SPOILER ALERT! This week’s Roundtable is all about movies ruined by their lousy endings. It stands to reason, therefore, that we’re about to give away those endings. Scan the list of bolded titles and consider yourself warned. Frankly, we wish that we’d been warned in advance before wasting our time watching some of these.
This topic was inspired by a recent YouTube video making the rounds on the internet that celebrates great movie endings.
Aww, isn’t that uplifting? Don’t you feel inspired by the power and potential of cinema after watching that?
Because we’re a bunch of grumps, we figured that we’d take the opposite approach and complain about movies with the shittiest endings we’ve suffered through. That’s how we roll around here.
Shannon Nutt
There are so many options for this, it was hard to choose just one. Do I pick a bad ending to a good movie? An awful ending to a bad movie? Or just an ending that really ticked me off? I chose to go with the latter. 2002’s ‘Signs‘ was on its way to becoming one of M. Night Shyamalan’s best movies. (Granted, this was back in the day when he was still making good movies.) The film is filled with tension and fear over an impending alien invasion of Earth. So, what happens during the climax when the aliens finally show up? We learn that they can be killed with water. That’s right, spray them down with a hose, throw a glassful at them, or just spit in their direction and they’re toast. Suddenly, this alien force that we’ve been dreading all movie-long turns out to be the dumbest lot in the entire universe. Who plans to invade a world that’s two-thirds water and where it rains all the time without some protective gear? At least bring a raincoat or something! The ending is an insult to the audience and ruins an otherwise entertaining movie.
Mike Attebery
Remember the twist in ‘The Usual Suspects’? If you’re a fan of that movie, then the moment that Keyser Soze is revealed, everything falls into place and you think, “Yes, that’s perfect.” It just feels like the proper, final piece of the puzzle.
Then there’s the ending to ‘Now You See Me‘. Without giving too much away, when you find out who was behind all the plot shenanigans, your most likely response will be “Yeah, right!” or “Whaaaaat?” or just “Bullshit!” What a crappy ending. It’s like someone couldn’t find the last piece of a crappy 500 piece cardboard cutout puzzle, so they took a piece from another puzzle entirely, grabbed the kitchen shears, and did a half-assed job cutting off the extra corners and nubs before they jammed it into place. Its mere presence makes everything around it look even worse.
Aaron Peck
The choreographed dance ending of ‘Slumdog Millionaire‘ is really terrible. Yes, I know that it happens while the credits roll and technically isn’t part of the story as far as the characters are concerned, but that doesn’t really matter, because it only serves to undermine whatever emotion and conviction Danny Boyle created with his Oscar-winning film.
I feel the same way about movies that provide outtakes while the credits roll. All these endings do is take viewers out of the escape. It’s like a giant slap on the face from the filmmaker, saying, “Oh, you became totally invested in this story and its characters? Sorry, it was all completely made up.” Why do so many filmmakers want to call attention to their movie’s phoniness? I want to escape in the story, not be reminded that I’m watching something and not experiencing it.
Also, I had to add this in here too: Animated movies that can’t seem to end their stories so they stop on an obligatory song-and-dance number are just awful.
M. Enois Duarte
‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Wind – Part 2‘ comes with one of the worst twist endings I think I have ever seen in any motion picture. It’s a horrible, blatant and apparently intentional use of the red herring. As I wrote in my review, it’s “the dumbest of all clichéd twists, the sort thought of as clever by only the worst and most amateurish writer.” If you actually plan to see this mess at some point, I suggest you read no further, as I’m about to ruin it for you.
The plot, or whatever the filmmakers think is reason enough for this making this piece of garbage, uses the existence of Edward and Bella’s miracle baby as an excuse to build up a war between vampire clans. For some stupid reason, the head vampires led by Michael Sheen think the baby was made into a bloodsucker, not born. Of course, the mess could be easily cleared up if the characters would just talk to one another, but any attempt at logic or intelligence is impossible in the ‘Twilight’ universe. When we finally arrive at that the vampire-on-vampire, vampire-on-werewolf climactic battle, wouldn’t you know it, the movie suddenly turns entertaining for a while. But after nearly fifteen minutes of awesome fighting and bloodshed, the whole thing turns out to be only a prophetic vision of what would happen if the characters continued down that road.
