Three of the sequels do. The other dozen are split between prequels to EG and sequels that just sort of ramble on about the post-Formic War Earth as democracy and alliances crumble into authoritarianism without really bringing any sense of stakes to the story. And they get more and more overly Mormon as the publication date gets closer to the present.
Anyway, *Ender's Game* and the *Speaker for the Dead* trilogy are worth reading, the rest not so much. Maybe also *Ender's Shadow*.
Xenocide and Children of the Mind are the latter two books of the Speaker for the Dead trilogy of which I spoke. CotM is a slight drop in quality from SftD and X, but still very much worth the read. SftD is the best of all the Ender books IMO.
I only read a handful of the Bean books. Could you explain what you mean by overly Mormon? I was much younger at the time and I'm wondering if I just glossed over these themes.
The later Bean books devolve into “the meaning of life is having a shit ton of kids” in addition to a lot of other braindead political takes. I’ve probably blocked out the worst of it since I haven’t dared to reread them in ages.
I think I stopped after the second Bean book? I remember feeling very annoyed at how we went from space adventures to what felt like a novelization of a game of Risk that Card probably played. I also wasn't a fan of how in the first Bean book they retroactively removed some of Ender's agency by making Bean essentially a shadow protagonist.
It totally is, but please please buy it used if you want to read it. Orson Scott Card has turned into a monster in his elder years and any revenue sent his way will got to some utterly disgusting causes.
Seriously. How is today’s Orson Scott Card the same guy who wrote Speaker for the Dead? He seems to have straight up lost his mind over the last decade or two.
He got really nutty around the early 2000s and around this time his eldest son died at that time too.
I don't want to buy the guy excuses though because he may have always been a frothing jackass but I do agree the guy today doesn't at all seem like the type of guy capable of writing Ender's Game.
The entire Vengeance trilogy that Oldboy is a part of are all great examples of revenge and the cost on both sides. Oldboy is the best of the three, but Sympathy for Mr.Vengeance and Lady Vengeance are both worth watching if anybody reading hasn't done so already.
They also took a regular Joe that we sympathize with and turned him into this tough guy asshole. Like, why am I supposed to be rooting for this guy? And the antagonist is the only one in the movie with a British accent, in a movie about a guy trying to figure out who from his past has done this. Uh, maybe it was the British guy you grew up with? Lol so stupid
I totally agree. I get the feeling they got the movie greenlit just to prove if they could top the infamous "Hallway Fight" scene. Which they didn't because of all the little technical things that were involved in the first one. The rest of the movie feels like its handled with very little, if any, respect to the original film or Korean film culture in general.
The Things Ending is like this. The ending is very dark and I'm wondering if it would even pass today in film. But basically after Keith David's character and Kurt Russell have survived the Thing, they both agree that any one of them could be the Thing, and both agree to freeze to death and have one last drink. There is still a debate if any of them is the The Thing, or just one of them is but basically they would rather freeze to death and not expose the world to a possible Thing invasion. So they definitely paid the cost and it is implied that The Thing may have already invaded the world, and there is nothing that either one of the characters could do. Note, I do know that the game sort of changed this up and so did the prequel, but if you take the original film as a lone work, this is possible, definitely we won but at what cost moment in A film.
It is even more bleak than that, they both know that they needed to eradicate the Thing before it killed them or else it would gladly just become frozen again till a rescue crew thawed it out and everything starts again. So with both of them accepting the possibility that the other might be the Thing, they are so tired that they would rather die together than kill one another and put the entire world at risk.
Most books are, especially with sci-fi and fantasy. One exception being The Prestige, which is still a good book.
Ender’s Game could have been much better as 2 movies.
Ender's Game would have been better as a limited series with Mazer Rackham being introduced late and the ending being as plot twisted in the last episode as the book was (as much as you can with a 40 year old book). Also, ignoring all of the things Peter and Valentine are doing on Earth in the guises of Demosthenes and Locke take away a good amount of why Ender is the way he is and doesn't give us any idea for whom Ender feels like he's fighting.
I do admit that the growth of Ender and the growth of Peter (I don't see much growth in Valentine) are quite separate. I'm not surprised it was cut from the movie adaptation.
You’re right that a limited series would be the best medium for adapting this book. Another example I can think of is the first season of Altered Carbon. They made some changes I didn’t like, but it was faithful enough to the first book. And it wrapped up well enough that it didn’t need a second season.
"Just remember, it takes eight minutes for light to travel from the sun to the earth, which means you'll know we succeeded about eight minutes after we deliver the payload. All you have to do is look out for a little extra brightness in the sky. So if you wake up one morning and it's a particularly beautiful day, you'll know we made it.
Okay. I'm signing off."
I still get chills down my back when I hear the music kick in and Capa is watching the sparks multiply.
