [/QUOTE] _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ is a deus-ex-machina done right. In addition to the info at the beginning, we see the Ark itself burn the Nazi emblem off the crate. The audience is properly prepared for a supernatural ending. I might also add that in the Bible, when someone-or-other captured the Ark from the Israelites, God sent two plagues down on them until they gave it back. Messing with the Ark is a recipe for trouble. (Even more ironically, the reason those guys were able to capture the Ark in the first place was because the Israelites had become wicked and unfaithful, and they had come to think of the Ark as a magical talisman, instead of as the symbol of God’s presence. So even if the Nazis hadn’t opened the Ark, it probably wouldn’t have given them victory. Truely, Indy really shouldn’t have bothered.) ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/53 "2006-11-29T17:57:25Z")
[QUOTE=labtrash] Speilberg’s _War of the Worlds_ Tom Cruise’s dipshit kid runs off into the mother of all fireballs, and shows up in Boston alive & well?!?! WTF!?!?! [/QUOTE] Don’t know what was “reset” with that one. Robbie? However, my favorite “wish it was this way” ending involves WOTW, and would’ve had Robbie still living at the end. I wrote it out a couple of months ago, and wtf, I’ll quote it again: > [@](#): > > I loved WOTW and found Robbies survival to be no more implausible than Cruise/Fanning’s - hell, all they did was run down the hill to the farmhouse that was about to be hit by the approaching battle line and hide in the cellar. :rolleyes: > > However, I think the film could’ve been the all-time great science fiction tragedies… > > Imagine, everything in the movie is the same up to the moment where Cruise leaves Robbie, grabs Fanning, and runs to the farmhouse. However, in the events following, Fanning dies… maybe as the result of Cruise’s action (the stunt with the grenade kills her as she impales herself on a tree), maybe as a result of Cruise’s inaction (he falls asleep, aliens grab her). Somehow, her death is in a manner in which he blames himself. > > Grabbing the last vestige of manhood about him, he stumbles off to Boston to tell his wife that he lost both of his children, despite his best efforts. He finally makes it onto their unswept street only to see… Robbie, alive and in good health. > > In leaving his father, his son saved his own life. By staying with her father, his daughter condemned herself to death. Cruise had failed in the most basic way a father can, his failure to be highlighted every day of the rest of his life by his son’s _living_ presence. > > You see all this played on Cruise’s face (and I believe he could pull it off: Tom Cruise can act when he wants to) before he turns, his back towards his ex-family as he strides off, trailing failure in his wake. > > FADE TO BLACK Of course, that might be too somber for audiences today… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/54 "2006-11-29T19:14:56Z")
[QUOTE=Mangetout] Are you trying to tell me that if I reverse the spin of the earth, time won’t go backwards? I’m pretty sure that was real, because I heard the Earth slowing down. [/quote] Sure, its the mother of all copouts. However, certainly you’re not telling me that you are going with the “Earth going backwards = time going backwards” rather than the non-idiotic theory that when hitting rewind and watching the Earth spin it’ll see to be going backwards… -Joe ---
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/55 "2006-11-29T20:49:37Z")
[QUOTE=NDP] Cut Scorsese some slack on this. He just depicted the incident as it happened in [real life](http://www.vegas.com/lounge/centennial/crimemoments.html) (scroll down to “**84. Rosenthal survives a car bomb (1982)**”). [/QUOTE] Damn. I had no idea. Still, the way he constructed it sure as hell led you to believe that he was dead from the beginning. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/56 "2006-11-29T22:01:18Z")
[QUOTE=Merijeek] Sure, its the mother of all copouts. [/QUOTE] And, oddly, if he could travel backward in time (presumably by flying at or above the speed of light), then why would intercepting two missiles be a problem? He zooms around the entire Earth several times a second, but can’t cross the U.S. in several minutes? Tragically, the movie was written and produced by people who had little if any respect for the source material. One of the big recurring themes when time-travel became a common comic-book plot device was that he _couldn’t_ change the past, despite really wanting to. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/57 "2006-11-29T23:31:18Z")
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers] And, oddly, if he could travel backward in time (presumably by flying at or above the speed of light), then why would intercepting two missiles be a problem? He zooms around the entire Earth several times a second, but can’t cross the U.S. in several minutes?. [/QUOTE] Because it takes a long time to accelerate to FTL speeds. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2006, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/58 "2006-11-30T00:40:06Z")
[QUOTE=ArrMatey!] The last book of Steven King’s Dark Tower series. I could go on for pages as to why I found this to be a bad book, but the end itself… Won’t spoil it. But those of you who’ve read it know exactly what I’m talking about. Heck, when King himself puts in a warning in the penultimate chapter that folks probably won’t like the ending… It’s a sign. I kept feeling like King had written himself into a SERIOUS corner, and turned to one of the worlds’ most horrible cliches to save himself. [/QUOTE] It was a giant spider, wasn’t it? 😃 I like Stephen King’s novels, but he can’t write an ending to save his life. In the movie “The Matador,” you can practically see where the screening audience response caused an ending re-write. If only Ang Lee (aka “Happy ending? I got your Happy Ending right here”) had directed that one… ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2006, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/59 "2006-11-30T04:52:06Z")
[QUOTE=Peter Morris] Because it takes a long time to accelerate to FTL speeds. [/QUOTE] Oh, of COURSE. How silly of me. ---
**Author:** ![divemaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/divemaster/32/78_2.png) [@divemaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/divemaster)\ **Post date:** [November 30, 2006, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097/60 "2006-11-30T05:16:11Z")
[QUOTE=featherlou] It was a giant spider, wasn’t it? 😃 I like Stephen King’s novels, but he can’t write an ending to save his life. [/QUOTE] Oh, yeah. The giant spider was a … disappointment. But I thought the ending of the Dark Tower Saga was perfect. It fit the character (Roland’s whole raison d’etre was the quest). I was quite worried while reading through the saga that King was going to get stuck, like the end of It, or The Talisman, trying to describe some _thing_ or some _place_ that, based on the story, really defies a set description. My admiration for King went up a couple of notches after the end of the Dark Tower series. It took balls, but good for him. re Casino: > [@](#): > > Damn. I had no idea. Still, the way he constructed it sure as hell led you to believe that he was dead from the beginning That’s just good moviemaking. A little misdirection for dramatic effect (especially since Scorcese didn’t just make it up) worked really well here, I think. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/worst-cop-out-reset-button-plots/382097.md?page=4)