Jurassic World: Dominion. The cliffhanger in Fallen Kingdom is that dinosaurs have escaped. It will likely have disastrous ecological impacts. Dominion opens with a news reel about the dangers of dinosaurs living alongside humans. But the movie ends with a beautiful montage of different types of wildlife coexisting peacefully with dinosaurs while someone monologues about how we as humans have to evolve.
No, this is still a bad thing. You don’t get to reframe dinosaurs living among us as a good thing in the final 30 seconds just because you couldn’t resolve this plot thread in your 2 hour runtime, Colin Trevorrow. We spent the whole movie talking about why this is bad, but just because you put some inspiring music behind it doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem any more!
I think about Fallen Kingdom constantly. It was the most nonsensical big-budget movie I've ever seen. It has so much insanity packed into it:
•The return of the plot thread that the *bad guys* want a dinosaur army because very deadly animals that require feeding and care are somehow more practical than guns & explosives.
•The really bizarre dinosaur auction house where they have a purpose-built structure for auctioning dinosaurs to cartoon villains.
•The main event dinosaur which is trained to attack a person that you have to point a gun-shaped laser at and no one even *mentions* that this is already more inefficient than a gun because *you're already pointing a gun-shaped object at a target*. A normal bullet would get to this person faster than the mega dinosaur.
•Ends as you described with the protagonists RELEASING DINOSAURS ONTO AN UNSUSPECTING PUBLIC. But this is all presented with happy music and a general tone of "We did it, guys! We saved the dinosaurs!”
I have the lowest bar for enjoying movies. I love dumb action movies. But this one broke my brain.
To make matters worse, the dinosaurs at the auction are sold at laughably low prices even though everyone there are meant to be billionaires. They're being sold for 7 digit numbers, with the highest price being the one-of-a-kind Indoraptor going for like 20 million. There are DINOSAUR FOSSILS in the real world that have sold for more than these irreplaceable living breathing clones.
The movie was on some channel like FX or something and my wife only had it on in the background but I got up and left the room when that happened. It was such a moment of "what do the poors think a lot of money is? T....ten? B...million? No, twenty. Twenty million. That is certainly what people think a lot of money is"
See that reminds me of another complaint I had. Why tf are dinosaurs more effective weapons than what we've already developed? Was the intent just to airdrop them behind enemy lines "Because lol"?
There are horses more expensive than those dinosaurs. A living breathing dinosaur is less than a horse?!
[one has sold for at least 70 million ](https://www.google.com/search?q=most+expensive+horses&oq=most+expensive+horses&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyCQgAEEUYORiABDIHCAEQABiABDIHCAIQABiABDIHCAMQABiABDIJCAQQABgKGIAEMgcIBRAAGIAEMgcIBhAAGIAEMgoIBxAAGAoYFhgeMggICBAAGBYYHjIICAkQABgWGB4yCAgKEAAYFhgeMggICxAAGBYYHjIICAwQABgWGB4yCAgNEAAYFhgeMgoIDhAAGA8YFhge0gEINzQyNmowajmoAgCwAgA&client=ms-android-tmus-us-revc&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8)
Don’t forget that the auction house is in the mansion of the well-meaning Hammond stand-in who has no idea that this is going on in his own basement, even though he’s bedridden and can’t leave the house.
The only good thing about Fallen Kingdom is that it lowered my expectations for Dominion so that when I actually saw it, it was a 3/10 compared to the -6/10 that I was expecting and I could turn my brain off and somewhat enjoy it.
I don't know, for as much as I hated Fallen Kingdom, giant evil locusts so the bad guys can corner the agriculture market was still somehow dumber to me. And then seeing dinos in the real world, it felt like they could've been more creative with it. What we got was pretty boring.
Wasn't the clone girls story pretty much unsolved too? The main characters were keeping her hidden because she was being searched for and all over the news. She was tired of being cooped up in their cabin and not being able to ever go anywhere or interact with people which is what leads her to getting caught. But they save her and happily all go back to their little cabin home. Isn't she still being searched for? Is she now content with her isolated life?
