how do you consider Taxi Driver's finale to be a happy ending.. while listing a pretty much straightforward wrap-up of Cool Hand Luke under "ambiguous"..? DeNiro's character went from general-psychotic-killer-obsessed-with-assassinating-a-political-figure... to hailed rescuer.. by sheer happenstance brought on by his own incompetence, which itself was brought on by his unyielding impulse to kill... the very ending shows us that this incident of chance may've merely spared him a prison sentencing - along with sparing the Senator his life - and notoriety, but may not at all spared him of his psychotic fate..
My favorite ambiguous ending: Hannah & Her Sisters. Spoiler Woody Allen, impotent, spends the entire movie questioning his own life and the worthiness of humanity. He finally meets a woman, who though also seriously flawed, at last shares a connection with him. Last scene: she announces she's preggers. He will be a father. He looks at the camera, and kind of half-smiles; black. A humanist miracle for the ages, or was she, and mankind, a cheating harlot all along? Taxi Driver's final scene could just as easily be interpreted as an Spoiler oxygen-deprived brain's death fantasy. De Niro had just been shot, and was bleeding out on the couch. Then, suddenly, everything in his world goes great? Press attention, adulation, respect, the prostitute is rescued & returned to her parents & childhood, the girl of his dreams appears once more. All in one fell swoop, for a man forever marginalized? A hallucination seems more likely. I wouldn't deem it a happy ending.
that was one of the prevailing interpretations... however, Scorsese and Paul Schrader (the writer) has said it was all written and filmed with the intention of conveying a tangibly real conclusion.. as in everything you just mentioned was meant to be understood as something that had actually taken place in the film's reality and chain of events..
I love a great ending, The Departed, There Will be Blood, and The Mist are some of the best in recent memory. Sad ending usually equals excellent. Sprry, but hated the ending to this movie. It was more of a cop-out than anything else to me. It was a good movie ruined by a simplistic ending imo.
Not many would watch those depressing turds if word of mouth spread about sitting through all of that without a happy ending.
Spoiler In most movies, the obvious ending is the bad guy getting caught. That didn't happen in NCFOM. Have you read the book? The movie cut out a number of scenes involving Tommy Lee Jones' character, many of which dealt with his growing sense of helplessness with the modern day evils. Without that background, I would probably agree that the ending didn't seem to fit as well. However, I would never call the ending easy or obvious.
I understood the ending fine without reading the book (I usually don;t care for novels by Cormac McCarthy). I considered it easy because you understand the ending as long as you are able to read the title of the movie. Considering how interesting the characters were, I would have like to see the movie end better.
Spoiler Bana's character cheated twice on his wife. I'm not saying it's entirely different from what Sandler's character did to her, but Sandler wasn't married to her. The one thing that bothered me was that Bana didn't seem to have any faith in his wife resurrecting her acting career. He matter-of-factly hinted that she wasn't any good in her previous acting work. At least Sandler was supportive in that arena. It seemed to me that the straw that broke camel's back was when Sandler acted disinterested in her daughter's peformance in that play. Either way, she didn't seem torn at all until she went to go see Bana's character at the airport.
You know, I just want the ending to be well done. With all the amazing talent Hollywood has and the tons of money that get thrown into projects you would think it would be hard to make a bad movie. Yet it happens all the time. I don't care if the movie is great or original or whatever (all of those are good). Just make it entertaining.
While watching Seven a few weeks ago, I decided to watch the extras. Apparently, they had an alternate ending. I wish they stayed with that instead of the one in the theatrical release. For those who've seen it, do you agree?
All that really matters to me is that the ending makes sense within the context of the movie. Sometimes I like the predictable happy ending because I've invested so much into the protagonists. Sometimes I like the sad ending because the story was heading in that direction. And sometimes, the completely unpredictable ending is great too...I like it when filmmakers choose to take a risk, despite the objections of the studio. Layer Cake is a great example. As is the original ending to The Descent. I'm probably more of a sucker for the tearjerker ending though, whether it be uplifting or downcast.
worst movie ending ever: Wayne's World Aerosmith? seriously? that's your happy ending? this should fall under tragic endings
for tv shows: The Shield has the best/most powerful ending of any show this decade. for a movie: someone mentioned it above, but the Mist ending was.... devastating.. i guess is the best word.
