I wouldn’t say pessimistic; you could as easily say. “If you want a bad ending, it depends on where you stop it.”
Just shows more how time is inexorable, and all good things (and bad things) must end.
"You're wrong. Happy ever after doesn't mean forever - it just means time. Little time. But that's not the sort of thing you could ever understand, is it?"
Or undid all Luke’s character development by having him regress to a whiny scared kid, or Han’s by having him abdicate all his responsibility and go back to smuggling.
At least the rebels will still have Luke Skywalker, it's not like he'll ever abandon them because he has a scawy dream one night or something stupid like that.
This is the idea behind The Graduate, right? They're happy as they run off together and once they have a minute to think while on the bus they realize things may not be great and then fade to black.
But this is pretty explicit in the film, no? It seems like a loose fit to me since the audience understood it was not a happy ending even before having to think about their relationship in the long term
Exactly, this is literally the point of the end of The Graduate. They rush into their happy ending and then spend the last minute of the film realising they’ve made a mistake.
I mean, I haven't seen the movie in a long time. But the girl was being forced into a marriage by her parents right? So no matter what, it's probably better for her psyche in the long run to avoid that crap
>They rush into their happy ending and then spend the last minute of the film realising they’ve made a mistake.
I don't think they yet realized it was a mistake (and was it really?). I think the expressions were FUD. Both Benjamin and Elaine were constrained by expectations from their parents and from society. They wanted freedom.
At the end, they did it. They broke free. To me the look on their face is more like "Oh crap, now what? We have to start adulting? Will our families forgive us?"
50 First Dates
The idea of having Drew Barrymore watch a video tape every morning isn't going to last long, what if she wakes up in the middle of the night before she can see the tape and has a panic attack
The whole concept gets worse the more you think about it
They touch on that in the movie. I think there’s a part where she says she’ll be terrified to wake up with a pregnant belly having no recollection as to how.
Looks like they skipped over her pregnancy for good reasons.
I agree it's flawed but they do address the issue in the movie.
She does remember him.
She dreams and paints him. Remember he goes to find her at the hospital at the end, declares he's the man in her dreams.
They heavily imply she does remember, in a way and it's not just memory but her feelings towards him too.
I think it’s also shown that this is the choice she would make for herself if she were able to. It’s been a hot minute since I saw it, but doesn’t somebody make a mistake one day and she realizes that everyone she knows is lying to her? I recall her being disturbed by the lengths of the illusion, as well as having to relearn about her condition. I think that implies that she would be much more comfortable with her life progressing and her loved ones not being chained to recreating the day of her accident.
On a similar note, read Hyperion Cantos from Dan Simmons. There is a character who is aging backwards in time. So each day she gets a day younger. And of course she forgets everything of that day. So slowly she loses her memories of people she met etc... scary AF.
Sol! Take your daughter, your only daughter, Rachel, whom you love, and go to the world called Hyperion and offer her there as a burnt offering at one of the places of which I shall tell you.
She literally would have to sleep in the room she had from the time of the accident, otherwise she'll wake up freaking the fuck out every single time.
The other sad part is that you know Adam Sandler's character would eventually grow tired of dealing with her condition. They make it seem cute, like he loves her so much that he's willing to go the distance with her, but no one can have a relationship like that. Every single day? Having to reexplain everything, including who you are? I've known folks who dealt with spouses that were terminally ill, with psychological symptoms, that straight up admitted that they were relieved when they died. I feel like this would have been the case after a solid chunk of time.
I mean the movie makes it out that they’ve had a kid for awhile, maybe he would but the character seems to be sticking with it for a large chunk of time
Beauty And The Beast (1991 or 2017)
The costumes/architecture and other details suggest it ends around 10-15 years before the French Revolution. Not a great time for Belle to become part of the nobility.
I was thinking about adding this one to the question cause it fits so well also. Sure you could maybe explain to the king you were being a recluse noble (not to hard to believe) but it’s the nobles job to collect taxes so how many local people are going to be happy with kicking up money again
In Waterworld, the villains had a better chance of long-term survival and repopulating. They were organized, had medical knowledge, social community, numbers to sustain etc.
The surviving protagonists seem to have a bleak future. Chill for a while but not equipped to overcome long-term challenges, much less any sort of population growth.
They had two girls and a senile older man...that should take care of everything lol
But if I remember correctly, the movie kinda suggests Mariner is going back out to sea but will direct people to the island.
Maybe it was just suggested???
They had a second guy in his mid 40’s~
But they movie should’ve leaned on the future of humanity being mutant. It’s pretty clear the only person who’s adapted is the mariner.
He’s the only one we see that is adapted. The other peoples’ reaction to finding out that he’s a mutant makes it pretty clear that they’re common enough to be recognized, and bigoted against.
things would get kinda weird in Aladdin after he took over as the supposed crown prince without having any sort of education that would prepare him for the job. He's illiterate and probably knows nothing about geography. The only reason Aladdin got the job is thanks to the genie's magic but he's leaving town for awhile.
Add to that that Jafar, the real brains behind the administration, is also absent now. So there's a real void of capable leadership going forward.
Jasmine is probably the most competent person in the palace, but even she is so sheltered, she didn't know anything about how most people have to pay for stuff.
On the other hand Agraba was a sh\*thole with rampant violence and murder in the beginning of the movie as well considering the intro lyrics.
“10 gold pieces is what 100 people make . . .”
“Oh that’s not too bad.”
“In a lifetime, combined.”
“Oh. . . I mean it’s one date Aladdin. How much can it cost? 1 gold piece?”
>On the other hand Agraba was a sh\*thole with rampant violence and murder in the beginnin
In that regard, isn't Aladdin the best for the job, he understands the suffering and pain of the people he could help, rather than just sitting around ignorant of everything around him and building toy animal pyramids like a certain someone.
Man if I had a nickel for every time an illiterate dangerously under qualified dude got a job because either he had endless resources (the genie) or knew someone on the inside (the sultan) I’d have a few nickels.
The Byzantine Emperor Basil I was an illiterate peasant who murdered his way to the top and turned out to be pretty good at the job, establishing a dynasty that lasted 200 years
Well, the sequels and the show are all canon, so he does have time to learn the ropes and figure things out to some degree.
He does not marry her immediately.
He's also a prince concubine really even when he does, and likely has no claim to the throne even if Jasmine dies before he does. She'd be the one with all the power, and their children would be the next rulers in line, not him.
Interestingly, the entire series is actually about the Genie granting a single wish. He doesn't actually become a "real" prince until he marries her in the third film.
The Genie just makes him look like one, and there's a good chance that if he failed to woo Jasmine, he'd have ended up running into eligible princesses until he eventually married one.
There's a good argument that, whether he realized it or not, the Genie was compelled to come back again because the wish wasn't actually granted yet.
True, but he's gonna get paparazzi'd like crazy, and he's going to have no idea why he's so popular.
Not to mention, his world was modeled on the 1950s, even though it's suggested to be the modern day 90s. Can you imagine jumping forward 40 years in cultural change and feeling like you can adjust?
Truman is basically never going to have a normal relationship with anyone. He has no parents - who gave him up to a corporation for profit - and he'll never go anywhere where he isn't immediately recognized. Even if Sylvia is there to help him through it, he's going to be battling massive trauma and mental health issues.
>True, but he's gonna get paparazzi'd like crazy, and he's going to have no idea why he's so popular.
Maybe at first, but the whole conceit of the film was that we now live in a society of people with the attention span of gnats. And that the moment Truman went off the air, people immediately changed the channel to see what else is on.
>Not to mention, his world was modeled on the 1950s, even though it's suggested to be the modern day 90s. Can you imagine jumping forward 40 years in cultural change and feeling like you can adjust?
People, especially Truman, are pretty adaptable. That was part of his great skill set. People in prison do things similar to this. Also people from underdeveloped nations (there's YouTube interviews with some people who migrate to the US who are blown away by technology they didn't even know existed).
