Has the ending to a film ever changed your opinion on that film?

The ending of The One is the greatest dumb ending ever. From Jet Li trying to sound tough in his English pronunciation, to the fucking Papa Roach song, it's just so goddamn perfect. I don't like The One but I will watch it just to see that goddamn last few seconds. I would watch an entire goddamn sequel that was just the continuation of the ending scene. So I think I like exactly two minutes of The One.

I liked that movie Identity. And then the big ending happened and it ruined what was an enjoyable Agatha Christie knock off. But fuck. That ending. Jesus.

High Tension is great. And then the ending happens.

I hate shitty twist endings.

New World's ending turns a great Korean crime movie into a really great Koran crime movie.

@theht: :D I DEMAND TO KNOW THE LINE! Put it in a spoiler block so I can find out suspensefully. I'm so happy to see their is someone else out there who likes this movie.

My thoughts exactly. Sunshine was a really good science fiction movie that stopped being good the moment Sun Man the Insane showed up. The entire third act felt like a different movie entirely.

Actually, this brings to mind another movie called The Wild Hunt. It starts off as this dramatic comedy about a guy who's bummed that his girlfriend he's having relationship issues with is attending this massive LARP and ends up attending it to try to win her back. And then suddenly, the last act shits the bed when the leader of one of the factions, who was interested in the girlfriend, gets spurned and urges his entire faction to go on the attack with real rocks and non-pretend violence. Everything descends into chaos from that point on, and not the good kind.

While my post isn't positive to negative and vice versa. It's more like positive to really positive.

12 Years a Slave really done it for me.

I was able to sense that Solomon wanted the other slaves to be free since they acted as sort of his other family during his enslavement, especially Patsey. Given that time, the only way out was through selfish means unfortunately. For me it's the reinforcement of this realization that made me appreciate the impact of the ending and the film overall. The experiences of Solomon's period of being a slave was authentically emotional but it sort of distracted me from what was to come; it's pretty smart.

The ending to Vanilla Sky made the film for me. Holy shit, was Cameron Crowe smoking meth or something at the end? Utterly insane.

This poll needs a both option.

@blackout62: Yeah, I should have made the poll able to pick multiple answers.

Haha okay okay. It was subtitled, so it might be different from other versions out there.

The ending of On the Waterfront was slightly worse than the rest of the movie.

@cheesebob said:

Yeah, that's one of my favourite twist endings in a movie. Really pulls everything together nicely, and the whole movie is beautifully shot. Apparently the movie was kinda all over the place as far as the critics, but I liked it.

Also, I just thought of another one. The Shawshank Redemption. It's like, a pretty good prison movie for most of the movie. I was having a good time, but nothing special. Then, man, the payoff at the end of the movie really brings it up to a new level.

On the other side of the spectrum, Hancock. Fucking Hancock. The idea of a drunk superhero who is kind of shitty at saving people and causes way too much property damage is actually kind of awesome. Too bad the movie shits the bed like halfway through, and when you actually find out what Hancock is and where they go with the story, it's incredibly stupid. So it's not quite "ending ruined the whole movie", but man, it starts off so strong only to deliver some plot revelations that are completely stupid and don't make the movie more interesting at all.

And while we're talking about Will Smith, I Am Legend. Wow did that ending ever fuck up. The whole point of that story is you find out that the people he has been eluding/hunting are actually sapient and not all that bad, and that Neville is now the titular night stalker "legend" that people whisper about, not the vampire/zombie creatures he thinks he has the right to kill. Which is kinda the alternate ending on the DVD, but the one in theatres is that they're just monsters, so fuck em, then Neville dies. The title doesn't even make sense if the creatures he's killing aren't intelligent and don't fear him as some kind of inhuman killing machine.