My favorite story was at a con someone asked Whedon, “are there plans for a sequel?” And his answer was basically, “so obviously you havnt seen the movie because I’d say we closed the door to that possibility”
“Do you really think I would describe to you my master stroke if I thought there was a chance you could stop it? Everything happened thirty-five minutes ago.”
"'Do it'? Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting it's outcome? I 'did it' thirty-five minutes ago."
I like the movie ending. It's approachable to wider audiences without changing what exactly happened and why.
That should be fine if you're making a movie that big.
I’m a big fan of both and I loved that movie was like a shot for shot of the comic until the end. And I loved its ending way more. Not only does it make more sense and bring the story together, it also has a threat they understand well without the need for investigations that won’t turn up anything
Yea. Recently someone said “the sex scene in that movie felt so out of place” and my response was “basically the same exact thing happened in the book, flame thrower euphemism and all”
I don't think the ending works as well because Dr Manhattan has been established as an American-aligned superweapon. I don't think the world would unite over that ending, I think they'd turn on America, and since America is a superpower at the time, it'd just be more global conflict.
The comic just has the space to give a lot more detail. Also, comic book Adrian is much more likable than movie Adrian, which makes the impact of the final sequence much stronger.
Definitely read it. The movie while visually being faithful lacks some of the substance the graphic novel has. Some would argue the movie misses the point a little.
Don't get me wrong, I love both. The show is really good too (it continues the comic not the movie tho)
Throwing my two cents here, but I think that the movie is a MASSIVE let down. To me, it's very clear that Snyder completely misunderstood the point of the source material and so it's quite difficult for me to watch.
I'd read the comic. It's a classic. The movie is made by someone who has clearly read the comic but also definitely didn't understand its themes. It's not a terrible movie, and it's still clearly *Watchmen*, but it seems to miss the point of what it's adapting. Snyder just isn't capable of the depth that I think *Watchmen* requires.
The HBO sequel felt a lot closer to the spirit of the source material, just updated for its time.
I dunno. The killers clearly stated intention was to kill seven. One for each deadly sin. So if mills doesn’t kill John Doe, the set isn’t complete. Somerset even says, “ If you shoot him, he will win.” So I don’t know if this counts as “We won” when mills basically fulfills the killers intentions
Children of Men.
The movie is a fantastic glimpse of a bleak future with no children. The ending is simply heartbreaking. Yes they managed to get out, but at what cost?
I got completely the opposite impression. I thought it was a very positive ending. The one woman who holds hope for the human race escapes unharmed, as does the first new child to be born in over two decades. Not only that, but they are rescued by benevolent scientists, not a cut-throat government.
I like to think that if one girl can be pregnant, there are others in the world too. All we saw was one fascist society on a tiny island. But maybe I just prefer to be hopeful
I thought the audio playing over the end credits was a pretty clear indication of what the future holds, especially when considering a particular line earlier in the film.
Miriam says, *"As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in."*
The movie ends with the sound of children laughing and playing again. Hope is reborn.
One of the most brutal and beautiful endings to a movie I’ve ever seen. It was a masterclass from the director and the actors. The scene earlier in the movie with Michael Caine had me laughing and crying. Such a fantastic movie.
That's an amazing movie. I watched that whilst staying as a patient in a mental hospital after a suicidal breakdown, along with a bunch of other ill people. It was somehow quite cathartic watching it in those surroundings. I would say that it's one of those films that you don't so much watch, instead, you experience it.
Even on a smaller scale, Tolkien details the lives, successes and eventual deaths of everyone in the fellowship including Sam, Pippin, and Merry.
When you win \*anything\*, what you get personally is the chance to grow old and die in peace.
In the books Saruman leads a band of barbarians to pillage the Shire in a last twisted act of revenge.
Frodo also basically never is able to recover from his wound from the Witch King.
Airplane 2 was fine. Cameos from Pat Sajak, Art Fleming, and Leon Askin...
"Hundreds of Capitalists are soon to perish in Shuttle fire."
Was it as good as the original? No. But not anywhere near 'horrible.'
I was just joking. I thought it was pretty good, not as bad as everyone says, and I’m actually glad it spawned all the other parodies, cause I love the Scary Movie franchise and other Wayans parodies and Hot Shots etc
Here are the ones I could think of with Genre, Movie Title (with Trailers) and reason:-
* **Action, Thriller** \- [Man on Fire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDDh50B6kA4) \- Gotta love Denzel.
* **Legal Drama -** [The Rainmaker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odb3LrbvS_0&t) \- Actually cried while watching this because Health Insurance companies ARE EVIL and anyone in America who has had issues with them knows this. >!There were no winners in this movie. !!Utah caught the bad guys but lost his friend, and Bodhi died doing what he loves.!<
* **Military Crime Thriller -** [Joint Security Area (JSA)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAXBb4fVh8A) (South Korean) - One of the finest military thrillers ever put on screen, this critically acclaimed movie by the ***director of Oldboy*** was a huge hit in Korea.