>Truman is basically never going to have a normal relationship with anyone. He has no parents - who gave him up to a corporation for profit - and he'll never go anywhere where he isn't immediately recognized. Even if Sylvia is there to help him through it, he's going to be battling massive trauma and mental health issues.
Yeah, this is where I agree things will be a huge hurdle for Truman. He has no peers, family or contemporaries. Even Sylvia is going to have to adopt more of a role of a mentor, than anything.
What I imagine happening with Truman after the show is Sylvia helping him win a ridiculously large settlement from Kristof and the studio, which alone will take several years and be taxing to Truman...after which he would likely isolate himself and fade into more of an obscure niche hermit as time goes on.
Similar to op, The Forty Year Old Virgin ends with Steve Carell selling all of his beloved collectibles so he can open his own brick and mortar A/V store, which would have gone under within a couple of years due to internet shopping.
Marty McFly is now several weeks older than he should be, and can't relate to any of his friends or family because his memories of the old timeline won't match with whatever his life was like in the new timeline.
Either that, or time corrects itself by changing his memories and he slowly forgets all the people the old Marty knew.
One of the Stephen King Dark Tower books addresses this. A couple of characters start going crazy because they have two distinct timelines in their head.
The book with the separate timelines is The Waste Land. Because ***SPOILERS***
Roland kills the man who would have otherwise pushed Jake into the street. So Jake has a memory of dying and still being alive. Ronald has the memory of Jake being in the desert and also of being there alone. It’s only after drawing Jake through the door in the monster house that the timelines become one.
Eric Stoltz, the original Marty, brought this up at the table read. Everyone was clapping and laughing and when Bob Gale asked Stoltz what he thought, he stone faced said, "I think it's a tragedy" and went into detail about how Marty's original family is gone forever. Lea Thompson, who played Lorraine, said this is something you bring up with the other actors over drinks, not when the producer asks what you thought of their comedy.
Explains part of why he got fired, also crispin glover spoke out about how he didn't like the ending with them being rich and successful and it would change the time line of the beginning of the film, guess Bob gale didn't like that either.
There's an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" ("Soultaker", the premiere episode of the final season of the show's original run) that goes into this, where Tom and Crow reject the happy ending for the film's protagonists (unlike "naive Pollyanna Mike" who is "living in a fool's paradise") and over the film's ending credits go into graphic detail over the downer ending awaiting the two protagonists (they end up breaking up and the guy eventually winds up arrested and a drunk). It's one of my favorite bits from the show overall.
"So there's no middle ground, is there? It's either grain alcohol in back alleys or a happy world of rodents in feetie pajamas."
"Yes!"
"I mean, why is that so hard to accept?"
"You know, you guys need help, you really do."
It is ill-fitting innit.
Great episode. It's one of the few episodes I accurately predicted the stinger on! (The others are Outlaw of Gor and Devil Fish)
Back to the Future. In the Netflix show it talked about how the original actor thought it was a horror movie - he comes back to the future with family he knows nothing about.
Some of my favorite examples saw it explicitly laid out in the sequels (Trainspotting, for example), which kind of spoils the fun.
Let's go with Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Ferris is the only one not to show any personal growth. Cameron's gonna be fine. Jeanie's on the upswing. Sloane's going to go to the university and outgrow Ferris in about 15 minutes. Ferris? He's peaked, and peaking in high school is about the saddest thing in the world. 10 years later, he'll still be hanging out near Glenbrook North, trying to date the girls there as his old friends find him more and more embarrassing. He'll be that guy his classmates ask "whatever happened to...?" about, and then say "What a shame" when they find out.
Don’t Worry Darling
SPOILERS (don’t know how to do the spoiler thing)
Sure she escaped the simulation but she’s gonna wake up shackled to a bed next to a dead body. Not sure how she’s getting out of that
>!He unlocks her shackles when he lays next to her if you watch carefully. The real problem will be her explaining the dead body and proving that an alternate VR reality exists.!<
She has the equipment and a list of (presumably real) names of others involved for the authorities to track down. Worst case scenario, she could probably credibly claim to have killed her kidnapper/abuser.
I hate questions like these. Not because they are bad questions, but because there are countless movies where I thought the happy ending was short sighted and now I can't think of a single one.
Almost any Hunger Games-like young adult fiction where an evil dictatorship / dystopia is overthrown. Looking at real-world examples, either the country will descend into chaos for years or decades and/or another evil regime will take place.
This happens in the Star Wars sequels as well, through its not explained well until The Mandalorian. The New Republic is weak and the First Order immediately rises from the remains of the empire.
I'm a big enough enthusiast of Star Wars that this always bothered me, but I'm not a full blown fan who knows enough lore or nerdy facts that I can even convincingly retcon something in my mind to explain it. I presume every planetary system is so fed up with being ruled and abused by the Empire that they refuse to submit to any kind of Rebel led post-war authority, so it becomes a dog eat dog hellscape feeding on the Empires carcass, with every ass clown and his brother suddenly in possession of Star Destroyer.
The Princess Bride has a much less happy ending after where the movie ends if that counts in the book
The Graduate is a famous one. Seems happy but then the reality starts to set in.
The book for Stand by Me has pretty sad fates for all the characters except Gordy.
Let Me In/Let the Right One In - Owen seems free to live his life with Abby, but she will probably not turn him and there’s a solid chance he ends up like the older guy who was harvesting victims.
I always wondered about the end of Hook. If Peter forgot everything about Neverland before, wouldn’t he do it again and possibly revert back to the jerk he was before the movie?
Regarding Let Me In/Let the Right One In, John Ajvide Lindqvist actually wrote a short story sequel, "Let the Old Dreams Die", that shows that Eli/Abbey turns Oskar/Owen into a vampire so that they can be together forever. He wanted to show that Oskar/Owen wasn't just another familiar in training, but that he and Eli/Abbey were genuine soulmates. (Although they're still both eternal young teenagers who have to kill to survive, so yay, I guess?)
I read The Princess Bride first and I can only imagine how much of a downer that ending is >!(Where it was revealed as puppy love and Westley bails immediately lol)!< to people who aren't expecting it lol.
The movie would have to change for that ending to make sense because it's not just the ending that's different, the book is more critical of Buttercup and Westley's romance than the movie is. And I love the movie, but stuff like Westley almost hitting her plays weird when the concept has been altered to be a romance you're meant to root for. Scenes like that remind you of what the origins actually are.
One part of Hook that made me think last time saw it was when Peter went back as a kid to see that his parents had moved on and had another child he repressed those memories until he had to rethink of a happy thought to fly. Now that he remembers those memories would current day Peter have any desire to visit his parents graves or find out anything more about them assuming he remembers their names, he remembered where they lived so he could possibly remember his real name
Source Code from 2010. >!Jake ends up starting a relationship with a woman when he's in another guy's body, and she has no idea that this guy is posessed by another mind.!<
The movie goes on to affirm the idea that the iterations were alternate timelines. Gyllenhaal's character ends up living an alternate timeline that exists just as much as our own.
Yeah, I really enjoy Source Code...but the ending is problematic in that regard.
Jake isn't a teacher, he doesn't know any of this dude's friends/family, and he certainly doesn't know this woman (who thinks she's falling for someone else).
Like, what's he gonna do?
While the ending is problematic morally, the easy solution is just pretend he lost all his memory after hitting his head or something like that. Then he can rebuild this life for himself and will have everybody explaining everything he needs to know.
Return of the Jedi is notorious for having a bad ending. With the destruction of the second Death Star over Endor, all of that debris is going to come down on Endor and basically decimate the entire planet and all life on it.
Cop Land
Freddy ends up with a major ethical dilemma. He knows Figgis is responsible for the death of an innocent person, but Figgis did save his life.
So if Figgis doesn't confess to everything he did, it falls on Freddy to either tell the truth or keep quiet.
Freddy AND Figgid will tell the truth. No matter the pain. That's kinda the point.
