Good movies with bad endings

[CptObvious]

A.I.

In fact, any movie where aliens come out at the end.

 

[jonks]

Sunshine. And by "ending" I mean "the entire second half of the movie," which was complete crap because they changed gears from an interesting if implausible sci-fi movie to ZOMBIES IN SPAAAAACE.

Why can't anyone make a suspenseful movie where the antagonist is nature itself? They always start that way but they have to go for the cheap thrills and include a monster of some kind. And instead of suspense they just go for as much blood and gore as possible.

the happening...

 

[Arkaign]

I'd love to hear what you have to say about the Omega Man with Charleton Heston. Parodied by The Simpsons halloween.

Well, you need a lot of things to make a good movie, not just a good story or an accurate adaptation.

Ideally :

Good actor (Will Smith, whoever)
Great director (Nolan, Fincher, etc)
Great script (Sorkin, whoever)
MINIMAL CGI
Hard R Rating, but not violence for the sake of violence, just a realistic depiction of events

As for The Omega Man, it's hopelessly outdated, and not of a decent quality to even be considered a true classic. It's appeal is really only for genre geeks.

 

[Arkaign]

So if the name was different would it be a good movie? I enjoyed it having never read the story or knowing the premise.

Yeah, I don't think the average person read the I Am Legend story. I didn't read it, and I thought it was a good movie. I like the alternate ending better than the theatrical one, though.

I've seen a lot of good movies with bad endings, but the one that I watched most recently was Silent Hill. It was shaping up to be a decent movie until in the end

Spoiler

the lady and her kid were just dead

.

Well, the fundamental disappointment was the reduction of the film to an action/zombie film heavy on CGI and product placement, and very light on actual plot or characterization. In the source material, there is a massive moment of enlightment that explains the very title of the story, along with wildly varied undead characters rather than vapid indistinguishable super zombies.

Viewed purely as a standalone piece of entertainment, I am Legend the film is passable, even great at parts, but ultimately forgettable due to lots of cheesy CGI and a flat, tacked-on ending (even if you haven't read the source material, the ending seems very out of place).

http://www.cracked.com/article_16258_5-awesome-movies-ruined-by-last-minute-changes.html

 

[IronWing]

The Holy Grail

 

[zerocool84]

The Dark Knight

 

[IronWing]

Star Wars - A New Hope

An awards banquet? Really?

 

[her209]

Spy Game - What is Redford's character going to live on since he blew his retirement on bribing the Chinese?

 

[MotionMan]

No one else probably saw it, but I nominate An Innocent Man.

MotionMan

 

[PhaZe]

Terminator salvation..it was great until aaahhnold

 

[zerocool84]

Terminator salvation..it was great until aaahhnold

lol no, the whole movie sucked.

 

[thegimp03]

This times 20,000,000,000!!!

I read the original Richard Matheson story shortly before seeing the film, and boy was it butchered, and I don't mean in the typical hollywood way where things are left out because they wouldn't flow well in the limits of a ~2 hour visualization of the novel, but rather a complete bastardization of the entire concept.

I'll go ahead and assume that everyone has already seen this that wants to, but if not, then minor spoilers ahead, these are the fundamental divergences from the superior source material :

(1)- It's QUITE clear in the novel that what he's dealing with is vampirism.

(2)- The 'vampires' are approximately human in strength, and with varying degrees of coherence. Creepily, some of them talk and taunt the protagonist. The creatures are NOT superhuman CGI zombie retards that flip SUVs and climb 10 story sheer buildings with their fingers.

(3)- He is fooled by a very eloquent 'vampire' that has worn makeup and masquerades as another human, to infiltrate his facility and gather info on him.

(4)- He is eventually captured by this emerging vampire society, and is set for execution, whereupon he reflects that he is really the 'monster' to them, having been killing them for quite a long time and going back into hiding. He declares before death that 'I am Legend', which makes perfect sense given the context of the story.

It's a shame, because Will Smith is talented, and you could tell that there was a large budget involved. Sadly, both the theatrical cut and the original alternate ending are a terrible distortion of the classic novel.

Thanks for the synopsis. I thought the movie sucked so I wasn't going to bother reading the book. Talk about shitting the bed with the movie.

 

[thegimp03]

How about Signs with crazy ass Joaquin Phoenix? Oh gee golly the aliens don't like water? How weak is that?

 

[Pocatello]

Star Wars - A New Hope

An awards banquet? Really?

For me it was Star Wars - Return of the Jedi. The whole movie turned to pure crap and utter disappointment with the appearance of Ewoks. At the end, the new version with Hayden Christensen appeared as the redeemed Anakin Skywalker...unspeakable horror.

 

[Ricochet]

A.I.

In fact, any movie where aliens come out at the end.

I'm not sure those were aliens. They could be highly evolved AIs. Consider how many years passed. But we could leave that up to interpretation.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Jurassic Park. The dinos didn't eat those uber-annoying kids.

 

[feralkid]

I thought that ending was perfect.

After all, as Shakespeare said, we "strut and fret our hour upon the stage" as Hank's character so manfully did by heroically clawing his way back to "civilization", only to find that life is, as Willy S. knew, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

This is most tellingly summed up by T.S. Eliot's famous ending to The Hollow Men:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

A deflated balloon indeed.

Well said.

Furthermore, she was not his wife , and she never "kicked him to the curb".

 

[Vikki]

Cabin Fever gets my vote.

Spoiler or not, the movie should have ended with the guy dead in the water, and them showing the girl making lemonade from the same stream his body was infecting. The rest of the town revisit to see the black group arrive and go to the old shop was a waste.

 

[0roo0roo]

A.I.

In fact, any movie where aliens come out at the end.

as said, NOT aliens.
a thousand clues you missed, they pretty much do everything but beat you over the head with them.

 

[n7]

Sunshine indeed.
Infuriating bullshit ending.

The Matrix trilogy made me very upset too, but i liked the first two & even a good portion of the third...i guess i just expected too much in hoping for an ending that nicely closed the trilogy.
Ever since watching that i've basically always assumed the worst when it comes to endings of shows/movies, as i've found the longer something goes on for, the better odds of the ending being crap tend to be...

 

[chowderhead]

another Danny Boyle movie with a weak ending IMO is 28 days later. I loved the setup and the journey but once they reached the mansion with the soldiers it went downhill fast. They did try and explain they didn't have the budget for the ending they really wanted in the DVD extras.

 

[0roo0roo]

Agreed, though the movie lost me much earlier than that.

Specifically:

Spoiler

When he killed people that were pretty much innocent, and had very little connection to the original case and crime. When he killed that young lawyer lady with the car bomb the movie was ruined to me. But maybe that was the point... he got carried away. Still, the movie went downhill quick after that part.

Also,
Hancock w/ Will Smith

I just wanted him to kill that da, because that is how unlikable that character was by the end

Anyways I think collateral was pretty horrible at the end, the uber elite hitman gets super super stupid at the end...in service of the plot.

 

[Rage187]

Contact.

Amen. I saw it in the theatre and was furious.

 

[Redfraggle]

So many choices, but I think I have to go with Contact also.

 

[KingstonU]

When I think of a movie that started out good and ended poorly I always think of Dreamcatcher.

Forgot about this one! +1