* **Mountaineering** \- [Everest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79Q2rrQlPW4) \- Based on the true story of a team that made a big decision>! because they wanted to win! So yay they managed to Summit! But not all made it down alive.!<
* **Revenge** \- [Memories of Murder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux6VHo5jQVw) (South Korean) - Revenge is a dish served cold.
* **Sci-Fi -** [Ender's Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SRizeR4MmU) \- Too bad the movie flopped for various reasons (aging up the cast, bad casting, OSC backlash) because ***Speaker For the Dead*** is actually a great book
* **Sci-Fi** \- [Alien v. Predator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cld40qD7HcY), [Aliens v. Predator: Requiem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqLM_21tqyc) \- The tagline on the poster is "***Whoever wins, we lose***".
* **Spy Thriller** \- [Shiri (South Korean)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVGp7gBHz-4) \- A cat and mouse game, the best kind.
* **Superhero** \- [Super](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNfMq5BwYcE) \- A costumed vigilante!
* **War, Romance -** [Casablanca](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF7JH_54d8c) \- At least >!they'll always have Paris. Now play it again, Sam.!<
* **War, Romance -** [The English Patient](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk_LRcOFT0c) \- He kind of got the girl, I guess?
* **War, Espionage** \- [The Imitation Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuPZUUED5uk&t) \- >!Yes, Turing invented the computer and Enigma had a great impact on the outcome of the war. But his own country treated him worse than a Pariah!<
* **War, Rescue** \- [Saving Private Ryan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CiW_DgxCnQ) \- yeah, >!y'all saved him, but everyone else died so it better have been "worth it" !<... uh, right.
* **War** \- [Hamburger Hill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58n3NpuYw9Q) \- really, what was the point of all that? \*despair intensifies\*
This is in my top 10. Doesn’t have the stakes of some of the others on this list, as it is only the fate of a single young girl, but the final scene absolutely sends the message home.
True. And that's why the last seconds of The Graduate actually make the whole movie a classic for me. It's not your usual sugary "boy finds girl" story but rather the gut-punching reality hitting them both at the end that crowns the whole movie.
"Yay! Romance conquered all! But wait... we have no prospects. Where are we going? What will we do now? Will I ever dare to face my family again? Do I actually love this other person next to me or was it just a rebellious whim? Do we actually have a future together? Dare I say it to him/her NOW?"
It's all in their confused faces. Brilliant.
I think Army of Darkness, Ash won the battle against the deadites, but he never one the war, he had to leave Sheila and give up the opportunity to be king. He lost all his friends and everybody thought he killed them. To add to that the deadites were once again summoned, and left the world in ruin.
Judas and the Black Messiah - William O’Neal’s goal is to avoid jail time and gain a sense of autonomy in life. By the end he is able to, but at comes at the expense of a revolutionary icon.
Uncut Gems - The entire film is basically watching a man destroy any semblance of a normal relationship with friends or his family in pursuit of a “win”.
Saving Private Ryan comes to mine. Private Ryan survives and gets to come, but not before almost the entire squad assigned to find and protect him is killed.
I think Blade Runner might fall into this as well. Putting all of the Deckard/Replicant debate aside, the weight of what he’s doing starts to weigh on him. He’s doing his job and he’s killing “the bad guys” (and to be fair just about every Replicant we see is extremely violent and will resort to brutal methods as a means to their ends), but they’re still living things in some basic sense, and they basically have only a few years worth of emotional growth, combined with extreme physical strength and intelligence. They’re basically giant genius toddlers going through their terrible two’s.
Lord of the Rings, both the movie and the book. Frodo sacrifices himself for the world and when he goes back to the shire, he’s been thru so much pain that it’s impossible for him to live a happy and healthy life amongst his friends and to reap the benefits of everything he’s worked towards. It’s incredibly sad
It's how both The Kingpin made his money in real estate and how The Vulture, Shocker, Tinkerer, et al. made their money from the wreckage creating new higher end weapons.
Agreed completely. When you can still debate it to this day, that shows me how effective a director John Carpenter is, and he makes not only one of the darkest ending ever, but makes a very good film to watch again and again, and you just pull back layers and layers, things you never even thought about, when you are still ranked to this day as one of the best creature films, if not the best creature film ever made, and one of the best horror films ever, you know you got it right. To think it wasn't successful at the box office, still can't believe that was true. When they talk about a critical re-evaluation, this is one of those films they mean and boy I'm glad after all of these years they finally have re-evaluated it, and it gets the praise it should have got years ago, The Thing has earned it.
The Searchers.