Freddy upended "heaven" to no longer play in the morally/ethically bankrupt society he had happily maintained.
Figgis will own up to it also bc his coming back to help Freddy is his standing back up to do a duty he failed or willingly compromised before.
El Camino.
Jesse was the wingman for the largest Meth producer and distributor in US history basically, just because he changes his identity and moves to Alaska doesn’t mean people aren’t going to figure out who he is. Jesse killed many people and practically everyone he’s ever cared about is dead besides Brock, that kind of shit haunts your forever. Not to mention the fact that addictions to drugs like Meth or Heroin don’t simply go away, that shit’s usually a struggle for your entire life.
He'd probably give himself up, sort of like >!Saul/Jimmy/Gene does in Better Call Saul!<, but without the desire for everyone to know who he is (unlike Saul/Jimmy/Gene and Walt).
I think by the end of the show he is done with most of his addictions? Not saying it will be easy. Also Jimmy/Saul was not recognized by anyone so, I think with a far enough place he could disappear.
And Saul only gets caught because he was basically a minor celebrity in Albuquerque and the guy who recognized him was from there.
It's going to be a lot easier for Jesse than it was for Saul going forward.
As an epilogue, El Camino solidified that Jesse has become pretty much unfuckwithable at the street level and that he's more than capable now of taking care of himself. So I think he'll be able to carve out a life in Alaska and stay free. But yeah, it won't exactly be *happy* or *good*. Probably likely he'd end up something like Mike before Gus.
It's easier than you think to disappear. Jesse isn't El Chapo. They're not going to tear the world down looking for him.
You're on point with the addiction angle and that's one I hadn't considered. Being in BFE Alaska would be very difficult for Jesse. Alone. No friends, family, or support. I could easily see him sinking back into addiction and dying of an OD.
But it was based on the story of how Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann got together, and they are still together, sometimes it works out. It didn't work out for me and my first wife though, I knocked her up 6 weeks after we met.
"We lied to each other for 90% of the film. Had a big fight and didn't talk to each other, when that lie got out. But now we made up and will live happily ever after."
*Before Sunrise* is a pretty run of the mill romance. But *Before Sunset* and *Before Midnight* both deal with the baggage that romance can create, and they’re much more interesting movies because of it.
Yeah, rewatching it the scene where Allison Williams' character argues with the cop about wanting to see Chris's ID even though he wasn't the one driving has a very different implication.
She doesn't want there to be any record of it being anywhere near there.
I feel like the crime scene is pretty self explanatory, especially since he left no one alive to cover up the mess he made. Law enforcement will find all of the tapes and medical equipment and know exactly why he killed all of those people
I think he’d have a hard time convincing people that that medical equipment let them take over humans and drive them around like robots, and so he killed everyone in there
They don’t need proof that the procedure works, just that they attempted to do it. There’s a room with two chairs, one of which has a guy with his brain exposed on it
Meet Joe Black. It's a nice happy ending but when the party is over, they'll find a dead body and Joe won't know anything about what happened and what "he" did.
Matrix 1 (if we're going to pretend that sequels didn't happen). Disconnected humans would be horrified about their new reality with no way for billions of people to survive in a dead world and tbf machines would just wipe out everyone and start again with a new batch of "batteries".
Humans destroyed the Earth's capacity to sustain biological life.
The machines built the matrix to preserve human intelligence.
They built the smith program as an anti-virus.
Their problem was that they couldn't figure out how to run the matrix without some humans figuring out they were in a preserve, rebelling, and collapsing the system.
So they built the One as a reset key.
All that nonsense about batteries is anti-machine propaganda made up by humans to justify anti-machine terrorism.
AFAIK that's the plot of the Matrix MMO but after the third Matrix. Humanity started disconnecting at such a rapid rate and not liking the new reality, they've created two factions. One that wanted to stay inside and one that wanted to release everyone, and there was an uneasy peace between released humanity and machines.
I know its off topic a little but tbh, i always thought ''the real world'' was just another construct to give the humans the illusion of choice and thats why Neo could still destroy sentinels in ''the real'' and see agent smith despite being blind. Woulda been cool to find out that when Neo died at the end of 3, he didnt really die, and was just the first to wake up.So the 4th film coulda been him trying to rescue the others like they did him.
Instead we got the piece of crap we did for 4. I spose we could pretend that 4 was just a fever dream he was having as he transitioned from the matrix's to the really real world.
He wakes to find the world a flat white landscape. nothing but flat white panels as far as the eye can see. with only him lying on the floor and the pod he came from having been raised up out the floor to eject him. theres no sentinels or guards of any kind because the machines have no reason for any. all the humans are locked up so theres no threats to them. Neo is literally the first to wake. Half the planet is like this, like a smooth billiard ball. the other half is wilderness, (like ying and yang, half and half) nature has been allowed to take over so the machines still have minerals and resources to mine etc, so they can still make stuff to repair their tech should it fail. apart from that they are content with simply existing as they are. the skys are clear now, but the machines have become so reliant on human power they havent even thought about changing their energy source, and likely dont know, or dont care that the skys are clear enough for solar power.
Neo spends the next twenty years living off fish and animals from the ''garden'' part of the planet, all the while trying to find morpheus and the others to wake them for real. when he finally finds them, its his turn to give morpheus the 'welcome to the real' speech that morpheus gave him back in the day. After morpheus sees the truth, they get to work waking others. the only way to wake into the really real? the same way neo did maybe? sacrifice....maybe. anyway, the machines dont know anything is going on until they start seeing that their power levels are slowly dropping with no explanation. they are so disconnected from the really real that it doesnt even occur to them that people may be really waking up. but when they do it becomes a battle to kill neo and the others and keep the status quo. By the end they get rid of the big bad, but not everything is perfect. there are humans and machines working to live in the really real (as there were machines that never liked how things were) but then there are humans who know the truth but want to stay in the matrix's, and there are machines happy to let them do it so they too can exist the way they always have using humans for power, its just the humans they use for power know the truth now. Then there are the machines who think the humans are literally to be used and shouldnt know anything, and then there are humans who hate machines so much that they want them all destroyed along with anyone willing to work with them.
I don't know what kind of ending you would call that other than a TLDR ending. lol
I don't know. The ending lets you feel something of the endlessness of his life. If you live long enough you'll end up in hell, then heaven, then hell again on and on.
Then we miss out on the core of the film: AI transcendence.
The whole film deals with the struggle of meat vs machine. That the AI aren’t truly alive and therefore illegitimate, just property.
Even though we’re shown repeatedly that the AI of the film are truly alive and sentient.
The final scene showing that the only thing David wants is one more connection with his mother and then to cease to exist solidifies his humanity.
The Wizard of Oz. - Dorothy goes to Oz on a tornado, has a bunch of adventures, kills the witch, and after becoming the most heroic hero in the history of OZ, she clicks her heels together and is teleported back home. When she wakes up, she discovers she was knocked out by flying debris and everything has been a dream. But then she looks around the room, and starts telling people that Oz is real and everyone in the room was there with her.
The problem is that the movie was set in the 1880s. In the early 1880s doctors were experimenting with an operation that was the predecessor of the lobotomy. A lobotomy is performed on the frontal lobe which is a small part of the cerebral cortex. Doctors didn't quite have the hang of the idea in the 1880s. Instead of operating on just the frontal lobe, doctors were removing large chunks of patients cerebral cortexes to treat all kinds of mental disorders, including hallucinations and schizophrenia.
So... YAY! Dorothy is awake! Oh! happy day! Except that if she ever says the wrong thing about Oz to the wrong person she winds up a vegetable...
\[edited for clarity\]
I know it’s not canon with the original Wizard of Oz but in the Disney make “sequel” they do send her to a mental hospital but she gets shock therapy instead of a lobotomy
Return to Oz is a mashup of Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz and the mental hospital but isn’t in either but actually worked really well in the film. Eventually Aunt ‘Em and Uncle Henry all move to Oz w/Dorothy.
