Alternate ending

Question

It had great characters. An intriguing story. The first 90 minutes flew by, firing on all cylinders. You were enjoying another great film experience.
And then ...
and then ...
in the last 20 minutes, the whole thing careened off the tracks.

What movie was it, and how would you change the last 20 minutes to make it the masterpiece it should have been?

Usenet · Accepted Answer

Funny you should mention it. Yesterday I finally saw The Ring on the suggestion of someone on MWSm (thanks, whoever you are). It thought it was really excellent, really gripping, really scary.

Until.
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Until they cheapened all their fine work with a blatant bid for a sequel.
Having the dead girl literally crawl out of the tv set and kill the ex- husband? So much less eerie and horrifying than the girl controlling people's minds and scaring them to death. So much less ... supernatural. So much less ... psychological. So much more ... solid.
Also, it demolished the storyline that was working just fine. Naomi Watts has seven days to solve the mystery, or she, her ex-husband and her son all die. With her brilliant skills honed as a reporter, she finds the dead girl's body. The dead girl has finally told someone the horrible story of her life and death, and is getting a proper burial. The seven days pass, and Naomi Watts gets to live, because she was brave enough and smart enough to solve the problem.

By having this cheap ending, the storyline turns to rubbish. Naomi's son says, You helped her!!?? You shouldn't have helped her!!! She'll never stop!!!
Uhm ... WHY will she never stop? Her story's been told, she's been properly buried. She's driven both of her abusive parents to kill themselves. She's already killed the four teenagers who stayed in the cabin in the woods over the spot where she was murdered. Why target anyone else? Especially, why target the family who got her properly buried?
It makes no *** sense. And the story made PERFECT sense up until this point.
Up until this cheapo ending, the writing, directing, and acting were so masterful, that I just have to suspect some studio suit insisted on this *** ending.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]It had great characters. An intriguing story. The first 90 minutes flew by, firing on all cylinders. You were enjoying ... was it, and how would you change the last 20 minutes to make it the masterpiece it should have been?[/nq]
No Country For Old Men.
Last 20 minutes, Tommy Lee Jones either catches the bad guy, or gets killed trying.
As it is, there is no reason for Tommy Lee Jones to be in the movie.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]What movie was it, and how would you change the last 20 minutes to make it the masterpiece it should have been?[/nq]
I dunno what your movie is, but Artificial Intelligence: A.I. did it for me. The buildup was good and scary - I imagine the Kubrick vision - then it veered off into Spielberg's sentimental fantasyland - disappointing. Spielberg directed the whole thing, but it was Kubrick's brainchild, too bad he died before it came to fruition.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]What movie was it, and how would you change the last 20 minutes to make it the masterpiece it should have been?[/nq]
[nq:1]I dunno what your movie is, but Artificial Intelligence: A.I. did it for me. The buildup was good and scary ... disappointing. Spielberg directed the whole thing, but it was Kubrick's brainchild, too bad he died before it came to fruition.[/nq]
Oh yeah, definitely this one. A good ending would have been finding the kid in the... whatever it was he was in under the ice, can't remember then FADE OUT. I thought this is where it did end. (If I had know better I would have shut the VCR off, simulated the ending, and thought "hey that wasn't too bad.) Instead we had this long drawn out, useless ending that just totally lost it for me.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]What movie was it, and how would you change the last 20 minutes to make it the masterpiece it should have been?[/nq]
[nq:1]I dunno what your movie is, but Artificial Intelligence: A.I. did it for me. The buildup was good and scary ... disappointing. Spielberg directed the whole thing, but it was Kubrick's brainchild, too bad he died before it came to fruition.[/nq]
Yep... A real bummer, though the beginning and the middle didn't do a lot to relieve the anticlimax.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Funny you should mention it. Yesterday I finally saw The Ring on the suggestion of someone on MWSm (thanks, whoever ... directing, and acting were so masterful, that I just have to suspect some studio suit insisted on this *** ending.[/nq]
That was pretty much the same twist as in the original (IIRC) and it actually kinda' worked for me, as twists go. The story makes perfect sense, just like you've outlined, except... that parents WEREN'T simply abusive and the little girl DIDN'T just need her story told and a proper burial. The little girl was, in fact, PURE EVIL (which makes a certain amount of sense; lots of kids die awful deaths and don't start killing random teenagers from Beyond the Grave) and everyone who'd been working against her was, in fact, doing the exact right thing - crazy though it seemed to outside observers.

Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary
Steven

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Until they cheapened all their fine work with a blatant bid for a sequel. Having the dead girl literally crawl ... and scaring them to death. So much less ... supernatural. So much less ... psychological. So much more ... solid.[/nq]
Funny thing is, I had the exact opposite reaction.

Up until this point, I thought everything in the film was completely predictable. I saw every twist coming, I could have practically described every scene before it happened.
And then, all of a sudden ... the movie didn't end where it looked like it was going to end. It kept going.
And that was great. And it was, for the first time in the film, genuinely scary. Now, yeah, the specifics of how she kills people or whatever, you can have that argument.
But the movie was, for a moment, unpredictable ...

And that was awesome.
-Ron

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]It had great characters. An intriguing story. The first 90 ... minutes to make it the masterpiece it should have been?[/nq]
[nq:1]No Country For Old Men. Last 20 minutes, Tommy Lee Jones either catches the bad guy, or gets killed trying. As it is, there is no reason for Tommy Lee Jones to be in the movie.[/nq]
I was wondering if anybody would say NCFOM. Glad somebody did. There were some great scenes in it, very memorable, then it was like they said, "Well, we've run out of film, so I guess we'll have to stop here."

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]...What movie was it...[/nq]
Brazil, as released by the Hollywood Brainless Happy-Ending Society.
[nq:1]...and how would you change the last 20 minutes...[/nq]
What Terry Gilliam did after regaining control of his own film.

Usenet · Answer

Fortunately this is the only version I saw. One of my favorites.

RonB
"There's a story there...somewhere"

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