What is interesting about The Truman Show is how it captures us into the world it gets us to condemn. You hate Ed Harris because he controls Truman’s life. You yourself refer to him as Big Brother - hardly a positive moniker. But you end up longing to be part of that audience for even longer, and to probe farther into Truman’s life.
Its ending is perfectly consistent. We are Truman’s audience. Not once is Truman shown in the movie where the scene is not through Christof’s lens. It would be entirely inconsistent to start filming Truman outside of his world with cameras that aren’t controlled by Christof.
minlokwat, I have to agree that the ending of Contact is pretty lame, but its not as lame as the ending in the book. While a great read, the ending is mostly scholastic meanderings about the beauty of math, I think they condensed it fairly well for the movie.
The Thirty-Nine Steps: What are the mysterious Thirty-Nine Steps? Well, all you have to do to find out is ask…
The Bad Seed: A really cool film, whose ending was deemed unacceptable by the Johnson Office. As a result, Warner Bros. tacked on two crummy endings, one right after the other. Worse still, they tried to profit off of the shitty ending by requesting that viewers not reveal the “suprise,” sort of like an early Crying Game thing, except this suprise sucked.
I can’t remember where I read it (and I’ve never seen the movie, sorry), but I hear that the ending of Contact was completely changed from the ending of the original novel (which was great). In fact, I heard the ending was so opposite of what the late Carl Sagan intended that his wife has denounced the film as a betrayal of his ideals… Can someone back me up here?
And I thought the ending of The Truman Show was fine. I liked the fact that we were left to speculate on what happened next.
I have to disagree with Sxyzzx. I liked The Pledge precisely because it doesn’t end in the traditional shoot-out with the criminal being killed in the end by the detective. Instead, it shows that there are no neat resolutions in real life, and the good guys don’t always win. Also the plot is taken from Swiss author Friedrich Dürenmatt’s book “Es geschah am hellichten Tag”. See the 1958 German movie based on the book also (which I personally liked better than the 2001 version.)
My worst movie ending ever? “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, where the ending completely destroyed the picture of the character that the novel had created.
My favourite “bad movie” ending story - Talking to a fellow student about the Warren Beatty’s movie “Reds”. We were engaged in conversation for several minutes with him maintaining that the ending of the movie resolved nothing, until I discovered that he had left at the intermission, thinking the movie was over. I guess he had never gone to a movie with an intermission before.
The ending to Chinatown was very flat and depressing. I was ready for the bad guy (the father) to get his comeuppance. But no, director Roman Polanski had to tack on his fashionable-at-the-time Nihilism. So the father gets to do his daughter.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Greatest opening credits of all time, one of the worst endings. I wouldn’t mind watching the whole cast get arrested if the joke were funny.
Thelma & Louise
Uplifting music, stills of happier times…
Yeah, right. These women just drove off the friggin’ Grand Canyon. Let’s treat their last milliseconds of life with a little more dignity.
Shakespeare in Love
Just bring in Queen Elizabeth in the final scene to tie up all the loose ends in the plot. Deus ex machina, anyone?
Bad endings disappoint most when the films are otherwise excellent. To balance it out, here’s three of the best:
The Producers
The “Springtime for Hitler” opening night is one of the funniest things ever on screen. Especially the overhead shot of the chorus line in swastika formation.
sex, lies, and videotape
You just know that heel of a husband is getting fired. The boss’s secretary is calling him into the office. Watch him squirm!
Some Like it Hot
Jack Lemmon: But you don’t understand! (he rips off his wig; in a male voice) I’m a Man!
Joe E. Brown: (oblivious) Well–nobody’s perfect.
I really liked the war part of the movie. But the ending that takes place in the present: UGH! The old guy sputtering over the gravestone about having lived up to the sacrifice… I dunno, I felt like they were trying too hard. I went from being really moved to trying not to crack up over the melodrama.
I’ll have to go along with AMERICAN BEAUTY. You did know that he was gonna die, you just didn’t know the circumstance. What threw me for a loop was his daughter’s casual/non reaction. Huh? Did I miss something?
The spot where I thought that the writer wrote himself into a corner, was the “seduction” scene. LOTS wrong with that one. All steming from the idea that SHE was a virgin??? With that mouth and attitude? PLEASE!!!
Other than that—a very good movie. Lots to think about there.
The originally released version of Blade Runner. Oh right, guess what? Rachel Ward has no shag-by date after all!! Well, well.
And I’m not sure I believe this, even though it’s on the IMDB - Le Grand Bleu has an american version where Jacques gets taken back to the surface by the dolphin ??? WTBFH?!?!?!?!???
I’m sure I’ve ranted about this before, but 2010. It had the potential to be a good movie if you could ignore the heavy-handed “why can’t we be friends” Cold War crap. But the message that was sent from the unknown beings that changed Jupiter into a star was changed and ruined. In the book they said:
In the movie, it was changed to:
So instead of superior beings, indifferently experimenting on mankind at different points during its evolution and then leaving the experiment to run undisturbed, the unseen aliens become the beings that are concerned about the petty squabbles of the human race and wish to save them from themselves. Uh-uh. I’m not buying it.
I’m very familiar with that movie, but I don’t follow you on that, Tretiak, unless you’re just talking about the way the parents all wind up back together after what they’ve done. That could have used some work, I agree, but the overall story was powerful and moving, I thought.
I remember hearing that the Pythons ran out of money while making the film, and that’s why it had to end so abruptly. Can anyone confirm?
It ended with the “Christmas in Heaven” production number. I’m surprised the sight of angels in breast-bearing Santa costumes didn’t stay in your memory!
The original ending of Clerks-saw it on the laserdisc.
Randal leaves and Dante goes back to the register.
Tight shot of the register-you hear the door open,Dante says “Sorry we’re closed”,a gunshot and the sound of Dante hitting the floor.Fade to blcak as the register beeps.
THAT ROYALLY PISSED ME OFF!!!
Up to that point the movie was one of the funniest things I’d seen and if it had ended like that the movie would have been ruined for me.
Thank god Kevin Smith’s friends talked him out of it. The theatrical ending is pretty lame but this…ugh.
Gotta go with Slap Shot – I could suspend my disbelief enough so that I could accept the army of thugs being added to the roster of the Chief’s final opponents at the last possible moment… but damn, so much could have been said if they had finished the game.
If they had last playing genuine “old-time hockey” it could have said something about the state of the NHL where, years before, the Flyers were winning Cups by beating people up. If they had won the game playing it straight, it could have served as an example of the kind of hockey that everyone except Don Cherry seems to be into… just so much potential.
Instead, with Michael Ontkean’s character running around in just a jock strap at the end, well, it just came out of nowhere and didn’t make any sense to me.
Yeah, I’d heard about the Clerks ending with Dante getting killed, but had never seen it. The idea is supposed to be that this is the worst day of his life. Since everything goes wrong, Kevin Smith thought he should end it with Dante getting killed in a robbery.
Quoth Dante: “I’m not even supposed to be here!” or “This is supposed to be my day off!”
Thank god Kevin Smith nixed that ending – it would have ruined the film.