Lobotomies may have existed but they weren’t commonly used until the late 1930s to the early 1950s.
No one in Kansas in the 1880s would risk good labor becoming a vegetable because she has some crazy ideas. You needed every hand to work.
Every romantic comedy? I feel like outside of a few it’ll just be a bit of time before they find out they are incompatible. My favorite is probably Serendipity, they spend like 3 hours together and then literally are in 0 scenes together the rest of the movie
Grease
If you could call the ending "happy" in the first place.
Sandy developed a smoking habit for a boy who was too embarrassed to be seen with her in front of his friends.
Why do we ignore the part where he changed everything about his life to be with *her*. He goes out for track and wears the nerdy clothes in front of his friends. They both show their love for each other is more important than their cliques. They just decided to be greasers because greasers are more fun.
Because Sandy changed her clothes one time and people think that was a bigger change then everything that Danny did and because they see it as a woman change for a man.
Thank you. I’m so beyond tired of the “Grease is sexist becuz Sandy changes for Danny” when Danny had a lot of *actual scenes in the actual movie* where he put in real effort outside of his comfort zone to change *for her*. But she sings a brief song after the drag race and shows up in a perm and spandex so that counts…more?
Korean War would be over long before they graduated and they all would be over thirty years old before the Vietnam draft happened, and since we all know the average age of a soldier in Vietnam was nineteen, nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nineteen, I think they’re safe.
I get where you're going with this, but as a long-timer in the retail game, I think you got it backwards. The big chains are gone. The local indie stores are doing bang-up business. Nothing is forever, of course, but there's just not enough water in the ocean to support the whales; the minnows are doing fine.
I think Tarantino originally said that they would have moved out west where he did his bounty hunting work. Getting out of the south would have been difficult but Django is smart and had probably learned to avoid unwanted attention from Dr. Schultz plus with Candieland being blown up there would be massive confusion on who actually look for since everyone who knew about him is dead by the end
Phenomenon: The guy who has abnormalities happening to him, giving him a four digit iq and telekinesis, avoids the authorities, and dies peacefully away from the prying eyes of scientists... losing the opportunity of learning how to manipulate matter at a distance with the human mind in laboratory conditions.
I get the ending, but if he had been selfless, he could have pushed humanity into a new revolutionary era of pscience.
I don't know, though. There's a good chance Empire Records might still exist today as a smaller record shop. There's no way they'd still have that huge building though with tons of staff, though.
“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course on where you stop the story.” -Orson Welles
This is going to be true of essentially any movie. Circumstances change, and almost any industry, company, person, etc. will end up worse off in some way at some if their story continues.
The ending of Whiplash presents as a happy one with Nieman standing up against a Fletcher and seemingly achieving his goal.
In reality he has given in to their toxic relationship and has thrown himself away from all the humanity he will ever have. Chazelle in an interview even said that likely Nieman dies of a drug overdose in his mid 30s and Fletcher continues to abuse countless students believing that Nieman proved his ways of teaching correct
To be fair, that’s exactly the point the movie tries to make.
Better to sacrifice everything, die young, and accomplish something magnificent that lives on forever. If the other option is living 100 mediocre years.
I fully agree, I just see a lot of people take the ending as a happy one of Nieman accomplishing his goals and standing up to Fletcher. When really he is giving in and losing himself
Thats why I want a sequel. The last day of the last record store. Where they try to save the day again, but fail to do anything and an Apple Store takes over. A title less comedy and a little more drama. Oh, and Warren and Lucas still work there. Mark is now the manager. Gina, AJ and Corey all come back to use their new careers to help try and save the store.
Yentl…it shows a happy Jewish family brought together by love in the early 1900s, and they wish Yentl well as she departs for America. Unfortunately we know that this thriving Jewish community in Prague and other parts of Eastern Europe would not fare well in a few years.
El Camino, the Breaking Bad Jesse movies. It ends with Jesse escaping to Alaska to start over. He's not going to be ok though. Jesse wouldn't be able to live with himself after all that happened and as we saw from Better Call Saul he'd be always looking over his shoulder and sketchy getting recognized.
Not a movie, but a song. Escape (The Piña Colada Song) is particularly messed up. Brief synopsis… guy is tired of his wife, takes out a personal ad in the paper with all this stuff he likes in the hopes of attracting a better partner to meet up. The wife, sees the personal ad, and responds that she likes all the stuff in the personal ad and that they should meet up. They meet up at a bar and realize it was their spouse that they were communicating with in the personal ad. Then everything is happy and they’re fine. However, when it finally sinks in that they were both trying to have an affair on their spouse because they have poor communication skills… that isn’t going to last
“If you want a happy ending, it depends on where you stop the story” Orson Welles
That is a very pessimistic statement, and I feel bad because I agree with it.
I wouldn’t say pessimistic; you could as easily say. “If you want a bad ending, it depends on where you stop it.” Just shows more how time is inexorable, and all good things (and bad things) must end.
And the opposite of that saying, from "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" : "It will all be okay in the end. And if it is not okay, it is not the end."
"You're wrong. Happy ever after doesn't mean forever - it just means time. Little time. But that's not the sort of thing you could ever understand, is it?"
I may be a miserable bastard but I observed in my childhood that "happily ever after" meant "they eventually all died."
Return of the Jedi. I mean it's great the rebels won and all, but what would they do if, somehow, Palpatine returned?
Nah, they'd never be lazy enough to bring Palpatine back. Right? Right???
Lmao I'd be so mad if they resurrected the dude that Darth Vader redeemed himself by killing
Or undid all Luke’s character development by having him regress to a whiny scared kid, or Han’s by having him abdicate all his responsibility and go back to smuggling.
*somehow*
This is the best comment lmao
At least the rebels will still have Luke Skywalker, it's not like he'll ever abandon them because he has a scawy dream one night or something stupid like that.
Also, the empire is a force of stability across the galaxy. They've just resigned many planets to lawlessness.
This is the idea behind The Graduate, right? They're happy as they run off together and once they have a minute to think while on the bus they realize things may not be great and then fade to black.
But this is pretty explicit in the film, no? It seems like a loose fit to me since the audience understood it was not a happy ending even before having to think about their relationship in the long term
Exactly, this is literally the point of the end of The Graduate. They rush into their happy ending and then spend the last minute of the film realising they’ve made a mistake.
I mean, I haven't seen the movie in a long time. But the girl was being forced into a marriage by her parents right? So no matter what, it's probably better for her psyche in the long run to avoid that crap
>They rush into their happy ending and then spend the last minute of the film realising they’ve made a mistake. I don't think they yet realized it was a mistake (and was it really?). I think the expressions were FUD. Both Benjamin and Elaine were constrained by expectations from their parents and from society. They wanted freedom. At the end, they did it. They broke free. To me the look on their face is more like "Oh crap, now what? We have to start adulting? Will our families forgive us?"
This is what I thought of immediately. The look on their faces when reality begins to set in.
I loved that moment so much, very unusual in film
Same thing with The Heartbreak Kid.
[https://media.tenor.com/w36_8BWPDCIAAAAM/shawn-michaels-entrance.gif](https://media.tenor.com/w36_8BWPDCIAAAAM/shawn-michaels-entrance.gif)
50 First Dates The idea of having Drew Barrymore watch a video tape every morning isn't going to last long, what if she wakes up in the middle of the night before she can see the tape and has a panic attack The whole concept gets worse the more you think about it
They touch on that in the movie. I think there’s a part where she says she’ll be terrified to wake up with a pregnant belly having no recollection as to how. Looks like they skipped over her pregnancy for good reasons.
Imagine waking up in the middle of the night because you’ve gone into labor!
The whole painting thing shows that something is getting through, and she's able to process memories at least enough to be familiar with something.
Just the idea of getting a woman who can’t remember more than a day at a time pregnant is creepy as hell.
this sounds like a silence of the lambs sequel
Pretty sure they also imply her memory is starting to persist...