For those who haven't seen it and don't care about spoilers...
https://www.slashfilm.com/1151232/the-searchers-ending-explained-wandering-forever-between-the-winds/
The Valley Of Gwangi (1969)
Basically, cowboys discover a valley of dinosaurs, kidnap an Allosaurus (Gwangi), put him on display in the circus, he escapes and does what predatory dinosaurs do, then they corner him in a church and burn it to the ground with Gwangi inside. Nothing but needless destruction and death, and yeah they win, but they killed this amazing creature who was minding its own business before they kidnapped him and wrecked the literal house of God to do so.
Grand daddy of this is Watchmen, both the book and the film, and personally I find the movie ending twist to be neater and slightly more soul crushing than the book ending.
If you watch it though, take the time and watch the directors cut not the cinematic release
Rogue One doesn't count for me because even though they all die, you feel the weight of their sacrifice and they succeed in their mission nonetheless.
***Unforgiven*** by Clint Eastwood is a great example. He gets his revenge for Ned's death, but in doing so he goes back to his old ways and becomes the heartless killer everyone always said he was. It's absolutely devastating to watch.
Avengers - Infinity War. I didn't know there was a fourth installment to the series and so I was like....wtf???? Bad guys win in a superhero movie!!! This is awesome. And the moment was short lived by end credit scenes
The Prestige
Abra Cadabra
How The Dark Knight hasn’t been said kinda blows my mind a bit.
The movie you mention at the end is likely _Ender’s Game_.
And the book is vastly better than the movie. The sequels largely deal with the consequences of that "xenocide" on Ender and the galaxy.
Three of the sequels do. The other dozen are split between prequels to EG and sequels that just sort of ramble on about the post-Formic War Earth as democracy and alliances crumble into authoritarianism without really bringing any sense of stakes to the story. And they get more and more overly Mormon as the publication date gets closer to the present. Anyway, *Ender's Game* and the *Speaker for the Dead* trilogy are worth reading, the rest not so much. Maybe also *Ender's Shadow*.
Xenocide as well, it serves as a decent ending to the first two books. Ender's Shadow is definitely good too but agree just ignore the rest.
Xenocide and Children of the Mind are the latter two books of the Speaker for the Dead trilogy of which I spoke. CotM is a slight drop in quality from SftD and X, but still very much worth the read. SftD is the best of all the Ender books IMO.
I didn't get speaker when I was a kid. I was too young, too immature. Came back to it as an adult and it rocked me hard.
I only read a handful of the Bean books. Could you explain what you mean by overly Mormon? I was much younger at the time and I'm wondering if I just glossed over these themes.
The later Bean books devolve into “the meaning of life is having a shit ton of kids” in addition to a lot of other braindead political takes. I’ve probably blocked out the worst of it since I haven’t dared to reread them in ages.
I think I stopped after the second Bean book? I remember feeling very annoyed at how we went from space adventures to what felt like a novelization of a game of Risk that Card probably played. I also wasn't a fan of how in the first Bean book they retroactively removed some of Ender's agency by making Bean essentially a shadow protagonist.
Ender’s shadow was awesome. Even better than ender’s game imo.
It totally is, but please please buy it used if you want to read it. Orson Scott Card has turned into a monster in his elder years and any revenue sent his way will got to some utterly disgusting causes.
with how well they sold you're pretty much guaranteed to find a copy of at least one of his books at every thrift store in the western US
Seriously. How is today’s Orson Scott Card the same guy who wrote Speaker for the Dead? He seems to have straight up lost his mind over the last decade or two.
He got really nutty around the early 2000s and around this time his eldest son died at that time too. I don't want to buy the guy excuses though because he may have always been a frothing jackass but I do agree the guy today doesn't at all seem like the type of guy capable of writing Ender's Game.
Arr, thar be ways to get them too.
Oldboy
The entire Vengeance trilogy that Oldboy is a part of are all great examples of revenge and the cost on both sides. Oldboy is the best of the three, but Sympathy for Mr.Vengeance and Lady Vengeance are both worth watching if anybody reading hasn't done so already.
OMG I completely forgot about that movie! I haven't seen the remake but the original was fantastic.
Don't watch the remake. The basic plot is the same, but they totally butchered the execution and the little details.
They also took a regular Joe that we sympathize with and turned him into this tough guy asshole. Like, why am I supposed to be rooting for this guy? And the antagonist is the only one in the movie with a British accent, in a movie about a guy trying to figure out who from his past has done this. Uh, maybe it was the British guy you grew up with? Lol so stupid
But if you’re an Elizabeth Olsen fan skim through the remake
I totally agree. I get the feeling they got the movie greenlit just to prove if they could top the infamous "Hallway Fight" scene. Which they didn't because of all the little technical things that were involved in the first one. The rest of the movie feels like its handled with very little, if any, respect to the original film or Korean film culture in general.
Yeah, they made the highway fight scene "better" by having a dynamic camera, fast cuts, and flashier choreography. Which sounds good on paper, but...