It’s the biggest WTF slap on the face of audiences in all movie history!
Gordon Miller
The worst ending I have seen this year is ‘Star Trek into Darkness‘. Of course, it didn’t help that the beginning and middle of the movie were terrible as well. Endings are always the hardest part of a story, so it’s not a surprise that these writers failed us, especially considering their track records.
Repurposing the ‘Wrath of Khan’ death scene was a mistake. When Spock died the same way in that earlier movie, it was meaningful to Kirk because of the length and depth of their relationship. However, the ‘Into Darkness’ writers not only showed that death could be overcome, they also showed McCoy conducting experiments with Khan’s blood, voiding any emotion from Kirk’s death. I can’t imagine that anyone thought Kirk would really remain dead past the credits.
The movie’s final action sequence finds Spock chasing Khan on foot and in the air through San Francisco so that Khan’s blood can save Kirk’s life. Uhura has to remind Spock to bring Khan in alive, though it’s hard to believe that he would kill Khan or that Khan’s blood wouldn’t work if it was taken shortly after his death. It’s even harder to believe that no one thought to check whether the blood of the other 72 members of Khan’s frozen crew had similar life-restoring properties.
Finally, a title card at the end states, “[Into Darkness] is dedicated to our post-9/11 veterans with gratitude for their inspired service abroad and continued leadership at home.” It seems rather bizarre to honor veterans with a movie where the plot involves an attempt to start a war based on lies, and which brings to mind conspiracy theorists who think that 9/11 (imagery of which was evoked in the film) was an inside job to get this nation into war, as at least one of the screenwriters has publicly admitted.
Adam Tyner (DVDTalk)
Okay, okay, I hear you. Superman didn’t reverse time by spinning the planet backwards like I always thought growing up. Its reversed rotation reflects the fact that the Man of Steel is orbiting the globe so quickly that he’s hurtling into the past. This is still one of the absolute worst ways to end a movie ever. If the guy can turn the clock back with no real consequences whatsoever, it stomps all over anything resembling drama or conflict. If anything ever goes south, Supes just has to zip around and undo it. Any catastrophes that plague our planet are just things Superman deems too insignificant to reverse. Sure, Jor-El says it’s forbidden for his son to interfere with human history, but since Superman’s involvement is shaping history anyway, is readjusting events minutes at a time any different? Ugh! I get angry just thinking about it.
Chris Boylan (Big Picture Big Sound)
One Word: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Even if that wasn’t the final scene in ‘Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith‘, the bullshit tied-together crap that came afterwards was as forgettable as the rest of the prequel trilogy. That ‘Frankenstein’ moment was when I knew that all the good will and reckless optimism I had through Episodes I and II and even into III were completely for naught.
Josh Zyber
Shannon already grabbed my first choice of ‘Signs’. Nothing about that ending makes any damn sense. Why would these aliens, who are allergic to water, ever come to our water-filled planet in the first place? Having done so, why would they run around butt-ass naked through dew-misted cornfields in the early dawn hours? And why would a TV news broadcast in the background of the scene report that the secret to stopping this alien invasion (with water) was discovered in the Middle East – a freakin’ desert, rather than… oh, I don’t know… Seattle or London or someplace where it rains a lot? M. Night Shyamalan is such a dipshit.
That said, my second choice goes to ‘A.I.: Artificial Intelligence‘, Steven Spielberg’s attempt to quickly and haphazardly toss together the remnants of a project that Stanley Kubrick had toiled away at for almost two decades prior to his death. I knew that the movie was pretty much doomed from the beginning, when William Hurt’s daffy scientist announces that he wants to build a robot that can looooooooooove, because looooooooooove is the most important thing in, like, forever. It was pretty clear from that moment that Steven Spielberg understood absolutely nothing about Stanley Kubrick, and must have tossed all of the master’s notes in a trash can and lit them on fire as soon as he signed on to direct. Spielberg’s touchy-feely sentimentality clashes badly with Kubrick’s cold intellectualism, and Spielberg ultimately wins the tug-of-war between the two.