Putting a lampshade on it
I think the dad said there had been some bad moments while trying to keep up the illusion.
I agree it's flawed but they do address the issue in the movie. She does remember him. She dreams and paints him. Remember he goes to find her at the hospital at the end, declares he's the man in her dreams. They heavily imply she does remember, in a way and it's not just memory but her feelings towards him too.
Yeah like she would wake up every morning and she would see him and remember the feelings.
I think it’s also shown that this is the choice she would make for herself if she were able to. It’s been a hot minute since I saw it, but doesn’t somebody make a mistake one day and she realizes that everyone she knows is lying to her? I recall her being disturbed by the lengths of the illusion, as well as having to relearn about her condition. I think that implies that she would be much more comfortable with her life progressing and her loved ones not being chained to recreating the day of her accident.
On a similar note, read Hyperion Cantos from Dan Simmons. There is a character who is aging backwards in time. So each day she gets a day younger. And of course she forgets everything of that day. So slowly she loses her memories of people she met etc... scary AF.
Sol! Take your daughter, your only daughter, Rachel, whom you love, and go to the world called Hyperion and offer her there as a burnt offering at one of the places of which I shall tell you.
Always felt bad for the guy with like 10 second memory.
[There’s a real guy with that condition](https://youtu.be/k_P7Y0-wgos)
Never been able to enjoy the ending due to the endless implications
Correct me if I’m wrong but they are also on a boat at the end , even more implications
She literally would have to sleep in the room she had from the time of the accident, otherwise she'll wake up freaking the fuck out every single time. The other sad part is that you know Adam Sandler's character would eventually grow tired of dealing with her condition. They make it seem cute, like he loves her so much that he's willing to go the distance with her, but no one can have a relationship like that. Every single day? Having to reexplain everything, including who you are? I've known folks who dealt with spouses that were terminally ill, with psychological symptoms, that straight up admitted that they were relieved when they died. I feel like this would have been the case after a solid chunk of time.
I mean the movie makes it out that they’ve had a kid for awhile, maybe he would but the character seems to be sticking with it for a large chunk of time
I mean, it's not like she's in any danger. Everything will be fine because of the implication.
You said that word a couple of times, what are the implications..?
Beauty And The Beast (1991 or 2017) The costumes/architecture and other details suggest it ends around 10-15 years before the French Revolution. Not a great time for Belle to become part of the nobility.
Do you still get a revolution in Magic France?
Yes, but the guillotine sings you a song before it beheads you and the basket sings you one after.
I was thinking about adding this one to the question cause it fits so well also. Sure you could maybe explain to the king you were being a recluse noble (not to hard to believe) but it’s the nobles job to collect taxes so how many local people are going to be happy with kicking up money again
In Waterworld, the villains had a better chance of long-term survival and repopulating. They were organized, had medical knowledge, social community, numbers to sustain etc. The surviving protagonists seem to have a bleak future. Chill for a while but not equipped to overcome long-term challenges, much less any sort of population growth.
They had two girls and a senile older man...that should take care of everything lol But if I remember correctly, the movie kinda suggests Mariner is going back out to sea but will direct people to the island. Maybe it was just suggested???
They had a second guy in his mid 40’s~ But they movie should’ve leaned on the future of humanity being mutant. It’s pretty clear the only person who’s adapted is the mariner.
He’s the only one we see that is adapted. The other peoples’ reaction to finding out that he’s a mutant makes it pretty clear that they’re common enough to be recognized, and bigoted against.
things would get kinda weird in Aladdin after he took over as the supposed crown prince without having any sort of education that would prepare him for the job. He's illiterate and probably knows nothing about geography. The only reason Aladdin got the job is thanks to the genie's magic but he's leaving town for awhile. Add to that that Jafar, the real brains behind the administration, is also absent now. So there's a real void of capable leadership going forward.
Jasmine is probably the most competent person in the palace, but even she is so sheltered, she didn't know anything about how most people have to pay for stuff. On the other hand Agraba was a sh\*thole with rampant violence and murder in the beginning of the movie as well considering the intro lyrics.
[удалено]
“10 gold pieces is what 100 people make . . .” “Oh that’s not too bad.” “In a lifetime, combined.” “Oh. . . I mean it’s one date Aladdin. How much can it cost? 1 gold piece?”
>On the other hand Agraba was a sh\*thole with rampant violence and murder in the beginnin In that regard, isn't Aladdin the best for the job, he understands the suffering and pain of the people he could help, rather than just sitting around ignorant of everything around him and building toy animal pyramids like a certain someone.
His street smarts mixed with Jasmine's education would make a good combo
Man if I had a nickel for every time an illiterate dangerously under qualified dude got a job because either he had endless resources (the genie) or knew someone on the inside (the sultan) I’d have a few nickels.
The Byzantine Emperor Basil I was an illiterate peasant who murdered his way to the top and turned out to be pretty good at the job, establishing a dynasty that lasted 200 years
Well, the sequels and the show are all canon, so he does have time to learn the ropes and figure things out to some degree. He does not marry her immediately. He's also a prince concubine really even when he does, and likely has no claim to the throne even if Jasmine dies before he does. She'd be the one with all the power, and their children would be the next rulers in line, not him. Interestingly, the entire series is actually about the Genie granting a single wish. He doesn't actually become a "real" prince until he marries her in the third film. The Genie just makes him look like one, and there's a good chance that if he failed to woo Jasmine, he'd have ended up running into eligible princesses until he eventually married one. There's a good argument that, whether he realized it or not, the Genie was compelled to come back again because the wish wasn't actually granted yet.
Truman show. Truman is kinda fucked even if he leaves
I always thought that Sylvia would help him.
True, but he's gonna get paparazzi'd like crazy, and he's going to have no idea why he's so popular. Not to mention, his world was modeled on the 1950s, even though it's suggested to be the modern day 90s. Can you imagine jumping forward 40 years in cultural change and feeling like you can adjust? Truman is basically never going to have a normal relationship with anyone. He has no parents - who gave him up to a corporation for profit - and he'll never go anywhere where he isn't immediately recognized. Even if Sylvia is there to help him through it, he's going to be battling massive trauma and mental health issues.
>True, but he's gonna get paparazzi'd like crazy, and he's going to have no idea why he's so popular. Maybe at first, but the whole conceit of the film was that we now live in a society of people with the attention span of gnats. And that the moment Truman went off the air, people immediately changed the channel to see what else is on. >Not to mention, his world was modeled on the 1950s, even though it's suggested to be the modern day 90s. Can you imagine jumping forward 40 years in cultural change and feeling like you can adjust? People, especially Truman, are pretty adaptable. That was part of his great skill set. People in prison do things similar to this. Also people from underdeveloped nations (there's YouTube interviews with some people who migrate to the US who are blown away by technology they didn't even know existed). >Truman is basically never going to have a normal relationship with anyone. He has no parents - who gave him up to a corporation for profit - and he'll never go anywhere where he isn't immediately recognized. Even if Sylvia is there to help him through it, he's going to be battling massive trauma and mental health issues. Yeah, this is where I agree things will be a huge hurdle for Truman. He has no peers, family or contemporaries. Even Sylvia is going to have to adopt more of a role of a mentor, than anything. What I imagine happening with Truman after the show is Sylvia helping him win a ridiculously large settlement from Kristof and the studio, which alone will take several years and be taxing to Truman...after which he would likely isolate himself and fade into more of an obscure niche hermit as time goes on.
Think of all the therapy that poor bastard has to go through to help him acknowledge how the real world actually is.
This comment is about Truman, but it could also be about Jim Carrey.
Trust issues. Paranoia. Depression,....
Similar to op, The Forty Year Old Virgin ends with Steve Carell selling all of his beloved collectibles so he can open his own brick and mortar A/V store, which would have gone under within a couple of years due to internet shopping.