Also, the Dawn of the Dead remake has an atrociously bad epilogue. The hole up in the mall. Eventually have a plan with armoured buses to make it to the harbour and get a boat. They get to the boat, but not before some people die, and one guy gets bit, and heroically leaves himself behind because he knows he is a hazard. The movie ends with the ship leaving the pier, and you hear a single gunshot off in the distance of the bitten guy doing the only thing he can. ROLL CREDITS, YOU FUCKS. Which they do, but there is this tacky epilogue alongside the credits all shot using a camcorder on the boat, and they bicker about not really having a plan once on the boat and they're running out of food, and then they dock on this island and think it's safe for about 10 seconds, but then some zombies run out of the woods, the person holding the camcorder drops it, and then I dunno, maybe they run away and make it, maybe they don't. The End. I assume that bit got tacked on because test audiences were like "DURRR, WHAT HAPPENS ONCE THEY'RE ON THE BOAT?", which is entirely besides the point, because they accomplished their short term escape goal after much hard work and tribulation. That's enough. I feel like the director almost spitefully wrote an epilogue that was just as vague as to who died and who didn't, and what ultimately became of everybody, other than "they landed the boat somewhere".

Dark City's ending is so epic and beyond the scope of what you think the movie is about when you start watching it the first time. Totally elevates a good B movie into one of my all-time favorites.

The Holy Mountain would be an untouchable perfect movie if it concluded with spiritual enlightenment as originally intended. At the last minute the director decided it should instead end with pulling back the camera to show that this was a movie and not really happening. No shit! A bad decision that knocks a bizarre, amazing film down a notch.

I remember watching Hancock and thinking it was pretty decent... then the final 1/3rd kicked into gear... and then the schlock hollywood ending where will smith comes back to life, because... fuck it ... magic which could've been a better ending if they just rolled with the unexpected.

You forgot the death scene

I remember being ok with Saw until the very end.

@mosespippy: I love Black Mirror so much. All the episodes are so good. Now I need to watch them again. And the one you are talking about, holy shit. I couldn't stop talking about that episode for like two weeks.

Yes, both positively and negatively in my case, and fairly often.

Sunshine. That third act man... What the fuck.

This question is to complicated for a poll as I have had both kinds of reactions.

I loved the ending to movies like Cloverfield, The Departed, (and to name some you didn't) The Mist, They Live, Sixth Sense. It's unfortunate, though. I really like when people die unexpectedly, as that is life, but a lot of people get pissed about it. They don't actually stop to consider whether it actually makes sense for the narrative (which in those films it entirely does- they could not end any other way and make sense).

I hate movies with predictable endings- by this I mean endings created because a test audience didn't like the real ending. If there's nothing at stake you'll lose me, too. Unfortunately I can't come up with any examples right now, but they exist on a massive scale.

Off the top of my head, District 9. The entire movie felt so fucking grounded and real and human (I mean, not human, they're aliens, but you know), and then all of a sudden it turned into a mecha sci-fi action flick. Fucking killed it for me.

Yes, both for better and for worse. While a couple of films have really annoyed me with endings that just make me say ‘Oh fuck you!’ at the screen, there have been some last act twists that made films better. The one that pops out to me right away is Cabin In The Woods. I mean, that film was pretty great to start with, but the ending is just bananas and brilliant.

I wish there was an option that had both positive and negative. I chose the negative option because I feel like it occurs more frequently. The most recent example for me is Edge of Tomorrow. I loved the movie, but the ending was just kind of a let down. The problem is when I assess it isn't like I can think up a better ending.

As for the positive one I definitely agree with The Mist. I was so cool on the entire movie but MY GOD that ending is spectacular!

@overnow: Edge of Tomorrow did a really poor job with that ending in the sense that it didn't explain why killing the Omega (and touching its blood) gives you a super rewind where you wake up alive and well and somehow the suicide mission you went on still took place, even though Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt and everyone involved are in different places instead of dead on the suicide mission. Also somehow the suicide mission kills the Omega and then its death occurs a full 2 days earlier; if Tom Cruise woke up on the army base that would be about one full day before the moment he dies killing the Omega, but waking up on the chopper from the beginning of the movie is two days before the Omega would've died. Why two days instead of one this time, other than the part where it neatly avoids Cruise ever getting knocked out and forced to go to the forward military base?