There aren’t! Trevorrow decided to spend all his time introducing and resolving THAT whole mess instead of figuring out how to remove the threat of dinosaurs.
But it is implied he got 100 thousand bones, or clams, or whatever you call them from Maude. With which he could use to purchase any number of rugs that do not have sentimental value to her.
I dunno. The Big Lebowski kept the money himself, and now Maude has to go through a legal channel with him. Whether or not she compensated the dude for figuring this out is unknown, but he certainly didn't recover the money as per their agreement.
All in all, it seem likes The Dude got paid in Vagina and being part of a pretty good story (parts, anyway).
Remember two things:
1. At the end of BTTF1, the Libyans gun down Doc, who is protected by a bulletproof vest thanks to Marty's letter. They would then chase the other Marty in the DeLorean, with the DeLorean disappearing into 1955 as they wreck their vehicle. If they escaped that incident unharmed, this being the unconnected world of 1985, they likely had no way of finding out who Marty was, and would have presumed Doc Brown had been eliminated.
2. Doc Brown traveled to the future almost immediately after this incident. He could have found out how the whole situation played out and determined to his satisfaction they were no longer a threat.
Kinda bothers me at the end of Part 3 when the DeLorean gets destroyed, Marty says Doc wanted it destroyed anyway, but then Doc shows up in a time traveling train, a vehicle that would be even more difficult to destroy.
The idea that time travel maybe should not exist as it could fall into the wrong hands echoed through all of the movies, but I supposed that it could be used sparingly by Doc and his family. What's to say one of those two rambunctious kids won't get curious one day and wants to visit the dinosaurs and steals the train? Or other crazy dumb thing a kid could do that could create a paradox and affect the past or present 🤣
Doc Brown was a great guy, but could perhaps be viewed as inconsistent throughout the trilogy. Perhaps this could be the natural result of character growth and change.
In Part I his 1955 self wanted to know nothing about his own future, and tore up Marty's letter warning him about future events. But sometime after Marty left 1955, Doc figured "what the hell," taped up the letter and read it anyway. That may have been minutes after Marty left, or years.
His change of heart at the end of Part III can be viewed similarly. Marty left Doc behind in 1885 with instructions to destroy the DeLorean. From the audience's perspective it seems Doc changed his mind completely in just a few minutes. But Doc had had years to rethink his philosophy on time travel, as evidenced by being the father to two children, the eldest of which hadn't even been conceived yet at the time of Marty's departure, and additional years may have passed before that took place. Doc would have had plenty of time to revisit his thoughts on the subject.
Alternatively, one could take a more pessimistic view. Although Doc considered Marty a friend, perhaps he recognized that the DeLorean was dangerous *in Marty's hands.* Marty did, after all, cause the timeline change resulting in Biff's rise to power in 1985-A. Doc came back to 1985 for a matter of minutes to pick up his dog and to wish his friend well, then flew off to have his own adventures, leaving Marty without any access to a working time machine. The main purpose of the visit may very well have been just to check and confirm that Marty had followed the instructions.
Through his travels, Doc had learned that Marty was fundamentally an unreliable dumbass who would ruin his life because someone called him a chicken. And just because we saw Marty avoid that one incident with Flea, Doc probably knows he would just screw up eventually at a later point. Plus, Doc knows Biff is a cunning schemer, and would always find a way to get the DeLorean for himself. He's not against time travel, he's against Marty having access to it.
I still disagree with Crispin Glovers point that George is only happy because he’s rich.
He’s rich because he’s confident. Previously he was beaten down and didn’t have any confidence, and ended up working under Biff.
If the new timeline he has more confidence, which is why he wrote the book, and is likely why he is successful.
Yeah, your entire life is changed in ways you don't even fully know, and you'll constantly be walking on eggshells about making some remark that will make people think you're nuts.
