One movie with a let-down ending was "Hostage". The movie was above average throughout, and the acting by Ben Foster was great, I didn't care much for Bruce Willis. After I watched the movie, I had to come to metacritics to see what kind of review average it received, and not surprisingly it was below 50. I knew right then and there that the ending was part of it. Dissapointing ending, go see it if you haven't, and you will know why.

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS NUMEROUS SPOILERS!!!



One movie that sticks out in my mind as an obvious “crowd-pleaser” ending is The Game. After all that… they should have ended it with Sean Penn leaping to his fate. Instead, we have Sean Penn “influenced” to commit suicide and leaping off the top of a building (without killing himself) and into a fun, lavish party.

Wow! I didn’t see that coming… because that was THE MOST LUDRICROUS THING EVER! It’s a good thing Sean didn’t jump off the other side of the building… whatever.

I realize that it’s just a movie and meant to screw with your mind, but that “twist” was insulting.



As a side note, I remember talking with a good friend many years ago about shitty endings in movies. After I complained about The Game, he remarked about a couple of remade films. I’m not familiar with either of these films so please correct me if I’m wrong with any of the details…

The Vanishing: The original Dutch version has the guy buried alive, subjected to the same fate as his female relation (wife, girlfriend ???) by her killer. The movie ends with him awaking in a coffin… creepy and very disturbing, to say the least. The Hollywood remake has the guy in the same situation… but at the last minute when all hope is gone, he is dug up at the end by some dumb woman… he doesn’t die and all is well.

The Big Blue: Luc Besson made two versions…. a good one (European) and a bad one (North American). The movie involved some tale around a guy who liked to do this thing where you dive as deep as you can and come back up… I don’t know, but apparently in the “better” version, the guy gives up on life and instead of coming back up… he continues his descent… fading from the picture in the darkness of the deep waters. Wow! However, you can take a guess on what happens in the North American version.

I remember someone on another forum commenting on these movies saying… could you imagine if Seven (SE7EN ???) had a happy ending? I rest my case. ;-)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mark f,

It was michael Douglas, not sean penn that does that thing at the end of "the game." i thought that ending was cool, I didn't really see it coming. I *was* pretty high though.

quote:

Originally posted by Hattoori_Hanzo:
It was michael Douglas, not sean penn that does that thing at the end of "the game." i thought that ending was cool, I didn't really see it coming. I *was* pretty high though.

Thanks for the save, I haven’t seen The Game since it was released… got my actors mixed up. ;-)

Note: In reference to my previous reply… I was going to put a spoiler alert on the top of it, but then I figured if someone was going to read a thread about the worst endings ever… you could be assured of spoilers. I’ll do my due diligence next time.

there is a thing in greek theatre that is called "Deus Ex Machina". What it means literally is the Machine of God. In a dramatic sense that means when they can't come up with a really good way to tie up the story the hand of god comes down and fixes everything.

I hate "maximum overdrive" for doing that. at the end of the movie (spoiler fast approaching) the people get on a boat and head out to an island with no machinery and then a note popes up on the screen with some b.s that says '2 days later the satellite left the orbit and everything went back to normal. The End'- Worst cop out ever!

On the otherhand "Dodgeball" - a movie that I liked - did the samething but acknowledged that fact. Right at the end when the team wins and they get all the money the treasure box has a little brass plate on the inside of the lid saying "deus ex machina". That I find witty and funny.

The Simpsons did that too when homer died in a episode he sees what life would be like without hioma and pleads to go back to his family so he asks god to fix everything and god obliges by roaring out "deus ex machina" and everything goes back to normal, just in time for the credits. hilarious!

"but dats wat i tink" - Andre 'Dice' Clay

quote:

Originally posted by CDN5150:

On the otherhand "Dodgeball" - a movie that I liked - did the samething but acknowledged that fact. Right at the end when the team wins and they get all the money the treasure box has a little brass plate on the inside of the lid saying "deus ex machina". That I find witty and funny.

Actually in the uncut version or the planned version of dodgeball, it's totally different and just as funny. At the end of the movie between Vince and Ben, and when Vince is looking away and gets nailed, that's when the movie ends. The Cobras win and Ben celebrates and then the average Joe's just walk away. Roll Credits. That would've been the best ending ever, I thought it was funny but aparently during the screening people didn't like it.

Did you guys see the movie "Dungeons and Dragons", I had the misfortune of seeing it. The whole movie was rubbish but the ending made me want the throw up and then swallow it again. On an off topic note, have any of you seen the show the office or Aqua Teen Hunger force. Both of them had some pretty bad endings to episodes but in some ways the office had brilliant endings.