But we’re not here to talk about beginnings. We’re here to talk about endings, and ‘A.I.’ has a doozy of a stinker. Truth be told, despite its many problems, ‘A.I.’ is an interesting film with some interesting ideas, and tries to explore some fascinating questions about human existence. After a long journey, the story almost wraps up with a beautifully poetic conclusion involving the death of its main character, the young robot child named David (Haley Joel Osment). Sadly, that’s all undermined when the whole thing shoots off into a howlingly absurd epilogue. Apologists will try to pretend that the flash-forward to the distant future, in which a race of super-advanced robots resurrect David in order to let him have a few more moments with his mommy before he dies again, was part of Kubrick’s original concept, but there’s simply no way that Kubrick wrote any of the reams of bullshit technobabble exposition about “space-time pathways” and “memory traces in resonance with a recreated body.” I imagine that Kubrick envisioned something more like the ending to his ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, something ambiguous and enigmatic left for the audience to decipher on its own. Instead, we get pure Spielbergian pap, a desperate attempt to explain away any hint of ambiguity, and it’s insufferably awful.
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What are your picks for movies with truly crappy endings? Tell us in the Comments.
Ryan
I hated the ending of Signs…until I read this article. It doesn’t 100% fix everything, but it really makes the movie much more enjoyable.
What if the aliens in Signs were actually demons???
http://adamantiumbullet.com/?p=26044
Timcharger
Interesting.
That does solve a lot of the symbolism in the film.
It seems to me a simple 3 line dialogue who go a long way to help:
Joaquin Phoenix: Brother, these space aliens are killed by water?!
Mel Gibson: No one on earth has found any space ships, so we don’t know where they are from.
Joaquin: Where else can they from?
(Camera pans to crucifix hanging on the wall, and then it pans downward toward the floor, and fades to black.)
J.J. Carlson
Fascinating take on the film that I’ve never thought of or read about until now! Thank you for sharing!
Aaron McKee
I hated the ending of The Mist. Hated. Hated. Hated.
And I hate the Special Edition ending of Return Of The Jedi. And not because of Hayden Christensen.
Trond Michelsen
I hate the ending of any movie where the hero first defats the villain without killing him, then the villain somehow manages to break free and get a weapon, so that the hero is “forced” to kill him in self defense.
J.J. Carlson
A very common cliche. Cliches exist often out of laziness, because the writers/filmmakers have not found a way to wrap up the story in a better way (even though there probably are thousands of possible better endings).
J.J. Carlson
I had a hard time accepting Identity’s ending. I just hate it when an entire film exists within another world, or someone’s mind, because to me it’s just an easy, lazy cop-out. How can one even begin to care about a character that honestly doesn’t exist?
The Number 23 (truly forgettable film) basically slaps you in the face after it pulls you and twists you along with its plot. If the film is supposed to end the way it does, then why is everyone else in the film even behaving the way they do the entire time? It’s insulting to its audience.
I don’t know what the Life of David Gale was trying to accomplish, but it made the anti-death penalty people into total idiots and psychos themselves, and no one can take that seriously. But I suppose we do see acts of lunacy like that occur every day, so the act itself might still be plausible.
Indiana Jones 4. That’s about all I need to say.
Daniel A. Pulliam
I have to agree on “Explorers”. One of the single best sci-do children’s films to come out of the 1980’s (which is saying a TON) until the last 30 minutes or so. I have the film in my collection because the first three quarters of it are so incredibly well-done. My heart always sinks when the story comes to a close. I’m so heartened to know that someone else out there remembers and loves this film as much as I do. It deserves to be remembered. It’s just too bad that the ending robbed it of a classic status so narrowly missed.