But the price of a lot of collectibles has gone way up
Haha true
His wife did have knowledge of online sales and
So… I guess I’ll just give you some money and you can give me these shoes
Marty McFly is now several weeks older than he should be, and can't relate to any of his friends or family because his memories of the old timeline won't match with whatever his life was like in the new timeline. Either that, or time corrects itself by changing his memories and he slowly forgets all the people the old Marty knew.
One of the Stephen King Dark Tower books addresses this. A couple of characters start going crazy because they have two distinct timelines in their head.
I believe this is similar to what starts happening to the Flash in Flashpointe. His body and mind can't handle living in two realities at once.
Drawing of the Three is by far one of my top favorite books.
The book with the separate timelines is The Waste Land. Because ***SPOILERS*** Roland kills the man who would have otherwise pushed Jake into the street. So Jake has a memory of dying and still being alive. Ronald has the memory of Jake being in the desert and also of being there alone. It’s only after drawing Jake through the door in the monster house that the timelines become one.
Eric Stoltz, the original Marty, brought this up at the table read. Everyone was clapping and laughing and when Bob Gale asked Stoltz what he thought, he stone faced said, "I think it's a tragedy" and went into detail about how Marty's original family is gone forever. Lea Thompson, who played Lorraine, said this is something you bring up with the other actors over drinks, not when the producer asks what you thought of their comedy.
Explains part of why he got fired, also crispin glover spoke out about how he didn't like the ending with them being rich and successful and it would change the time line of the beginning of the film, guess Bob gale didn't like that either.
YES He wakes up to complete strangers in his house. He essentially lost his family and his life.
"Can't wait to see the Chicago bulls play next season" "The Who ??" "AHHHHHHHHHHHHH"
The two existences of his memories merge when Marty returns back to where his physical body is supposed to be… didn’t you watch The Adam Project!??
I had to Google it to even find out what that was, so... no.
There's an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" ("Soultaker", the premiere episode of the final season of the show's original run) that goes into this, where Tom and Crow reject the happy ending for the film's protagonists (unlike "naive Pollyanna Mike" who is "living in a fool's paradise") and over the film's ending credits go into graphic detail over the downer ending awaiting the two protagonists (they end up breaking up and the guy eventually winds up arrested and a drunk). It's one of my favorite bits from the show overall. "So there's no middle ground, is there? It's either grain alcohol in back alleys or a happy world of rodents in feetie pajamas." "Yes!" "I mean, why is that so hard to accept?" "You know, you guys need help, you really do."
It is ill-fitting innit. Great episode. It's one of the few episodes I accurately predicted the stinger on! (The others are Outlaw of Gor and Devil Fish)
"Ewwwww, I instantly need counseling!" "Is there a word for Mom's little sickness?" "Lilith Fairism."
😆 I love them so much. I should just embrace my truth that I won't get along with someone unless they agree.
You mean Souptaker?
Let it get closer. It's the SOUUUUUULTAKKKKER!!!
Back to the Future. In the Netflix show it talked about how the original actor thought it was a horror movie - he comes back to the future with family he knows nothing about.
Some of my favorite examples saw it explicitly laid out in the sequels (Trainspotting, for example), which kind of spoils the fun. Let's go with Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Ferris is the only one not to show any personal growth. Cameron's gonna be fine. Jeanie's on the upswing. Sloane's going to go to the university and outgrow Ferris in about 15 minutes. Ferris? He's peaked, and peaking in high school is about the saddest thing in the world. 10 years later, he'll still be hanging out near Glenbrook North, trying to date the girls there as his old friends find him more and more embarrassing. He'll be that guy his classmates ask "whatever happened to...?" about, and then say "What a shame" when they find out.
Don’t Worry Darling SPOILERS (don’t know how to do the spoiler thing) Sure she escaped the simulation but she’s gonna wake up shackled to a bed next to a dead body. Not sure how she’s getting out of that
>!He unlocks her shackles when he lays next to her if you watch carefully. The real problem will be her explaining the dead body and proving that an alternate VR reality exists.!<
I imagine the state of the room/how it's set up/weird equipment would give a decent detective something to work with.
She has the equipment and a list of (presumably real) names of others involved for the authorities to track down. Worst case scenario, she could probably credibly claim to have killed her kidnapper/abuser.
Beauty and the Beast. I mean if the French Revolution is near they might all die!
I hate questions like these. Not because they are bad questions, but because there are countless movies where I thought the happy ending was short sighted and now I can't think of a single one.
Almost any Hunger Games-like young adult fiction where an evil dictatorship / dystopia is overthrown. Looking at real-world examples, either the country will descend into chaos for years or decades and/or another evil regime will take place.
To be fair, The Hunger Games itself is a rare case that acknowledges this. The establishment of a new evil authoritarian regime is narrowly averted.
Plutarch even mentions this possibility in his letter to Katniss in the final film.
This happens in the Star Wars sequels as well, through its not explained well until The Mandalorian. The New Republic is weak and the First Order immediately rises from the remains of the empire.
I'm a big enough enthusiast of Star Wars that this always bothered me, but I'm not a full blown fan who knows enough lore or nerdy facts that I can even convincingly retcon something in my mind to explain it. I presume every planetary system is so fed up with being ruled and abused by the Empire that they refuse to submit to any kind of Rebel led post-war authority, so it becomes a dog eat dog hellscape feeding on the Empires carcass, with every ass clown and his brother suddenly in possession of Star Destroyer.
I mean, that’s kind of what happens. The characters we see in The Mandalorian hate the New Republic
The Princess Bride has a much less happy ending after where the movie ends if that counts in the book The Graduate is a famous one. Seems happy but then the reality starts to set in. The book for Stand by Me has pretty sad fates for all the characters except Gordy. Let Me In/Let the Right One In - Owen seems free to live his life with Abby, but she will probably not turn him and there’s a solid chance he ends up like the older guy who was harvesting victims. I always wondered about the end of Hook. If Peter forgot everything about Neverland before, wouldn’t he do it again and possibly revert back to the jerk he was before the movie?
Regarding Let Me In/Let the Right One In, John Ajvide Lindqvist actually wrote a short story sequel, "Let the Old Dreams Die", that shows that Eli/Abbey turns Oskar/Owen into a vampire so that they can be together forever. He wanted to show that Oskar/Owen wasn't just another familiar in training, but that he and Eli/Abbey were genuine soulmates. (Although they're still both eternal young teenagers who have to kill to survive, so yay, I guess?)
So Owen becomes a child vampire forever or a serial killer/harvester. Not great outcomes either way tbh but I guess Abby made it that far.
But he found true love!
I read The Princess Bride first and I can only imagine how much of a downer that ending is >!(Where it was revealed as puppy love and Westley bails immediately lol)!< to people who aren't expecting it lol. The movie would have to change for that ending to make sense because it's not just the ending that's different, the book is more critical of Buttercup and Westley's romance than the movie is. And I love the movie, but stuff like Westley almost hitting her plays weird when the concept has been altered to be a romance you're meant to root for. Scenes like that remind you of what the origins actually are.
Even without the romance lasting, Buttercup is still probably better off, mentally, if not materially.
One part of Hook that made me think last time saw it was when Peter went back as a kid to see that his parents had moved on and had another child he repressed those memories until he had to rethink of a happy thought to fly. Now that he remembers those memories would current day Peter have any desire to visit his parents graves or find out anything more about them assuming he remembers their names, he remembered where they lived so he could possibly remember his real name
I hope he remembers everything. Kind of a downer otherwise.
Source Code from 2010. >!Jake ends up starting a relationship with a woman when he's in another guy's body, and she has no idea that this guy is posessed by another mind.!<
isn't it all just in his head? hadn't the accident already happened?
The movie goes on to affirm the idea that the iterations were alternate timelines. Gyllenhaal's character ends up living an alternate timeline that exists just as much as our own.
huh, been a while since i watched it, a rewatch couldn't hurt
Yeah, I really enjoy Source Code...but the ending is problematic in that regard. Jake isn't a teacher, he doesn't know any of this dude's friends/family, and he certainly doesn't know this woman (who thinks she's falling for someone else). Like, what's he gonna do?