P.S I mean the british office, not this new rubbish American one

I would like to respectfully disagree with the opinions of several posters as to worst endings regarding two movies specifically mentioned above.

The Game (1997) starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn and The Stepford Wives (2004) starring Nichole Kidman and Matthew Broderick. As a member of the crowd-pleasing audience, I was pleased by the ending of both movies. There are times when I go to movies to only be entertained and I found in the ending of both these movies to be enjoyable and quite satisfying just because I didn't want to have to sit through one more negative, sad, and emotionally twisting movie.

I admit that I am a Nicole Kidman fan and so I have a big bias going on with the remake of The Stepford Wives (1975) starring Katherine Ross, but I never did like the ending of the original movie. In that instance, I wanted an American happy ending and have wanted to see a remake ever since to change that ending. The 2004 remake is done well in its consistency of tone. Both the 1975 and 2004 versions appear to be true to their genre - the 1975 horror version and the 2004 comedy/drama/thriller. One needs to take into consideration the nature of the 2004 movie and the tone never really required a disruptive and dark ending.

As to The Game, the audience is so manipulated through out the movie on this rollercoaster ride that the ending is just a ludicrous as the rest of the mystery thiller ride so that by the end, I was gratified that twist came the way it did. I was only too happy to walk through that door because it really did reflect how odd and strange our world has become today, the paranoia, the juxtaposition that our entire society and civilization has obtained in upsetting the nature of the natural world around us. A bit of humanity and collosal joke on the whole theme of the movie was just so apt that I left the movie with a smile on my face for being thrust from the depths of dispair to a all is right with humanity for this day at least. I think that the audience deserves some respite from the serious, tedious, and difficult life that many of lead.

Has anyone seen Ghost Ship? Probably one of the worst endings ever

Lost in Translation. Probably the worst ending of all time. The story built up to a point where even the writer/director couldn't think of anything, so we just couldn't hear them. What a waste of time.

quote:

Richard Posted 25 November 2005 12:44 PM:

Lost in Translation. Probably the worst ending of all time. The story built up to a point where even the writer/director couldn't think of anything, so we just couldn't hear them. What a waste of time.

The Lost In Translation (2003), the multi-award independent movie, controversy again. I've had this conversation once before on another website. Those audience member's needing, wanting something more at the end of this movie missed much of the flavor and the experience of the movie. To ask for more from the ending and the demand for wanting to know what the whisper was about is asking for something that the movie really wasn't designed or intended to do.

The controversy over this movie appears to be about the distinction between having a movie with a substantive plot where things happen concretely, have drama, and the typical build up, crisis, and then resolution. This movie and a few others that have been made subsequently such as Jarhead (2005) have no strong message nor build up, climax, nor resolution and this absence is deliberate. Unlike our American passion for CSI drama with all the excitement, analysis, and definite conclusion, such fantasy scripts while entertaining and emotionally satisfying are many times artificial.

The very strength of Lost in Translation is its ability to expose the audience to a "slice of life" experience that was created for its artful impact on the audience. The power in this movie is its realism and performed acting within the foreign cultural venue where it took place and the intersection of two people's lives without having to become a full blown production of falling in love, falling out of love, and then getting back together (we've all seen this scenario too many times). What happens in Lost in Translation is much more real and has more to with real relationships that can help us with in our own realities.

I don't have any axes to grind, but I find it difficult to accept that just because a movie is underdeveloped and elusive that it somehow works at a higher level of art than a "mainstream" film which "we've all seen too many times". Art is very subjective. Just because somebody thinks it's meaningful to them doesn't mean it's not boring and pretentious to others. What is that you may be missing from good old-fashioned storytelling?

Brilliant. That's what I've been trying to put into words for ages. I'm going to use your point when I'm forced to have this debate again next week.

quote:

mark f Posted 25 November 2005 06:12 PM

I don't have any axes to grind, but I find it difficult to accept that just because a movie is underdeveloped and elusive that it somehow works at a higher level of art than a "mainstream" film which "we've all seen too many times". Art is very subjective. Just because somebody thinks it's meaningful to them doesn't mean it's not boring and pretentious to others. What is that you may be missing from good old-fashioned storytelling?

I won't argue that a movie that is "underdeveloped and elusive" may not work at a "higher level of art." But I don't consider Lost in Translation underdeveloped nor elusive.

This movie had a beginning, a middle, and an end in an "elusive" setting but not necessarily "elusive" in its beauty and elegant portrayal of a disillusioned American male in a foreign country who encounters in an authentic way an American female that by the end of the movie concludes in a refreshingly geniune ending.