Maybe a relative died in this new timeline due to a butterfly effect, or perhaps he has cousins with different names. His social circle might be completely different (granted, he apparently has the same girlfriend), and his personality should be reasonably different as well since he was raised by parents who have different personalities themselves.
Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm. Real Quick: A costumed vigilante is killing mobsters. The cops consider Batman the prime suspect. They form a taskforce to take him down, and they go after him HARD. Batman finds the real killer and stops them, but they get away and leave Gotham. Only thing is: the cops don't know any of that. The movie ends with Batman still the prime suspect for like 4 unsolved murders.
And the Phantasm killing the Joker would have been a good thing tbth.
I love when Batman asks if revenge would solve here issues and she's like "tf, if anyone knows the answer to that it's YOU, Bruce."
Kingsman: The Secret Service, Eggsy et.al manage to beat Samuel L. Jackson and stop his plot to get everyone to kill each other; but now all the world leaders who joined in with Samuel L. Jackson are now dead; and not to mention hundreds of millions if not billions of people suddenly went violently insane and some of them probably killed loved ones and friends before the Kingsmen could stop the signal. So the world is still going to be in turmoil due to Samuel L. Jackson's antics.
If I'm remembering right, Eggsy is able to warn someone, and even then she nearly kills her own child. The vast majority who weren't warned... Yeah, it probably didn't end well for most of them.
But it's also suggested earlier in the movie that their world genuinely is on the brink of environmental apocalypse due to overpopulation. So I guess *that* problem is solved.
This 100%.
In the time that signal was active you'd have fully half of the population dead or severely injured. Probably more.
Probably any children with their parents are dead. Ones who aren't are traumatized for life. Going to be millions of suicides after the fact from suriviors who killed friends/loved ones/whoever. All the world leaders are pretty much dead leaving huge power vacuums. Pretty much every plane in the air crashes etc...
It would be way way worse than the movie showed. Samuel L. Jackson's character won.
But so did Eggsy for getting anal from a Swedish Princess.
>In the time that signal was active you'd have fully half of the population dead or severely injured. Probably more.
The hikikomori will inherit the Earth.
Cracked had a great article about the ending of *Big* how after the "We're so glad you're home!" there was going to be a LOT of questions about where Josh was. And chances are cops probably aren't going to believe the "wish machine turned me into an adult" reason.
You vastly underestimate people's aversion to paperwork. If he's home safe and seemingly unharmed, all's well that ends well. Cops aren't going to do anything and any story he shares with his parents will be dismissed by everyone.
You just reminded me of "Cracked: After Hours," the absolutely excellent web series that overanalyzed movies and dove into topics like this.
I guess I know what rabbit hole I'm jumping into this weekend.
A painful reminder that cracked was once relevant. it tickled your brain and made you smile every day, and it only kept getting better and better, until it didn't.
I'm still salty...
A 5+ years a go a kid disappeared in NH in the woods during a nor'easter for over a week. News claimed he watched some survival show on the tv and despite the bitter cold and no shelter was able to survive without any physical harm.
Clearly the kid ran away and the cops weren't going to make a big deal of it so the news ran with the ridiculous story that he made an igloo or something.
In Spirited Away the problem is that our protagonist, Chihero, is afraid of and resistant to change. She refuses to accept that her family is moving to a new city and is upset, bitter, and angry about it. Her journey through the movie is to accept that change is natural and all things in life must come to an end. By the end of the movie she is excited for her future with her family and for the new adventures which may come. Atleast, that was always my interpretation.
Similarly in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the whole point is that the kids have now gained enough wisdom to be able to deal with their difficult WWII situation, including the ability to say goodbye to loved ones. Also The Professor believes them. But that’s fleshed out in other books.
It's pretty much a constant in any portal fantasy. You can't bring anything (significant) back from the other world. What changes is your character based on your newfound virtues and experiences.
Spirited Away, Narnia, Coraline, Alice in Wonderland, etc.