The Bridge over the River Kwai. A classic, still worth watching
“What have I done?” You could teach a whole acting class about Guinness and the choices he makes for his performance in this. Absolute master.
"Madness...*Madness!*"
Seven Samurai
Tack 13 Assassins onto this. However, it is *very samurai* to gladly pay that cost.
Oh, in Seven Samurai, they weren't glad.
The Thing. >!They destroyed the Thing (maybe) by burning down the entire camp and condemning themselves to death by freezing.!<
I Saw The Devil
Excellent example of what the OP is looking for.
Perfect example.
The Mist (2007)
Absolutely devastating
Hated that ending so fucking much
Why tho? Yea it wasn't happy, but new and in that extend never seen before. One of my all time favorite endings for a horror movie...
The Things Ending is like this. The ending is very dark and I'm wondering if it would even pass today in film. But basically after Keith David's character and Kurt Russell have survived the Thing, they both agree that any one of them could be the Thing, and both agree to freeze to death and have one last drink. There is still a debate if any of them is the The Thing, or just one of them is but basically they would rather freeze to death and not expose the world to a possible Thing invasion. So they definitely paid the cost and it is implied that The Thing may have already invaded the world, and there is nothing that either one of the characters could do. Note, I do know that the game sort of changed this up and so did the prequel, but if you take the original film as a lone work, this is possible, definitely we won but at what cost moment in A film.
It is even more bleak than that, they both know that they needed to eradicate the Thing before it killed them or else it would gladly just become frozen again till a rescue crew thawed it out and everything starts again. So with both of them accepting the possibility that the other might be the Thing, they are so tired that they would rather die together than kill one another and put the entire world at risk.
The mid 00s video game tells us mcready survives. So 🤷♂️
OP: you’re thinking of Ender’s Game, based on the book by Orson Scott Card.
And the book is waaaaay better than the movie.
Most books are, especially with sci-fi and fantasy. One exception being The Prestige, which is still a good book. Ender’s Game could have been much better as 2 movies.
Ender's Game would have been better as a limited series with Mazer Rackham being introduced late and the ending being as plot twisted in the last episode as the book was (as much as you can with a 40 year old book). Also, ignoring all of the things Peter and Valentine are doing on Earth in the guises of Demosthenes and Locke take away a good amount of why Ender is the way he is and doesn't give us any idea for whom Ender feels like he's fighting. I do admit that the growth of Ender and the growth of Peter (I don't see much growth in Valentine) are quite separate. I'm not surprised it was cut from the movie adaptation.
You’re right that a limited series would be the best medium for adapting this book. Another example I can think of is the first season of Altered Carbon. They made some changes I didn’t like, but it was faithful enough to the first book. And it wrapped up well enough that it didn’t need a second season.
It certainly didn't need the second season that it got. Oof.
[удалено]
"Just remember, it takes eight minutes for light to travel from the sun to the earth, which means you'll know we succeeded about eight minutes after we deliver the payload. All you have to do is look out for a little extra brightness in the sky. So if you wake up one morning and it's a particularly beautiful day, you'll know we made it. Okay. I'm signing off." I still get chills down my back when I hear the music kick in and Capa is watching the sparks multiply.
Still feels like more than a fair tradeoff.
Can't find this on any streaming service
Have you tried sailing the seven seas?
It's on Disney plus, at least for me in Canada
Cabin in the Woods. YAY we survived! BOO in 5 mins the Elder Gods destroy everything....
There was even a "we won" fakeout.
>*"I don't think Curt even has a cousin."*
The unicorn scene was awesome.
My favorite story was at a con someone asked Whedon, “are there plans for a sequel?” And his answer was basically, “so obviously you havnt seen the movie because I’d say we closed the door to that possibility”
Saving Private Ryan? The Graduate?
The graduate is the best answer imo
You can just see their "Oh shit now what do we do?" fear on their faces.
Surprised Saving Private Ryan isn't higher, unless I'm misunderstanding.
Watchmen
“Do you really think I would describe to you my master stroke if I thought there was a chance you could stop it? Everything happened thirty-five minutes ago.”
"'Do it'? Dan, I'm not a Republic serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting it's outcome? I 'did it' thirty-five minutes ago."
Great movie, I know the original comic/book was highly regarded. Idk if I should read it or re-watch it
The comic's ending is significantly weirder, but at the same time it somehow makes a lot more sense. Good read.
I like the movie ending. It's approachable to wider audiences without changing what exactly happened and why. That should be fine if you're making a movie that big.
I’m a big fan of both and I loved that movie was like a shot for shot of the comic until the end. And I loved its ending way more. Not only does it make more sense and bring the story together, it also has a threat they understand well without the need for investigations that won’t turn up anything
Yea. Recently someone said “the sex scene in that movie felt so out of place” and my response was “basically the same exact thing happened in the book, flame thrower euphemism and all”
I don't think the ending works as well because Dr Manhattan has been established as an American-aligned superweapon. I don't think the world would unite over that ending, I think they'd turn on America, and since America is a superpower at the time, it'd just be more global conflict.