This movie ranks as 44th all-time high critical rankings on this website. It is possible that the mainstream audience has overlooked something on a higher level of art as it is oftentime caught up with sex, violence, action, and melodrama - looking for the quick fix, the black and white storyline. What is oftentimes confounding, is that Japan is a culture of elusiveness, of grays, of mystery that no easy explanation or answers. Strangely, however, what this movie also portrays is just the realism of our actual lives in the roles of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson. Us Americans so desire and expect the dramatic love affair, the passionate embrace, the sizzling gossipy storyline. We often forget that it is just those very fantasy expectations and unrealistic desire that get us into so much trouble. When a movie like this does come out that provides a much more sober and poignant look at relationships and the disorientation of experience in an unknown, unfamiliar place and culture, it's a critics' pleasure as it is also mine.

Like I said earlier, if you love a movie, good for you. Sex is not a pre-requisite to thinking lightly of a film. My wife and my daughter, whom I both believe have a better grasp on reality than somebody who grew up in Francis Ford Coppola's house (just an opinion ), both think that Lost in Translation is an OK movie if you care about superficial things. I agree with them. I don't think it's a deep movie at all, but neither do I believe that Eternal Sunshine... has the remotest thing to do with real life, and I'll shut up now, since people love movies more than they do their own lives.

Me too, but my movies just aren't the same.

Lost In Translation can be viewed in a number of different ways. But just like a world class figure skater who can make a performance look so easy, beautiful and dazzling, such a performance can only occur from lots of training, talent, and skill. What might appear to be superficial, might on further examination uncover some quite substantive and deeply moving phenomena underneath.

Qualitatively and quantitatively speaking, Alien (1979) could easily be seen as the first superficial science fiction movie to become a serious science fiction horror/thriller in space that broke into new levels of artistic direction and performance and later came the more deeply substantive science fiction drama of Gattaca addressing genetic purity issues. Yet for me Alien like Lost In Translation are major accomplishments because not of their earth shattering/morally ground-shaking/politically moving messages that will alter the face of our planet, but because of their technique and ability to focus the audiences on the more smaller details, the closer intimate emotions of humanity of displacement, unease, and confrontation with the unknown and strange - something that we people are faced with everyday but are prone to ignore such uneasiness with repression and denial.

Quality movies such as these offer its audiences, those who are able to experience them, a fascinating look into the real mirror of humanity, a role-model of imperfect human beings who actually confront the unknown and somehow survive intact and in some cases every better for it.

Alien, at least for me, is a masterpiece, but Lost in Translation falls far short, just as The Virgin Suicides did earlier. It's possible for one to think highly of Alien and be completely indifferent to Sofia Coppola's work and/or Gattaca, for that matter. There's no inherent requirement to see them as existing on an "even field".

The striking parallel between Alien and Lost in Translation was what I considered the best element of either film and that was the direction and performances. In both films, the intuitive and natural performances were superb. In the first, the crew of the Nosotromo is faced with a unknown threat and their reaction (using relatively unknown actors) allowed the audience to connect to (not some cheap stereotypical, melodramatic, fake) characters as if one could actually relate and be there with them. So to with the second movie with Bill Murray, his brilliant (underplayed acting) using more his quiet expressions and reactions brought its audience into the movie while he to was facing the unknown. Regardless of the plot, what marks both of these movies are their sense of reality, their ability to pull us into their experiences for us to understand a little more, expand our horizons which is the best that movies can hope for.

WARNING: SPOILER

...like you've never seen this film though...

I hope I don't get burned alive for this one...
I think the ending is the one thing High Fidelity (both the book and the movie) get wrong.
Any guy who's ever been dumped can feel Rob's pain right up until Laura's dad's funeral. Their getting back together is so clunky and we never get a reason why she takes him back. She does give a reason but it doesn't really mean anything. I don't think the actress knows why her character is doing what she's doing, so we don't know either.
When I was a sophomore in college I'd watch this film almost daily (hard times), and I'd always turn it off when Laura said, "my dad died."

quote:

briggsjazzgroup posted:

...like you've never seen this film though...

I hope I don't get burned alive for this one...
I think the ending is the one thing High Fidelity (both the book and the movie) get wrong.
Any guy who's ever been dumped can feel Rob's pain right up until Laura's dad's funeral. Their getting back together is so clunky and we never get a reason why she takes him back. She does give a reason but it doesn't really mean anything. I don't think the actress knows why her character is doing what she's doing, so we don't know either.
When I was a sophomore in college I'd watch this film almost daily (hard times), and I'd always turn it off when Laura said, "my dad died."

Can't comment right now - I've seen the movie but can't remember the details. I'll have to check it out when I have time. I do want to say though that your comment is great, your opinon is one of those that really deserve credit for being sincere along with providing a decent observation. Good job!