When it jumped back to the chopper from the start of the movie, I briefly thought the Omega had some defense mechanism to rewind time two days, so by Tom Cruise's character absorbing its blood, he accidentally died and rewound time yet again, undoing the entire suicide mission (and undoing Tom Cruise being forced onto the front line). But then it turned out, no, everything still happened this time.

I don't dislike that ending so much that it ruined the film for me, but that ending just makes no sense.

That ending ruined my entire weekend in the best way possible.

Usually for the worse. Two examples:
Fallen, which was so goddamn perfect until it decided to rob its ending of its bittersweet catharsis with its last minute twist. Yes, he did say "almost". But he probably shouldn't have.

Office Space, which a lot of people genuinely love... I kind of do, too, but when things start getting all moralistic and Jennifer Anistony toward the end, it saps all the fun out for me.

Of course.

The ending of Sixth Sense changed that movie from a decent flick to the massive popular culture touchstone it was at that time.

On the other hand, the endings of Signals and The Village were terribly lackluster. I liked the tension of the movies until that point, but the ending totally deflated it...

Seems like and obvious one, but 2001. I love all the hard sci-fi stuff and they set up the monolith as really creepy and mysterious, and then instead of an ending they just shoot technicolor bullshit at you face for what seems like FOREVER. Fuck that movie.

@cheesebob: The movie was a remake of "Abre tus ojos", and the ending is pretty much the same... except the protagonist on that one doesn't survive the fall, because Hollywood.

@jeust: I'll spoiler tag the more spoilery bits just in case.

The book is actually set in the present day with the framing story being that of the two magician's grandchildren trying to piece together just what happened between the two men. They are also trying to solve their own issues, the major one being that one of the descendants, Borden's grandson, can't shake the feeling that he has, or had, a twin. The story of Angiers (Jackman) and Borden (Bale) is told in a series of journal entries, first Borden followed by Angiers, each telling the same events from their own point of view. I guess the main problem is that the film tidies up what is otherwise a kind of confusing narrative. And then, well, here it goes-

So in the movie, Bale interrupts the magic trick and discovers Jackman-in-a-box, that one dies, and the other escapes and assumes another identity, all so Bale can take the fall for murdering him. In the book, Bale magician interrupts the trick and instead of their being one very dead Jackman and one alive, there are two, a sicklier but overall normal version and a ghostly version. The rest of the story with the magician's plays out kind of the same, except there are two Jackmans, one in hiding because he's a weird freaky ghostly version. The last journal entry of the ghost Jackman claims that he is going to find a way to reunite with his other half and become whole again.

Okay, fine it's ridiculous but it kind of fits with the overall story so far. Where it really goes off the rails is 100 years later (give or take) the grandchildren find a crypt with all the clones in it and the ghostly version is still hanging out in the cave! Then they run away, because that shit is scary, and they end up seeing ghost Jackman walking off into the forest. WHA? It totally just ruined the book. They could have left it with the final journal entry and I would have been pretty happy with it, but instead there had to be that final bit with the other characters in the present day.

I'm probably doing a pretty poor job of summarizing the movie too, since I haven't seen that in a while either. But all you need to know is that movie doesn't have a ghosty Jackman peacing out at the end, and that makes it way better, to me at least.

Mind you, I am trying to summarize a book that I read ages ago, so I am probably leaving stuff out. I just remembered that ending being such a book flipper. And I went back and reread it and yeah, it's still just as ridiculous. Also, I can't remember what happened to the grandchildren. The framing story was just so meh to me that I completely forgot the conclusion of that plot point.