Joseph
Worst endings would be a close one between killer joe and hobo with a shotgun
Hardcore
For me, it’s pretty much any alien invasion movie . In reality, humanity would simply be wiped out by a technologically-advanced race of hostile aliens, but movie culture will not accept an “unhappy” ending like that. So writers have to pull some some unlikely (often absurd) way we can defeat our more advanced foe out of their asses. It doesn’t matter whether it turns out to be H2O (Signs), computer viruses (ID4), cold viruses (War of the Worlds), or Morse code (can’t remember which); it’s almost always ridiculous and undoes any credit the movie may have built up until that point.
William Henley
Gosh, there were so many listed up there that I actually liked – I liked how AI ended, was almost beside myself with the reveal in Now You See Me, and I loved the dance scene in Slumdog Millionaire. And the ending of Episode 3 worked, and even better, led to many great spoofs (Robot Chicken – Panda Bear).
The end of Titanic annoyed me. If it wasn’t for the ending, it would probably be a very good movie. Seriously, she throws the stone into the sea, after holding onto it all those years? It would make more sense if she threw herself into the sea. At least she did die that night, but seriously, heaven is being onboard the Titanic for the rest of eternity? Maybe she went to hell.
The Passion on the Christ. If you were unfamiler with the story, you would have no clue what happened there at the end (note – I am annoyed with how the movie ended, not the story)
The Cube – although everything about that movie annoyed me. I HATE this movie!
Wizard of Oz – talk about a huge departure from the books! It was pretty much made so there couldn’t be a sequel or prequel, went completely seperate route from the book series that had been around for 40 years prior to that movie, and dream sequences are some of the laziest writing there is. I love this movie, but usually tend to turn it off after the wizard departs.
Yes, I just slammed a cinema classic.
Star Trek: The Final Frontier. Even with its bad story and special effects and cringe moments, the movie could have been saved, if it were not for that awful last 20 minutes of the movie.
Return of the Jedi Special Edition – UGH! You had a great ending, and then just totally ruined it! One of my favorite parts of all the Star Wars movies as a kid was turned into this travesty!
Indiana Jones 2 and 4 – Seems as if the even number movies in this francise just don’t work. In the Temple of Doom – only a handful of people died – what is to stop them from taking the stones again? What happened to the prince? How the heck in one day did the village’s condition improve that much? And don’t even get me started on Crystal Skull – it was a good movie (in my opinion) up until that reveal.
Back To The Future 3 – It runs on steam? The future is not set? Jules and Verne? Did they outsource the writing of the ending to someone else?
American Girl: Sage Paints The Sky – Man, those American Girl movies really started going downhill. They started off as great movies, then ended with this garbage. This is like the “Final Frontier” of the American Girl movies. The movie had issues throughout (mainly with Jane Seymore’s character – seriously, surgery, wheelchair and beating herself up because she broke… her wrist?) The movie had no real conflict, an act that should have gotten the girls expelled from school ended up getting them a pat on the back, a rich suburban high school has issues raising $5,000, they think they can actually hire a teacher for that price, and then they come within a couple of dollars of meeting that goal (which was an arbitrary amount to begin with), just to have it go over the top in the last couple of seconds… The movie is AWFUL, even for a kids movie.
I am sure I’ve got more, but I got to stop somewhere.
Jeb Barr
I agree with amny of those already mentioned. I have to throw “Man of Steel” into the mix. I actually enjoyed most of the movie, but when Perry White emerges from the rubble of metropolis exclaiming “he saved us” and Superman kisses Lois, ignoring the destroyed buildings surrounding him and the likely thousands of dead, injured, and trapped people all around, I just couldn’t believe it.
I’m also going to go against the grain as say “2001: a Space Odyssey”. Yes, the ending makes sense if you’ve ready the book, but if all you know is the movie, it’s completely non-sensical. The 15 minute lightshow once Dave Bowman enters the Monolith sure doesn’t help.
Josh Zyber
AuthorThere’s a difference being something not being explained and something not making sense. The ending of 2001 is intentionally ambiguous and left for each viewer to interpret on his or her own. The events and concepts depicted are meant to be beyond human comprehension. The book (which was written concurrently with the movie) reduces the complexity of the ending by tacking on a very mundane, literal explanation. The sequel books compound this problem by over-explaining everything.