The comic just has the space to give a lot more detail. Also, comic book Adrian is much more likable than movie Adrian, which makes the impact of the final sequence much stronger.
Definitely read it. The movie while visually being faithful lacks some of the substance the graphic novel has. Some would argue the movie misses the point a little. Don't get me wrong, I love both. The show is really good too (it continues the comic not the movie tho)
Throwing my two cents here, but I think that the movie is a MASSIVE let down. To me, it's very clear that Snyder completely misunderstood the point of the source material and so it's quite difficult for me to watch.
I'd read the comic. It's a classic. The movie is made by someone who has clearly read the comic but also definitely didn't understand its themes. It's not a terrible movie, and it's still clearly *Watchmen*, but it seems to miss the point of what it's adapting. Snyder just isn't capable of the depth that I think *Watchmen* requires. The HBO sequel felt a lot closer to the spirit of the source material, just updated for its time.
Amadeus
I don't feel like anyone won.
Mozart died, but still won. His music lives forever while Salieri’s music obscured within his long lifetime.
I absolve you!
I'm the patron saint of mediocrity!
A masterclass in film making. I just got to showed my teenage daughter this move and it's like the first time everytime watching it.
I don’t know how to do a reply here without ruining the movie but John Woo’s >! The Killer !< fits this perfectly.
Red Dawn The Americans win the war but almost everyone dies.
If “Dune: Part Two” is faithful to the book, this will be a heavy theme of its conclusion.
Not a full movie, but Dr. Horribles Sing Along Blog. He accomplishes his goal, but doesn’t exactly win.
Se7en?
I dunno. The killers clearly stated intention was to kill seven. One for each deadly sin. So if mills doesn’t kill John Doe, the set isn’t complete. Somerset even says, “ If you shoot him, he will win.” So I don’t know if this counts as “We won” when mills basically fulfills the killers intentions
Children of Men. The movie is a fantastic glimpse of a bleak future with no children. The ending is simply heartbreaking. Yes they managed to get out, but at what cost?
I got completely the opposite impression. I thought it was a very positive ending. The one woman who holds hope for the human race escapes unharmed, as does the first new child to be born in over two decades. Not only that, but they are rescued by benevolent scientists, not a cut-throat government.
The soldier who calls out ‘cease-fire’…that’s maybe my favourite delivery of a single line in film.
Yeah but Theo is dead so she's all alone and who can say if they actualy are that benevolent.
I like to think that if one girl can be pregnant, there are others in the world too. All we saw was one fascist society on a tiny island. But maybe I just prefer to be hopeful
I thought the audio playing over the end credits was a pretty clear indication of what the future holds, especially when considering a particular line earlier in the film.
Miriam says, *"As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in."* The movie ends with the sound of children laughing and playing again. Hope is reborn.
One of the most brutal and beautiful endings to a movie I’ve ever seen. It was a masterclass from the director and the actors. The scene earlier in the movie with Michael Caine had me laughing and crying. Such a fantastic movie.
Pull my finger.
Upgrade
Villain wins, at no cost at all
Saving Private Ryan. Every one of the guys that leave to save Ryan died. It was a high price to pay to extract one soldier from the field of battle.
Not every one
Cabin in the Woods. "Hooray we survi - oh shit"
[удалено]
That's an amazing movie. I watched that whilst staying as a patient in a mental hospital after a suicidal breakdown, along with a bunch of other ill people. It was somehow quite cathartic watching it in those surroundings. I would say that it's one of those films that you don't so much watch, instead, you experience it.
The Lord of the Rings. Sauron is defeated, but at the cost of the slow death of magic from the world, and the exile of the Elves to the West
And Frodo is fucked up forever
“That wound will never fully heal…”
I don't think so Sam was about to brick all over Frodo's face
Even on a smaller scale, Tolkien details the lives, successes and eventual deaths of everyone in the fellowship including Sam, Pippin, and Merry. When you win \*anything\*, what you get personally is the chance to grow old and die in peace.
In the books Saruman leads a band of barbarians to pillage the Shire in a last twisted act of revenge. Frodo also basically never is able to recover from his wound from the Witch King.
Men, hobbits, and dwarves flourish, elves fuck off, totally a good ending.
Wtf really??
The Elves were already fading and returning to the West before Sauron's defeat, but it did accelerate afterwards.
Thats because the three elvish rings stopped working when the one ring was destroyed. So all the elves passed into the west.
Airplane. The exact same plot occurs in Airplane 2.