So yeah, I think considering the material that he had to work with, Christopher Nolan did an admirable job making a pretty great movie out of the novel. I liked both, but I think the movie really streamlines the story and makes it make more sense, which is weird to say, but there you go. :D

@yi_orange: YOU TAKE THAT BACK! That ending changed the entire film... all of those hints!

@jadegl: Wait, so in the book, were they not just physical clones of Angier where one of them very much drowned each time the trick was performed because Angier wouldn't be able to provide for dozens of copies of himself? Was there some master copy of Angier (the ghostly one) that never died? Also why was either of them sickly/ghostly? It sounds like the copying machine thing worked differently in the book. Almost like a Picture of Dorian Gray kinda situation. Also what is the significance of Borden's grandson thinking he had a twin, other than the part where his grandfather (Borden) had a twin that was part of his signature magic trick?

@bisonhero: Yeah, in the book the clone that is created in the machine is a lifeless husk, it doesn't die in the box it just slumps over, which makes for way less drama than the movie version. The one that is cloned and teleported is perfectly fine. Somehow when the machine is turned off mid-teleport/cloning, it creates a ghost version and the sicklier version is left, I think. It's really weird and I honestly can't recall how it plays out exactly. I need to reread it to be absolutely sure.That doesn't explain how both have sentience at that point, since it never alludes to that before that point, so I have no idea how both can live. Maybe if the transference/cloning is incomplete the mind is split? I don't know.

However, the ghost version is still alive in the mid-late 1990s (when the framing story is set) and the older grandchildren of both men see it walk away from the crypt area. It's so crazy. There is some debate about whether he can teleport himself into other people (kind of like The Swapper I guess) and there is also debate about whether he actually was able to do it in the past, but they never answer whether he was able to rejoin his other piece/half/whatever. Reading discussions online is actually making it murkier, because people have different opinions on what the ending in the book means for Angiers.

This is the wikipedia article. It focuses mainly on the story of the two magicians and does a slightly better job stating what happens. I still find it confusing after reading the book and reading the synopsis. :D

The movie is relatively clean in comparison.

The first one I can think of was Enemy (2013). It was an ok mystery movie throughout but nothing I would likely remember. It was a bit "wannabe Hitchcock", I remember thinking for some reason.

Then the ending happened... and my bowl of popcorn dropped to the floor. It made me question every previous minute in the movie. So I had to rewatch it and suddenly I loved the hell out of it.

I don't know anyone who had the same experience as me, but hey, different people and different taste.

@jadegl: Somewhere in the back of my mind I always wanted to get around to reading The Prestige since I liked the movie so much, but man, the ghostly Angier stuff just sounds way dumber, even by the standards of "sure, Nikola Tesla is basically a wizard". Also the framing story sounds really unnecessary except for the reveal at the end with the ghost version that is still alive. I mean, the novel couldn't be in first person because obviously Borden and Angier would be fully aware from the get go of what their trick is, but it seems like a carefully written third person account, or honestly just structuring the whole thing as diary entries without any grandchildren (which is basically what the movie did) would work just as well.

I have always considered The Prestige movie as prime example of a "Nolan Film" and that I wish he would go back too. I always thought the issue with The Swapper is that it made a perfect copy so both are Angier. To maintain the illusions of the trick one of them has to die. Even if the one that fell below the stage lived, one of the Angier would have to die either way because both would be driven to maintain the illusion. In any event the ending of The Prestige is great because it answers the question of how both tricks work.

The book is pretty different but the movie is stellar because focus on the symbolism of splitting and division. How Borden's trick works and Angier's trick works are extreme examples of this. The split between rich and poor. Talent and showmanship. Destruction caused by maintaining secrecy and single minded competition is also a major theme. Although I'm not sure about the ending where it feels it didn't earn it.

@bisonhero: I really liked the book until the final epilogue. I would read it just for the experience. It is a very interesting piece, I just don't think the structure is successful. It's a lot of the same issues I had with House of Leaves. A great haunted house/scary story kind of trapped in a lackluster framing story.