William Henley
I agree – I liked 2010, but 2061 was a bore –
seriously, diamonds? And they land on Europa – after being specifically told not to. Yawn!
2061 was so boring, that I practically don’t want to read 3001.
2061 is to 2001 and 2010 what Dune Messiah was to Dune.
Barsoom Bob
Will, the first three Dune books are all pretty darn good and form a very cohesive narrative about the effects of power. The story doesn’t just end, “Okay we won the revolution now everything is Hunky Dory”
It shows the target Paul became and the his power usurped by people around him and hius Jihad out of control, until he finally finds a way to deflate the myth and his son makes an ultimate sacrifice to save Arrakis.
Even God Emperor of Dune, albeit a lot more wacked out, and projected into the far future, is folowing this basic through line of power and saving the planet.
After that, while sporadically entertaining, the books really go off the rails. Nothing is going to be as powerful as the first book that created this great tale and visionary metaphor for our planet and alot of it’s current, troubled situations, but the first three books are really a single story of good quality.
cynicalmatt
What Dreams May Come is a perfect example of what happens when test audiences don’t get it. I remember very little about the film itself, but I remember HATING the tacked-on happy ending. Robin Williams goes into hell to find his wife. He does, but she’s completely comatosa and doesn’t even realize he’s there. Never the less, he sacrifices eternal happiness in heaven to stay with her.
Even if you’re not religious (I am not), that’s a beautiful, powerful sentiment. And it’s completely undermined by the theatrical ending where they’re both suddenly whisked away to heaven.
I Am Legend was also great for 2/3s of the film, then turned into an unwatchable CGI shitfest by the end.
I don’t understand the hate on Fight Club, though. The twist is straight out of the book and has nothing to do with Hollywood trying to cash-in on the Shyamalan Twist trend.
Josh Zyber
AuthorThe alternate ending on the I Am Legend Blu-ray is a lot better than the theatrical ending. Still has issues, but it’s better.
William Henley
M. Enois Duarte – Believe it or not, the movie ending was better than the book. In the book, if I recall, Esme just touched their heads, they saw she wasn’t who they thought they were, killed the informer, and walked away. There wasn’t even a fake battle. I kept thinking that they had to be building to something, because after teh garbage of the first two movies, the third one was fantastic.
Truthfully, it looks like the author gave herself an opening to continue to milk this now-stale series. She actually did start a 5th book, that was leaked half-done onto the internet, but it was a retailing of the first book from Edwards perspective (which was actually very entertaining – as he can read minds, you start to understand why everyone behaves the way they do).
It is really a pitty – I had my arm twisted to read the books, and ended up loving them (at least until I read the trash ending of Breaking Dawn), and then went back and watched the movies again, and realized the movies were just as bad as I remembered – actually even worse, because now that I had read the books…. The thing is, screenplay wise, the movies followed the books really well. You just had horrible directors and the casting of Kristen Stewart in the lead role, who cannot act. The directing in Breaking Dawn is SO bad, it even made Dakota Fanning look like a high school theater student.
I am sorry, I am just PISSED at the ending to this series. While it was not the best series I had ever read, I did enjoy READING it, and just felt like I had been mind-raped when I read the ending.
Csm101
So I brought this topic up at work and a good friend of mine mentioned Twister and I thought to myself, “how’d I forget that one!” Sitting inside the most dangerous tornado and not even a speck of debris hitting them, C’MON!! I was even willing to forgive the fact that they would be torn to ribbons or the belt would cut through them or snap. But not even a scratch…
NJScorpio
Personally, I never liked any of the Harry Potter endings. It’s like, “I’ll do magic REALLY HARD tapping into love and such!”
John Peacock
The Mist. A really decent adaptation of Steven King’s novel goes completely awry when the director messes with the author’s original ending, totally changing the tone and making the entire movie a pointless endeavor.
Gordon S. Miller
Just thought of King Kong vs Godzilla. No way the monkey should of won.
Conrad
Someone really should have mentioned American Graffiti. The intertitle at the end of the film explaining that one of the characters, yes that’s right, one of the characters, not an actor, had died following the film. THIS IS SO LAZY AND USELESS.