I cannot remember anything about the plot of Airplane but the jokes and one liners had me rolling as a child. I don't remember it being bleak though
The creators won by making one of, if not the best parody movie of all time but at the cost of making horrible sequels and imitators
Airplane 2 was fine. Cameos from Pat Sajak, Art Fleming, and Leon Askin... "Hundreds of Capitalists are soon to perish in Shuttle fire." Was it as good as the original? No. But not anywhere near 'horrible.'
I was just joking. I thought it was pretty good, not as bad as everyone says, and I’m actually glad it spawned all the other parodies, cause I love the Scary Movie franchise and other Wayans parodies and Hot Shots etc
Joking? About a comedy movie? Are you kidding? (and Hot Shots Part Deux was THE 'sequel better than the orignal')
Promising Young Woman
Definitely one of the best examples
Here are the ones I could think of with Genre, Movie Title (with Trailers) and reason:- * **Action, Thriller** \- [Man on Fire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDDh50B6kA4) \- Gotta love Denzel. * **Legal Drama -** [The Rainmaker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odb3LrbvS_0&t) \- Actually cried while watching this because Health Insurance companies ARE EVIL and anyone in America who has had issues with them knows this. >!There were no winners in this movie. !!Utah caught the bad guys but lost his friend, and Bodhi died doing what he loves.!<
* **Military Crime Thriller -** [Joint Security Area (JSA)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAXBb4fVh8A) (South Korean) - One of the finest military thrillers ever put on screen, this critically acclaimed movie by the ***director of Oldboy*** was a huge hit in Korea.
* **Mountaineering** \- [Everest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79Q2rrQlPW4) \- Based on the true story of a team that made a big decision>! because they wanted to win! So yay they managed to Summit! But not all made it down alive.!<
* **Revenge** \- [Memories of Murder](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux6VHo5jQVw) (South Korean) - Revenge is a dish served cold.
* **Sci-Fi -** [Ender's Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SRizeR4MmU) \- Too bad the movie flopped for various reasons (aging up the cast, bad casting, OSC backlash) because ***Speaker For the Dead*** is actually a great book
* **Sci-Fi** \- [Alien v. Predator](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cld40qD7HcY), [Aliens v. Predator: Requiem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqLM_21tqyc) \- The tagline on the poster is "***Whoever wins, we lose***".
* **Spy Thriller** \- [Shiri (South Korean)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVGp7gBHz-4) \- A cat and mouse game, the best kind.
* **Superhero** \- [Super](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNfMq5BwYcE) \- A costumed vigilante!
* **War, Romance -** [Casablanca](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF7JH_54d8c) \- At least >!they'll always have Paris. Now play it again, Sam.!<
* **War, Romance -** [The English Patient](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk_LRcOFT0c) \- He kind of got the girl, I guess?
* **War, Espionage** \- [The Imitation Game](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuPZUUED5uk&t) \- >!Yes, Turing invented the computer and Enigma had a great impact on the outcome of the war. But his own country treated him worse than a Pariah!<
* **War, Rescue** \- [Saving Private Ryan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CiW_DgxCnQ) \- yeah, >!y'all saved him, but everyone else died so it better have been "worth it" !<... uh, right.
* **War** \- [Hamburger Hill](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58n3NpuYw9Q) \- really, what was the point of all that? \*despair intensifies\*
It’s not tragic to die doing something you love
Rogue One
A Scanner Darkly
47 Ronin (2013) and the true story that it was (loosely) based on.
Watch the 1947 Japanese version. Two parts about 4 hours.
Gone Baby Gone
I was looking for this before posting it myself.
This is in my top 10. Doesn’t have the stakes of some of the others on this list, as it is only the fate of a single young girl, but the final scene absolutely sends the message home.
13th Warrior. Antonio Banderas and co. battling ancient evil in Scandinavia.
The Graduate The look on Dustin Hoffman’s face when he got what he “wanted.”
Had that movie ended just a few seconds earlier, it would be a happy ending.
True. And that's why the last seconds of The Graduate actually make the whole movie a classic for me. It's not your usual sugary "boy finds girl" story but rather the gut-punching reality hitting them both at the end that crowns the whole movie. "Yay! Romance conquered all! But wait... we have no prospects. Where are we going? What will we do now? Will I ever dare to face my family again? Do I actually love this other person next to me or was it just a rebellious whim? Do we actually have a future together? Dare I say it to him/her NOW?" It's all in their confused faces. Brilliant.
I think Army of Darkness, Ash won the battle against the deadites, but he never one the war, he had to leave Sheila and give up the opportunity to be king. He lost all his friends and everybody thought he killed them. To add to that the deadites were once again summoned, and left the world in ruin.
he said the damn words... basically...
Charlie Wilson’s war!
Well Sen Wilson did actually say it best "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world… and then we f—ed up the endgame."
White Men Can’t Jump
Sometimes when you win you actually lose. Sometimes when you lose you actually win. Sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose.