I thought Savages was pretty good until they did that Waynes World ending thing.

Frailty. The movie was OK until the finale came out blasting and turned it into a great one. Highly recommend it, hell it has Bill Paxton in it, what more do you want?

I'll echo the praise for The Mist's ending. I think a lot of people hated it because it was so bleak.

I thought Signs was great until the ending. I can still watch it and enjoy it now but I had a science teacher in high school who broke down why the ending is complete horseshit and it definitely ruined it a little for me.

Two movies that come to mind are Terminator 3 and The Mist, which the endings to those movies make me remember them more fondly then I probably should.

Signs was an okay movie until everything about it became the absolute worst. That's an easy one.

Not too drastically. I just naturally consider the journey more important than the ending. I'll be disappointed if a good journey has a bad ending, and I might knock some points off on the "objective" scale, but if most of the movie was enjoyable, then the movie was enjoyable. Same thing goes the other way, a good ending to an uninteresting journey isn't going to suddenly redeem the entire thing.

I'd say Man of Steel and Solaris are some recent negative examples for me.

I was getting bored with Man of Steel but it still seemed generally redeemable with a better sequel until the notorious ending moment then I went straight into "fuck you fuck this" mode.

The 2002 version of Solaris was super engaging with it's atmosphere and the romance plot seemed to exist to show the protagonist going through the exact delusions the rest of the crew went through until the end when it ends on the romance plot taking over in a rather nonsensical way.

As for the Prestige and it's use of science fiction elements it seemed less like they were using it for the sake of science fiction so much as providing something the audience simply can't understand. The layers of complexity to the various tricks and the various character's understanding of how the tricks work gets into the audience in that way. More so there's the hysterical irony of Angier being so unable to accept Borden's trick is as simple as it is that he straight up finds the most complicated solution possible.

Watchmen. To me Zach Snyder complete missed the point of the ending to the book. I'm not even talking about the squid thing, that change was fine. I'm talking about the Niteowl/Rorschach scene, and cutting Manhattan's last conversation with Ozzy (which in my opinion was the most important moment).

@cornbredx: while I agree that unexpected deaths fits the narrative in those films (I actually do like The Departed,) the way they come to that at the end of Cloverfield is what I take issue with; there is no reason for the helicopter to take the path it does.

I like when movies avoid the schmaltzy happy ending. I always like a twist or a perspective you didn't see until the end that takes a movie you thought was telling you one things but is actually telling you another.

I recently saw Maze Runner with my family. I actually kind of enjoyed the first half of the movie. It was building to something that could have been kind of cool. The idea of a group of young adults trapped in an obviously man-made maze has some potential to be something other than dumb garbage. However, the ending was perhaps the dumbest ending in a film that I have seen in the past 3-4 years. The reason these children were put in a FOREST environment was so that they could somehow improve life on a DESERT planet (something about resourcefulness?). Not to mention the MULTIPLE twists at the end (none of them good), and the death of some character that I don't care about.
If I had not seen the ending, I would have said this movie was alright, with a good premise and some good acting. That ending though.

As per the topic, this is how I feel the breakdown goes. Around 60% of movies are trash from the start, 30% start well enough and end horribly, 10% are good and can be called films. Fake stats and all aside, I feel Now You See Me is in that 30%; nonsensical yet entertaining to start, a complete mess by the time the credits roll. What happened to stories being developed front-to-back? No one knows how to create an ending anymore. The ball's always dropped.

@sterling: They are all really good, but I think the last one about a parody politician running for office was pretty weak. I probably think that because it's shorter than the other episodes and it's nothing we haven't seen before here in Canada with Labatt Brewing Company and their parody political party Le Parti Bleue in 2004. I'm pretty excited about the Christmas special they're putting out this year. Hopefully it leads to more episodes in 2015.