BENNETT INVENTORY : Good Movie, Bad Ending

I love a good ending. I love surprises, punchlines, ambiguity, shock cuts, fadeouts, even neat & tidy old fashioned happy endings. From a distance there's no right or wrong, until we have to get dreadfully specific and make that eye-rolling declaration: it depends on the movie. Don't go hard for 100 minutes and then get all soft on me; movies earn their endings whether they like it or not and sometimes whether they mean to or not. It's a big responsibility but it's also a tremendous freedom - in my story writing experience I would often write just as an excuse to invent a provocative conclusion. But it's clear, in many movies, that the means were more urgent than the ends. 

A lot of these are your standard climax, some of them are the final moments before the credits, some are a painful bruise on the body of the movie, some are so forgettable that I can barely remember how everything turned out. In any case I'll leave it to you to agree or disagree - because that's a good ending. 

- Paul

*** S P O I L E R S   A H E A D***

The Fugitive (1993)

Maybe one of the most engrossing movies ever -- all the way up until Dr. Kimble confronts the architect of the whole frame-up, Dr. Nichols, and like Tommy Lee Jones I struggle to care. Harrison accuses him of "switching samples" in regards to whatever the overall motivation was but I never bother to remember any of that, and then he inexplicably follows the criminal mastermind into some backroom out of public view(!). Ultimately this is so Tommy Lee can be a part of the showdown which is all we wanted but it ends up being such a drag after the elaborate chase that was the entire film. 

The Thing (1982)

No, not the cryptic staredown between Kurt and Keith David - that's on the Best Endings list, so no surprise that it overshadows the formulaic Action Movie climax with the explosion and underground tunnels and the witty curse word remark. But the real troubling moment is the faltering monster FX that noticeably pale in comparison to the the dazzling achievement that is the rest of the movie leading up to it. Supposedly Team Bottin fell behind schedule with all the effort put into the other creations that it resulted in this immobile puppet that feels like an afterthought. 

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

The movie has many strengths and perhaps just as many weaknesses so there's a polite balance throughout. I'm not here to get into any of that, but I will say that the whole film could've come out ahead had Spielberg & co. given the audience a little more credit. Instead he leaves us with one of the worst expository speeches I've still ever heard as an animated alien lifeform (voiced by Ben Kingsley) tediously explains to David everything that we already know. I'm not complaining about the repetition but rather the crude disregard for even a remote chance of any abstraction. After I left the theater I went home and watched 2001 to get the taste out of my mouth. 

Trading Places (1983)

The story lands right where it's supposed to and right on time as the two lead characters reach the heights (and depths) of their respective class status. Then they join forces, which is also satisfying. Then they all board a train wearing silly disguises and talking with funny accents in a sequence that is comedically beneath a Benny Hill sketch. You'd think two SNL vets could make this work, but no; whatever tone the movie created had shifted into a silliness that feels like an entirely different movie. Furthermore, the second climax involving the commodities trading floor becomes literal white noise as the esoteric stock market stuff loses my interest entirely. 

Unbreakable (2000)

This one hurts. What an otherwise shockingly original and nearly perfect movie that had me surprised with every development, up to and including the surprise ending! I like M. Night - I like just about all the movies I've seen and I like the twists... to a point. Regardless of his impeccable storytelling strengths (as well as a creative eye) he truly has no faith in an audience's intelligence: he'll show us what's really going on, and then explicitly tell us, and then show us yet again. And in the odd case of Unbreakable, he employs title cards to tell us even more. Dreadful. 

Django Unchained (2012)

I'm sure this is hypercritical and won't get much support, but once Dr. King and Calvin get killed, I find I'm much less invested in any further outcome. Plot wise, yes, it's necessary for Django and Broomhilda to be reunited and the remainder of that journey (though sorta rushed) is entirely compelling, but not as satisfying as it should've been. The movie is so much more concerned with building the relationship between Django and Schultz that the actual objective always feels sorta incidental, so once he dies we have to force ourselves to become more invested in the very peripheral romance. 

M*A*S*H (1970)

To be fair there was no right or wrong way to end this movie - it has no narrative thread in a traditional sense, it's just a disjointed series of hijinks, and that's fine. Actually, that's great - it was Episodic Comedy before it was even televised. So for some ridiculous reason (regardless of the source novel) they decided to tack on some version of a "plot" in the form of an arbitrary football game to close out the film. It goes on for what feels like 20 minutes and it is a completely superfluous and disorienting bit of filmmaking that just about sinks the whole movie. 

Cast Away (2000)

How about this: when he comes back to civilization the world is run by intelligent apes. Seriously though I don't know how else it should've ended. No I didn't want him to die on the island and his rescue could've only ever had bittersweet consequences, but I think that's the point - or at least my point: the paint-by-number wrap-up kinda writes itself (in a boring way); everything else that was exciting or interesting was on that island and they did too good a job holding our attention with the survival element that they themselves became stranded in their own painted-in corner.