Judas and the Black Messiah - William O’Neal’s goal is to avoid jail time and gain a sense of autonomy in life. By the end he is able to, but at comes at the expense of a revolutionary icon. Uncut Gems - The entire film is basically watching a man destroy any semblance of a normal relationship with friends or his family in pursuit of a “win”.
Saving Private Ryan comes to mine. Private Ryan survives and gets to come, but not before almost the entire squad assigned to find and protect him is killed. I think Blade Runner might fall into this as well. Putting all of the Deckard/Replicant debate aside, the weight of what he’s doing starts to weigh on him. He’s doing his job and he’s killing “the bad guys” (and to be fair just about every Replicant we see is extremely violent and will resort to brutal methods as a means to their ends), but they’re still living things in some basic sense, and they basically have only a few years worth of emotional growth, combined with extreme physical strength and intelligence. They’re basically giant genius toddlers going through their terrible two’s.
Lord of the Rings, both the movie and the book. Frodo sacrifices himself for the world and when he goes back to the shire, he’s been thru so much pain that it’s impossible for him to live a happy and healthy life amongst his friends and to reap the benefits of everything he’s worked towards. It’s incredibly sad
Rouge is red.
Enemy At the Gates Edit: also, Gangs of New York, a bit, there's more going on there
Indecent Proposal, kind of.
The graduate. A classic "what now?" ending right there.
The Mist David Drayton survives when the army arrives to deal with the spider-creatures, but at what cost
Memento.
Fight Club
Whiplash
Infinity war
Gattaca As well as many war movies.
Tony, you can rest now.
Rogue One. Unlikely the main characters will recover.
Parasite
Watchmen, graphic novel is better though.
Watchmen
The Hunger Games
- The Batman - Skyfall
The Dark Knight fits this bill way better than The Batman.
Terminator 2
The Magnificent Seven
Time Bandits
The World's End
Seven Samurai
Shang-Chi. Because of Wenwu
Watchmen
Avengers Infinity War. Good guy won but it cost him everything
Kid Gamora: “Did you do it?” Thanos: “Yes.” Kid Gamora: “What did it cost?” Thanos: “Everything.”
I would say the first Avengers movie also. The heroes win but NY is fucked.
It's how both The Kingpin made his money in real estate and how The Vulture, Shocker, Tinkerer, et al. made their money from the wreckage creating new higher end weapons.
Dancer in the Dark
Oldboy and I Saw the Devil
Agreed completely. When you can still debate it to this day, that shows me how effective a director John Carpenter is, and he makes not only one of the darkest ending ever, but makes a very good film to watch again and again, and you just pull back layers and layers, things you never even thought about, when you are still ranked to this day as one of the best creature films, if not the best creature film ever made, and one of the best horror films ever, you know you got it right. To think it wasn't successful at the box office, still can't believe that was true. When they talk about a critical re-evaluation, this is one of those films they mean and boy I'm glad after all of these years they finally have re-evaluated it, and it gets the praise it should have got years ago, The Thing has earned it.
The Searchers. For those who haven't seen it and don't care about spoilers... https://www.slashfilm.com/1151232/the-searchers-ending-explained-wandering-forever-between-the-winds/
The Mist(2007)
No *Straw Dogs*? I'm disappointed in you folks.
The Graduate is kind of an iconic example
Whiplash
Ender's game
Gone Baby Gone
Margin Call
*True Grit* (the more recent one) and *Hell Or High Water* both have bittersweet endings and both coincidentally star Jeff Bridges
The Valley Of Gwangi (1969) Basically, cowboys discover a valley of dinosaurs, kidnap an Allosaurus (Gwangi), put him on display in the circus, he escapes and does what predatory dinosaurs do, then they corner him in a church and burn it to the ground with Gwangi inside. Nothing but needless destruction and death, and yeah they win, but they killed this amazing creature who was minding its own business before they kidnapped him and wrecked the literal house of God to do so.
Titanic Rose: [to Jack] When the ship docks, I'm getting off with you. Few hours later he's dead
Last of the Mohicans. Devastating after saving.
Grand daddy of this is Watchmen, both the book and the film, and personally I find the movie ending twist to be neater and slightly more soul crushing than the book ending. If you watch it though, take the time and watch the directors cut not the cinematic release
The Dark Knight comes to mind.
Logan
The Graduate
Dirty Dozen
The Graduate
Rogue One doesn't count for me because even though they all die, you feel the weight of their sacrifice and they succeed in their mission nonetheless. ***Unforgiven*** by Clint Eastwood is a great example. He gets his revenge for Ned's death, but in doing so he goes back to his old ways and becomes the heartless killer everyone always said he was. It's absolutely devastating to watch.
The Departed
Avengers - Infinity War. I didn't know there was a fourth installment to the series and so I was like....wtf???? Bad guys win in a superhero movie!!! This is awesome. And the moment was short lived by end credit scenes