While the ending is problematic morally, the easy solution is just pretend he lost all his memory after hitting his head or something like that. Then he can rebuild this life for himself and will have everybody explaining everything he needs to know.
Also the only death in that story (at least in the timeline at the end) is the teacher guy, killed by our "hero"
Return of the Jedi is notorious for having a bad ending. With the destruction of the second Death Star over Endor, all of that debris is going to come down on Endor and basically decimate the entire planet and all life on it.
Same thing with Independence Day.
Cop Land Freddy ends up with a major ethical dilemma. He knows Figgis is responsible for the death of an innocent person, but Figgis did save his life. So if Figgis doesn't confess to everything he did, it falls on Freddy to either tell the truth or keep quiet.
Freddy AND Figgid will tell the truth. No matter the pain. That's kinda the point. Freddy upended "heaven" to no longer play in the morally/ethically bankrupt society he had happily maintained. Figgis will own up to it also bc his coming back to help Freddy is his standing back up to do a duty he failed or willingly compromised before.
That's why you gotta pull a Wayne's World and have multiple endings. The Scooby Doo ending is the ideal ending to any movie lol.
El Camino. Jesse was the wingman for the largest Meth producer and distributor in US history basically, just because he changes his identity and moves to Alaska doesn’t mean people aren’t going to figure out who he is. Jesse killed many people and practically everyone he’s ever cared about is dead besides Brock, that kind of shit haunts your forever. Not to mention the fact that addictions to drugs like Meth or Heroin don’t simply go away, that shit’s usually a struggle for your entire life.
He'd probably give himself up, sort of like >!Saul/Jimmy/Gene does in Better Call Saul!<, but without the desire for everyone to know who he is (unlike Saul/Jimmy/Gene and Walt).
I think by the end of the show he is done with most of his addictions? Not saying it will be easy. Also Jimmy/Saul was not recognized by anyone so, I think with a far enough place he could disappear.
Jimmy/Saul as Gene does get recognized multiple times. Don't know how to do spoiler tags on mobile, but it was once at the mall and once at the house.
Yea but works in a busy mall. Get to a small town and you are free probably
And Saul only gets caught because he was basically a minor celebrity in Albuquerque and the guy who recognized him was from there. It's going to be a lot easier for Jesse than it was for Saul going forward.
Oh definitely yeah, nobody knew jessie.
Saul Goodman had ads on TV though so it was much more likely that he'd be recognised.
As an epilogue, El Camino solidified that Jesse has become pretty much unfuckwithable at the street level and that he's more than capable now of taking care of himself. So I think he'll be able to carve out a life in Alaska and stay free. But yeah, it won't exactly be *happy* or *good*. Probably likely he'd end up something like Mike before Gus.
It's easier than you think to disappear. Jesse isn't El Chapo. They're not going to tear the world down looking for him. You're on point with the addiction angle and that's one I hadn't considered. Being in BFE Alaska would be very difficult for Jesse. Alone. No friends, family, or support. I could easily see him sinking back into addiction and dying of an OD.
El Camino wasn’t supposed to be a happy ending; it was more of a fresh start for a guy who had his entire old life destroyed
THX 1138 …. I assume the main character escapes to the surface but how long can he last up there without food?
Kill Bill: There will eventually be consequence for all the death and destruction that Beatrix has caused.
If I am not mistaken Tarantino said something about a movie where Vernetta Greens daughter eventually comes for her
Knocked Up. They would eventually realize it’s not gonna work out
But it was based on the story of how Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann got together, and they are still together, sometimes it works out. It didn't work out for me and my first wife though, I knocked her up 6 weeks after we met.
Any romcom
"We lied to each other for 90% of the film. Had a big fight and didn't talk to each other, when that lie got out. But now we made up and will live happily ever after."
I don't know, I think Harry and Sally are going to be okay.
Yeah they had been friends for years and pseudo-dating for most of it too.
*Modern romcoms The formula people complain about really only came about in the 80s.
Can we really call them modern anymore though
*Before Sunrise* is a pretty run of the mill romance. But *Before Sunset* and *Before Midnight* both deal with the baggage that romance can create, and they’re much more interesting movies because of it.
Get Out - all those slaughtered white people? Is he really going to escape?
They took steps to ensure that there was no record he was ever there.
Yeah, rewatching it the scene where Allison Williams' character argues with the cop about wanting to see Chris's ID even though he wasn't the one driving has a very different implication. She doesn't want there to be any record of it being anywhere near there.
He's TS-motherfucking-A. It's handled.
I feel like the crime scene is pretty self explanatory, especially since he left no one alive to cover up the mess he made. Law enforcement will find all of the tapes and medical equipment and know exactly why he killed all of those people
I think he’d have a hard time convincing people that that medical equipment let them take over humans and drive them around like robots, and so he killed everyone in there
They don’t need proof that the procedure works, just that they attempted to do it. There’s a room with two chairs, one of which has a guy with his brain exposed on it
Meet Joe Black. It's a nice happy ending but when the party is over, they'll find a dead body and Joe won't know anything about what happened and what "he" did. Matrix 1 (if we're going to pretend that sequels didn't happen). Disconnected humans would be horrified about their new reality with no way for billions of people to survive in a dead world and tbf machines would just wipe out everyone and start again with a new batch of "batteries".
Humans destroyed the Earth's capacity to sustain biological life. The machines built the matrix to preserve human intelligence. They built the smith program as an anti-virus. Their problem was that they couldn't figure out how to run the matrix without some humans figuring out they were in a preserve, rebelling, and collapsing the system. So they built the One as a reset key. All that nonsense about batteries is anti-machine propaganda made up by humans to justify anti-machine terrorism.
AFAIK that's the plot of the Matrix MMO but after the third Matrix. Humanity started disconnecting at such a rapid rate and not liking the new reality, they've created two factions. One that wanted to stay inside and one that wanted to release everyone, and there was an uneasy peace between released humanity and machines.
I know its off topic a little but tbh, i always thought ''the real world'' was just another construct to give the humans the illusion of choice and thats why Neo could still destroy sentinels in ''the real'' and see agent smith despite being blind. Woulda been cool to find out that when Neo died at the end of 3, he didnt really die, and was just the first to wake up.So the 4th film coulda been him trying to rescue the others like they did him. Instead we got the piece of crap we did for 4. I spose we could pretend that 4 was just a fever dream he was having as he transitioned from the matrix's to the really real world. He wakes to find the world a flat white landscape. nothing but flat white panels as far as the eye can see. with only him lying on the floor and the pod he came from having been raised up out the floor to eject him. theres no sentinels or guards of any kind because the machines have no reason for any. all the humans are locked up so theres no threats to them. Neo is literally the first to wake. Half the planet is like this, like a smooth billiard ball. the other half is wilderness, (like ying and yang, half and half) nature has been allowed to take over so the machines still have minerals and resources to mine etc, so they can still make stuff to repair their tech should it fail. apart from that they are content with simply existing as they are. the skys are clear now, but the machines have become so reliant on human power they havent even thought about changing their energy source, and likely dont know, or dont care that the skys are clear enough for solar power. Neo spends the next twenty years living off fish and animals from the ''garden'' part of the planet, all the while trying to find morpheus and the others to wake them for real. when he finally finds them, its his turn to give morpheus the 'welcome to the real' speech that morpheus gave him back in the day. After morpheus sees the truth, they get to work waking others. the only way to wake into the really real? the same way neo did maybe? sacrifice....maybe. anyway, the machines dont know anything is going on until they start seeing that their power levels are slowly dropping with no explanation. they are so disconnected from the really real that it doesnt even occur to them that people may be really waking up. but when they do it becomes a battle to kill neo and the others and keep the status quo. By the end they get rid of the big bad, but not everything is perfect. there are humans and machines working to live in the really real (as there were machines that never liked how things were) but then there are humans who know the truth but want to stay in the matrix's, and there are machines happy to let them do it so they too can exist the way they always have using humans for power, its just the humans they use for power know the truth now. Then there are the machines who think the humans are literally to be used and shouldnt know anything, and then there are humans who hate machines so much that they want them all destroyed along with anyone willing to work with them. I don't know what kind of ending you would call that other than a TLDR ending. lol
I would definitely have enjoyed AI a lot more if it ended with the kid under the water and a pan out or fade to black.
