Whether it’s an awesome movie or a terrible movie, nothing leaves you miffed like a crappy ending. If it was a great movie, then a ridiculous ending just ruined what should’ve been a cool two hours of your life. If it was a stupid movie, then a stupid ending is like adding insult to injury. Like a drunkard who just crashed your party and pissed all over the Tupperware, a bad ending kills everyone’s buzz. Warning: Spoilers Ahead!
by Nathan Bloch
The following article does not represent the opinions of Spike TV or its affiliates.
10. It
Stephen King’s It – the movie, directed by Tommy Lee Wallace – didn’t really get the cinematic adaptation it deserved. The book was terrifying, but the movie was like a really long after school special on why you shouldn’t take candy from clowns. But the ending of this movie was really the rotten cherry on this stinker of a cake.
Basically, Pennywise the Clown is the manifestation of a demon that came to earth millions of years ago and spends most of his time in Derry, Maine. Apparently evil prefers a chilly, northeastern climate. He appears to seven kids in various horrific forms, but his final act is transforming into a huge spider. In the book this was scary. In the movie this was more evidence of why stop-motion really didn’t have much more of a future in visual effects.
Word on the street is that there’s a remake of the movie underway. This is one of the first times that the announcement of a remake has caused me joy. The first movie just didn’t cut the mustard, and the ending basically summed up all the silliness of the last 3 hours.
9. Contact
Contact is, by and large, a really solid, thought-provoking film. Despite questionable casting choices like Matthew McConaughey as a spiritual leader and adviser to the president (I can’t really imagine any president asking McConaughey’s advice about anything other than tanning or smiling), the story is great and the acting is solid. The build up to the climax of the film is extremely suspenseful and exciting.
And then we get to see what these aliens really are: they’re Ellie’s (Jodie Foster) dead dad. Wait, no, they’re whisps of light on a beach. Wait, no, they’re…we have no idea what they are, because their plan was to make a big stink about building their little space machine and then reveal absolutely no edifying information about themselves, where they come from, or what in hell they want, other than to make…Contact. Houston, we have a title.
I mean, seriously? Director Robert Zemeckis traded in a really cool, sci-fi, creepy ending for a sentimental sob-scene with Ellie and her dead dad. Give me a frickin’ break. Not cool, man, not cool. Audiences walked away feeling ripped off, and I think they should have to put a sticker on the DVD cover that warns: BEWARE: GIRLY ASS ENDING.
8. Castaway
Dang, two Zemeckis films in a row. Once again, Cast Away is a mostly great film, and Tom Hanks proves for the umpteenth time he can single-handedly steer a movie with no supporting cast other than a volleyball and an out of control beard. It’s an impressive feat of filmmaking.
And then Hanks’ character, Chuck Noland, gets rescued. We spend what feels like an hour watching as Chuck shakes hands and smiles sadly and fails to rekindle his relationship with long-lost girlfriend Kelly (Helen Hunt). It’s just all so…sad.
What the hell happened?! When did a tough-as-nails story about survival and self-reliance in the face of adversity become a tear-jerker of a romantic tragedy? Who made that choice? And if they really had to bring Chuck back to civilization, why not show him spearing squirrels in his back yard and eating the mail man? Now that’s how you end it.
7. King Kong
Peter Jackson certainly knows how to make big films, for better or worse. With King Kong, it was definitely worse. After all this business on the island – the best part of which involved an unlikely battle involving a Tyrannosaurus rex and, well, King Kong – we get back to New York, where King Kong is on display. Soon, though, he’s on the ice, and then climbing a building, and then dying.
And it’s all retarded. Why, Jackson, why? Did King Kong really need to be remade? The answer is no, it did not. We all paid the price of admission, and we all paid the price of having to watch one of the most ridiculous endings ever. This movie should’ve been called, King Stupid Monkey Face.
6. Sunshine
Danny Boyle made a really entertaining first and second acts to Sunshine, and then I guess his screenwriter, Alex Garland, got sick of writing the movie and inserted a psychopathic manifestation of Apollo, God of the Sun, to finish off act three. And, yes, this is as stupid as it sounds.
Whose idea it was to end what could have been a modern day 2001 with a B-horror movie murder/chase sequence I can’t say, but the fact that Boyle went with it meant that everyone definitely ran out of ideas. And everyone who watches this movie runs out of fondness for an otherwise cool film. If it had been my call, I would have put the astronauts on the surface of the sun and had them come back as walking nuclear furnaces, living gods able to supply their planet with the energy it needed. Why? Because then you’ve got yourself a sequel where the sun gods do battle and destroy the solar system.
Ok, so my ending sucks too, but I’m not being paid $10,000 a word. This movie definitely needed a better ending, and just about anyone could have come up with a better one. The proof is in the blogging.
