I hate it just when things get interesting, the movie “pulls back”.
For example. “Bringing Down the House” Steve Martin does a dating service and gets Queen Latifah (not a “white” black girl like in “Guess Who” or Halle Barry). Maybe some chemistry between clear opposites, then: “I’m going to help you get your wife back”.
I wonder if the original script had them hook up?
“Eye for an Eye” Sally Field is tempted to use her gun to kill Keifer Sutherland pre-emptively. Then the guys arrives and gives her no choice and she kills in self-defense.
Hey, let me be the first to mention WAR OF THE WORLDS a.k.a WAR OF THE REFUND, WAR OF THE DISGUSTED CINEMA AUDIENCE, WAR OF MY ARSE, WAR OF THE COP-OUT. For those who havent seen this movie, I’ll spoilerise the hugest cop-out in a sea of cop-outs Tom Cruises son, who we earlier saw walking to his ABSOLUTE and UNESCAPEABLE DEATH shows up fresh faced without a fucking scratch on him at the end.
Unbelievable.
The ending of **Monty Python and the Holy Grail ** fits the description, but works perfectly.
The original Invasion of the Body Snatchers added a frame tale that cops out.
Originally, it was to end with Kevin McCarthy shouting at the audience, “You’re next!” with the idea that people would begin to feel paranoid. The studio added an opening and closing sequence that indicated that someone believed the threat and would begin doing something about it.
So I take it you’re not a fan of the ending of The Mummy
I remember getting pissed watching What Dreams May Come and the main character asks something like
“But where is God?”
Reply “He’s up there somewhere shouting down he loves us and wondering why we can’t hear him”
When he asked the question I just knew KNEW that they wouldn’t have the guts to really say anything about God that might get the movie boycotted anywhere. Which was bad enough but that touchy feely nonanswer thrown on top of it really pushed my buttons. I turned to my ex and said
“Oh great so you die and you still don’t get any answers from God”
This wasn’t a movie, but it was a tv show based on a movie, so maybe that’s close enough.
The short-lived show “House Calls” (starring Wayne Rogers and Lynn Redgrave, based on the movie with Walter Matthau and Glenda Jackson), had an episode where a little girl was admitted to the hospital with acute appendicitis. Naturally, they wanted to do an appendectomy right away, but her parents were Christian Scientists who wouldn’t permit it. (Though now that I think of it, why did they even take her to a hospital?) The doctors tried unsuccessfully to get a court order overruling the parents.
So, one of two things should have happened: 1) The docs go against the wishes of the parents, operate to save the girl’s life, and accept the consequences; or 2) they don’t operate, and the girl dies because of her stupid parents.
Know what happened? She spontaneously got better! No operation necessary! What a relief.
Baldwin, did you ever watch the show Babylon 5? In the first season there was an episode titled “Believers” In it the parents of a boy balked at the necessary surgery to cure his debilitating lung condition.
This episode really kicked TV conventions in the ass. Dr. Franklin, the chief medical officer, was finally so frustrated at the kid’s lingering death that he operated against the parents wishes and the boy was fine. Trouble was the parents wouldn’t take the kid back. They believed that one’s spirit resided in the body, and that surgery had released it, therefore their boy was dead and a demon now inhabited his body. But the doctor thought they would come around and finally they did, coming to retrieve their child. Franklin smirked at the nurse who had doubted the reconciliation. Then he learns, to his complete horror, that the parents killed the boy, explaining “It was only a shell”. Talk about different! :eek:
That had to be the stupidest custom ever. Are they of the opinion that anyone who gets a splinter, or gets a cut, is now a zombie? Seriously, folks, that’s one f’ed up religion, and this comes from a staunch Christian.
The soul would be released only with deliberate voluntary cutting, surgery, in the torso area, which is where the boy had his problem. And he and his were not human, although humanoid, so I suppose there was more scope for differences of belief.
The last 15 minutes of the Mel Gibson movie Ransom should have been cut, but they were so damn determined to let the audience see the kidnapper get his just reward, even though it made no sense whatsoever and ruined what was otherwise a reasonably good film.
What about The Final Countdown? The U.S.S. Nimitz, fully loaded for bear, gets sucked back in time to just before the Pearl Harbor attack. Lots of agonizing and discussing about whether or not they should interfere with history for about 9/10 of the movie, then: Just as they decide to save the taxpayers millions of 1941 dollars and untold thousands of 1941 lives by stopping the attack, the freaking time warp opens back up and sucks them back to their own time!
If you want to see real copouts, look at how Hollywood has treated adaptations of works from other media that deal with icky sexual stuff.
Frex, in 1936, William Wyler made a movie called “These Three” based on Lillian Hellman’s hit Broadway play “The Children’s Hour,” about rumors of a lesbian relationship between two teachers. How did they deal with that lesbian stuff in 1936 under the Hayes Code of censorship? They made it an illicit heterosexual relationship. Same thing happened in 1951 when the film was remade (and bowdlerized) once more. That’s how they dealt with lesbian themes in those days … just made the characters straight adulterers. Same thing really … I guess.
Bondage also inspires cop-outs, the most famous of which was 9 1/2 Weeks which was based on a book about a bondage and dominance relationship, but you wouldn’t know it from the movie, which contained no bondage whatsoever. Just licking stuff off each other and sexy dancing. The Gor movies, although not TOTAL cop outs ,were near-total cop-outs, certainly a far cry from the books they were based on in EVERY respect (not jsut the bondage).
I haven’t seen this movie (hardly anyone has), but as I understand it, Jennifer Lynch’s much-talked-about-but-almost-never-seen movie “Boxing Helena” copped out by using it the old “it was all just a dream” ploy. The lovesick doctor didn’t REALLY amputate his love’s limbs and keep her in a box after all.
I have no idea if the film had any merit or not, but if it did, or if Jennifer Lynch had any integrity, why would she make a movie based on such a gruesome concept, and then say “It never happened”?
Well, this isn’t a huge plot point that invalidates the whole movie or anything, but it’s still a cop out, IMHO.
In War of the Roses, there is a scene where Michael Douglas’s character accidentally runs over and kills Katherine Turner’s cat. Later, Turner feeds Douglas some homemade pate, then implies that it was made from his dog Benny (“good to the last bite”). Douglas reacts with horror, then upsets the entire dinner table, sending it and everything on it crashing to the floor loudly.
The cop out is when we cut suddenly to the dog laying under a bush in the back yard, who, upon hearing the crash inside the house, jumps up.
You just know the test audiences must have freaked that poor Benny ended up in the pate, so the filmmakers decided to soften the scene, save the pooch, and keep Turner’s character from looking completely monsterous.
Any number of romantic movies, usually comedies, where a woman is inexplicably paired with an unappreciative jerk so she can leave him for a nice guy. Can’t have her leave a good guy for someone else who she prefers; somebody would feel bad. The other guy has to be a total cretin.
It’s like the writers write themselves into a corner and have no other means to extricate the intrepid heros but for the Hand of God[sup]TM[/sup]; used quite literally in:
I never saw that as deus ex or a cop out. God was clearly a theme throughout the book and it was The Walking Dude’s arrogance and Trashcan Man’s desire to please that set the stage for the defeat. I always felt it was more the Walking Dude’s loss of control and waning powers that caused the fireball to destroy the nuke the ‘hand’ it turned into was just showing God’s presence and that he hadn’t forgotten his sacrifices. King could have just as easily had the fireball go out of control and never turn into the hand and still have everything be destroyed.