10 Worst Movie Endings

Barry Nelson

Saw this online today and thought I would share it. I haven't seen everyone of the movies the author mentions, but I have seen most of them and I don't agree on a lot of them. However, he does make some accurate points. I especially agree with him calling out Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine when he attempts to make a mockery of an old Charlton Heston. That scene always angered me.

http://movies.msn.com/movies/2007wintermovieguide/worstendings?GT1=7701

Nightshooter

Million Dollar Baby should not have been on that list. Seven should take its place.

TonyDP

Nightshooter wrote:

Million Dollar Baby should not have been on that list. Seven should take its place.

The author of the article seems to have a hangup on downbeat endings as many of his selections don't end on a particularly cheery note.

I do agree with him (and Barry) on Columbine though. Michael Moore has always struck me as something of a sanctimonious fraud, skewing facts to suit his agenda and always eager to promote himself as much as his movies.

As for me, the first movie that pops to mind is Alien 3, a very mediocre effort with a positively terrible ending. Ripley was turned from a strong survivor to a pathetic character looking for someone to kill her to, ultimately, a wannabe martyr. Utter crap IMHO.

Napoleon Plural

But there have also surely been some cop out endings, where you sense things were gonna go tragic, but got rewritten to accomodate studio demands. Can't think of any, except The Opposite Sex.

John Drake

I've hated Michael Moore ever since he pulled that stunt on Charlton Heston. It was cruel and pathetic. I'd add The Big Blue to that list. Good film. But the ending is atrocious.

Alex

Pat O'Brien asking old friend Jimmy Cagney to purposefully face the electric chair with fear in Angels With Dirty Faces.

This was a powerful scene, but I really hated the way a person on death row was asked to literally die like a dog by putting on a sniveling act. (And he will always be remembered for that) Just because we had to think of the rammifications it might lead with the Dead End Kids / Bowery Boys who happened to idolize him. That's a giant favor to ask some one!

Then again, I guess it was his last chance at redemption.

Sir Hillary Bray

Can't believe he included Blow Out. That film is great because of the ending, especially the creepy final scene when Travolta uses Nancy Allen's real-life death screams in the movie he's dubbing.

I think the Spielberg rips -- especially Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan smack of critic jealousy. Anytime a critic asserts that a filmmaker is trying to make his/her movie more important than it is, I lose interest.

I would actually include The Usual Suspects. As much as I loved the film when it came out, my view now is that the whole revelation at the end was just an excuse to play a dirty trick on the viewer. Also, it leads to contradictions, such as: If Kobayashi (played by Postlethwait) was a figment of "Verbal's" imagination, who was the guy (also played by Postlethwait) who drove off with Soze at the end? Are we to believe that Soze imagines his own compatriots' faces in his lies?

Alex

I don't know, what's wrong with the ending of Schindler's List?

Good lord, when Liam Neeson breaks down, ("this party badge, two more lives!"), followed by a procession of actual holocaust survivors paying respect; what more can you ask for?!!

Anyway, I thought it was a pretty emotional ending to a pretty great motion picture.

John Drake

I agree with the guy about Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg has a habit of hammering home his point, even when he's already made it in the two hours leading up to the little speeches at the end of both those films. With the exception of Munich, I much prefer Spielberg the entertainer, to Spielberg the serious filmmaker.

Hardyboy

Seems like a petty and stupid list to me. To my mind, a bad ending is one that thoroughly negates everything that came before--like the old trick of finding out that everything that came before was just a dream. (There's a famous sci fi film from the 1950s that ends this way, but I won't spoil it by revealing the title.) To give you an example: although M. Night Shoobeedoobeedoo's The Village is a prety bad experience from the start, its "surprise" ending is so ridiculous, so improbable, so obviously added because we "expect" a surprise ending from his movies, it transforms a merely boring movie into a lousy one. Where's that on the list?

Mr Martini

Hardyboy wrote:

Seems like a petty and stupid list to me.

I agree with this. It's funny that he thinks one way, but the Academy and Golden Globe and some other pretty important award givers say other wise. There's three movies that won the Academy Award for best picture (maybe 4, did Broadcast News win Best Pic?) . I'm sure a couple of them won an award for writting. This is just another list by a board writter. If he wants to start another list I can give him at least one movie to begin with, The Sixth Sense .

John Drake

Hardyboy wrote:

M. Night Shoobeedoobeedoo

) I've been trying to type a response for about 10 minutes, but I can't stop laughing. Has anybody read the book about him and his last movie The Lady in the Water? He is supposed to come across as a complete plank.

Loeffelholz

What's said about Mr. Shoobeedoobeedoo is that he started out with such promise. I really liked Sixth Sense...and enjoyed Unbreakable and Signs as well (in descending order of preference)...but it's become increasingly apparent that he's a 'one trick pony' (apologies to Paul Simon ).

He needs to take a new tack...

Jamesbondjr

Each to their own i guess. It is always interesting to read this kind of list in which (often, but not always) the writer is merely venting his own frustrations and passing them off as fact. Here, apparently, these are the REAL worst movie endings. As opposed to what? Fake endings?!

At the end of the day an ending is only bad to the veiwer if they don't enjoy it, and that is down to personal taste.

For instance I recently watched Mulholland Drive with my girlfriend. She was enjoying it up until the third act, then she lost it. To her the ending was bad. She likes to know exactly what has happened and have everything explained. Fair enough. I however love to see an ending that throws you slightly and leaves you thinking for a while afterwards. To me the ending is great.

The only ending I haven't liked that I can think of is Pirates of the Caribbean: At worlds End

Solaris

Out of all the films I've seen on that list the only one I agree on is war of The Worlds. I thought the majority of it was good but I hated how Spielburg bought it to a climax with Tom Cruise and daughter in the basement and then they get up in the morning and we get a voice over saying all the aliens died because they caught a virus. I know the book ends that way and in the book it seems to work but in the movie, possibly due to the changing of the story to involve a family, it just seems like a cop out. What did I want instead? I have no idea. but to me it was not a good ending to the movie. and then of course they had to bring the boy back to life because you can't kill teenage boys in movies.

apart from in Constantine where he has the power to bring everyone back but only brings the girl back forgetting about the dead Shia LeBouf in the other room.

Lady Rose

I too agree with War Of The Worlds. It always felt as though Speilberg got bored and just decided to to finish it. Biggest cop out of the year for me.