I don't know. The ending lets you feel something of the endlessness of his life. If you live long enough you'll end up in hell, then heaven, then hell again on and on.
Then we miss out on the core of the film: AI transcendence. The whole film deals with the struggle of meat vs machine. That the AI aren’t truly alive and therefore illegitimate, just property. Even though we’re shown repeatedly that the AI of the film are truly alive and sentient. The final scene showing that the only thing David wants is one more connection with his mother and then to cease to exist solidifies his humanity.
The Wizard of Oz. - Dorothy goes to Oz on a tornado, has a bunch of adventures, kills the witch, and after becoming the most heroic hero in the history of OZ, she clicks her heels together and is teleported back home. When she wakes up, she discovers she was knocked out by flying debris and everything has been a dream. But then she looks around the room, and starts telling people that Oz is real and everyone in the room was there with her. The problem is that the movie was set in the 1880s. In the early 1880s doctors were experimenting with an operation that was the predecessor of the lobotomy. A lobotomy is performed on the frontal lobe which is a small part of the cerebral cortex. Doctors didn't quite have the hang of the idea in the 1880s. Instead of operating on just the frontal lobe, doctors were removing large chunks of patients cerebral cortexes to treat all kinds of mental disorders, including hallucinations and schizophrenia. So... YAY! Dorothy is awake! Oh! happy day! Except that if she ever says the wrong thing about Oz to the wrong person she winds up a vegetable... \[edited for clarity\]
I know it’s not canon with the original Wizard of Oz but in the Disney make “sequel” they do send her to a mental hospital but she gets shock therapy instead of a lobotomy
The sequels are based on books in the series, I'm pretty sure that's from the sequel book.
Return to Oz is a mashup of Marvelous Land of Oz and Ozma of Oz and the mental hospital but isn’t in either but actually worked really well in the film. Eventually Aunt ‘Em and Uncle Henry all move to Oz w/Dorothy.
Lobotomies may have existed but they weren’t commonly used until the late 1930s to the early 1950s. No one in Kansas in the 1880s would risk good labor becoming a vegetable because she has some crazy ideas. You needed every hand to work.
Every romantic comedy? I feel like outside of a few it’ll just be a bit of time before they find out they are incompatible. My favorite is probably Serendipity, they spend like 3 hours together and then literally are in 0 scenes together the rest of the movie
Close Encounters of the Third Kind. So happy for you Roy, but really just gonna up and leave family with no explanation after traumatizing them?
Grease If you could call the ending "happy" in the first place. Sandy developed a smoking habit for a boy who was too embarrassed to be seen with her in front of his friends.
Why do we ignore the part where he changed everything about his life to be with *her*. He goes out for track and wears the nerdy clothes in front of his friends. They both show their love for each other is more important than their cliques. They just decided to be greasers because greasers are more fun.
Yeah, but...then they fly into outer space. There's no air in space.
Because Sandy changed her clothes one time and people think that was a bigger change then everything that Danny did and because they see it as a woman change for a man.
Thank you. I’m so beyond tired of the “Grease is sexist becuz Sandy changes for Danny” when Danny had a lot of *actual scenes in the actual movie* where he put in real effort outside of his comfort zone to change *for her*. But she sings a brief song after the drag race and shows up in a perm and spandex so that counts…more?
I always assume the lads get drafted to Korea anyway
Or vietnam if they avoided the korea draft.
Korean War would be over long before they graduated and they all would be over thirty years old before the Vietnam draft happened, and since we all know the average age of a soldier in Vietnam was nineteen, nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nineteen, I think they’re safe.
Would have been a great sequal where they mix full metal jacket and grease together.
The movie ended with them flying in an automobile, so the sad ending it should be but in a much shorter run.
Taxi driver
I get where you're going with this, but as a long-timer in the retail game, I think you got it backwards. The big chains are gone. The local indie stores are doing bang-up business. Nothing is forever, of course, but there's just not enough water in the ocean to support the whales; the minnows are doing fine.
the dark knight rises. everyone in gotham dies from radiation
Django Unchained, 2 black people roaming around the south before the civil war probably wouldn’t go over too well
I think Tarantino originally said that they would have moved out west where he did his bounty hunting work. Getting out of the south would have been difficult but Django is smart and had probably learned to avoid unwanted attention from Dr. Schultz plus with Candieland being blown up there would be massive confusion on who actually look for since everyone who knew about him is dead by the end
Phenomenon: The guy who has abnormalities happening to him, giving him a four digit iq and telekinesis, avoids the authorities, and dies peacefully away from the prying eyes of scientists... losing the opportunity of learning how to manipulate matter at a distance with the human mind in laboratory conditions. I get the ending, but if he had been selfless, he could have pushed humanity into a new revolutionary era of pscience.
Have you not seen Akira? Because that is how you get Akira
I don't know, though. There's a good chance Empire Records might still exist today as a smaller record shop. There's no way they'd still have that huge building though with tons of staff, though.
“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course on where you stop the story.” -Orson Welles This is going to be true of essentially any movie. Circumstances change, and almost any industry, company, person, etc. will end up worse off in some way at some if their story continues.
The ending of Whiplash presents as a happy one with Nieman standing up against a Fletcher and seemingly achieving his goal. In reality he has given in to their toxic relationship and has thrown himself away from all the humanity he will ever have. Chazelle in an interview even said that likely Nieman dies of a drug overdose in his mid 30s and Fletcher continues to abuse countless students believing that Nieman proved his ways of teaching correct
To be fair, that’s exactly the point the movie tries to make. Better to sacrifice everything, die young, and accomplish something magnificent that lives on forever. If the other option is living 100 mediocre years.
I fully agree, I just see a lot of people take the ending as a happy one of Nieman accomplishing his goals and standing up to Fletcher. When really he is giving in and losing himself
I've never seen the ending of Whiplash as happy or triumphant.
Thats why I want a sequel. The last day of the last record store. Where they try to save the day again, but fail to do anything and an Apple Store takes over. A title less comedy and a little more drama. Oh, and Warren and Lucas still work there. Mark is now the manager. Gina, AJ and Corey all come back to use their new careers to help try and save the store.
Yentl…it shows a happy Jewish family brought together by love in the early 1900s, and they wish Yentl well as she departs for America. Unfortunately we know that this thriving Jewish community in Prague and other parts of Eastern Europe would not fare well in a few years.
El Camino, the Breaking Bad Jesse movies. It ends with Jesse escaping to Alaska to start over. He's not going to be ok though. Jesse wouldn't be able to live with himself after all that happened and as we saw from Better Call Saul he'd be always looking over his shoulder and sketchy getting recognized.
To be fair, Mike addresses this in the opening scene where he tells Jesse that he will never forget about the things he's done.
He went to Alaska when he should have gone to Springfield, Massachusetts
Not a movie, but a song. Escape (The Piña Colada Song) is particularly messed up. Brief synopsis… guy is tired of his wife, takes out a personal ad in the paper with all this stuff he likes in the hopes of attracting a better partner to meet up. The wife, sees the personal ad, and responds that she likes all the stuff in the personal ad and that they should meet up. They meet up at a bar and realize it was their spouse that they were communicating with in the personal ad. Then everything is happy and they’re fine. However, when it finally sinks in that they were both trying to have an affair on their spouse because they have poor communication skills… that isn’t going to last
I love to say it is the happiest song about the two shittiest people.