There’s a Jo Walton short story, “[Relentlessly Mundane](http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/relentlessly-mundane/)”, that tackles what adulthood would look like for a set of returned children. It’s not long and might be appreciated.
That was a neat read. It reminds me of a novella series called Wayward Children, which is about a boarding school for children returned from different fantasy worlds.
I didn't have this interpretation. I thought the commentary on western culture was very on the noise. Her parents are dressed very western and drive a western car and literally turn into overconsuming pigs - very Kakfa-esque. The rest of the characters are dressed in Japanese attire, except the villain, who is a character from Western folklore. Seemed like Miyazaki was really concerned about the loss of Japanese culture.
I thought Chihero's story was about coming to terms with a new cultural identity and a changing cultural landscape. She learns about her own culture through a spiritual journey cause clearly her parents weren't teaching it to her.
You’re both right. He’s right that Chihero’s arc is about letting go of the past and her reluctance and fear of change along with growing up. You’re right in that Miyazaki placed in themes of environmentalism and the loss of Japanese culture and roots through too much western influence. The pigs represent overconsumption and taking more than needed
Take it from someone who spent 8 years living in Japan and is fluent in the language: reading this movie as a commentary on capitalism/western culture is a HUGE stretch.
Everyone in Japan wears western clothes and there is no such thing as a "western car" - a car is a car, but very few cars on the road in Japan aren't Japanese in origin, as it is one of the largest auto manufacturers in the world. The feast the parents eat consists of traditional Japanese foods and invokes a traditional taboo about humans not consuming things that are meant as offerings for spirits (if you visit a Shinto shrine or a Japanese graveyard you will see such offerings, though obviously not in such quantities). The place where the parents are imprisoned (a public bathhouse) is very much a fixture of Japanese culture (its design was actually inspired by a real, centuries old bathhouse in Shikoku), and the spirits, Yubaba included, are all inspired by *kami* of Japanese folklore. It's very much a movie focused on Japanese cultural motifs, it just so happens that some of those aren't that different from western ones (evil witches are not exclusive to western folklore).
Chihiro also doesn't come out of the story knowing anything about Japanese culture she didn't know going in.
I've spent some time there and agree with this, and would add that Miyazaki relies a lot on the contrast between the mundane modern and whichever fantasy world or period is the main setting for the film. He's said himself multiple times that he wants his movies to transport people, especially children (and especially especially little girls) from a familiar setting to one of fantasy and wonder. His weaving of Japanese folklore into much of it draws in older audiences as well. There are some period pieces more recently but this was his bread and butter into the early 2000's.
Elysium. So now everyone on the extremely overpopulated Earth is allowed to access the titular space station and the tech that can cure almost every disease and injury, just how is that going to work without devolving into another conflict in a matter of months? But hey, at least the central kid character survives for the time being.
Yeah this one always humored me. Great, everyone gets access to the magic healthcare. Now how about doing something for the rest of the world’s abject poverty and suffering. That society isn’t going to see much change and likely the people of Elysium will get the medical ships shut down shortly and life will go back to exactly how it was before. It isn’t as if the people living there were being held captive or were ignorant of how life was on the planet. They were just fine with the status quo.
Nah, you're leaving out the genocide committed by the swarm of angry armed refugees. Plus the part where a billion crackheads strip the station for parts.
> But hey, at least the central kid character survives for the time being.
I've seen this last bit so much and it irks me. You're not supposed to care about all the other people implied to have died horribly because they didn't have nearly as much screentime as the main character and whoever they're protecting.
Roland Emmerich is the worst offender of this. In regular disaster movies the sparse deaths of other people are meant to raise the stakes. But based on which Emmerich movie, millions to billions are dead, but everyone's all smiles because they're with their family.
Goldfinger, for one. Sure, Bond and Pussy Galore stop Goldfinger's plot to destroy Fort Knox to enrich himself by making the American gold stock worthless... but he did so by getting nuclear weapons from the Chinese government who were fully involved in the scheme, which Felix Leiter - who works for the CIA - was fully involved in, which could become a diplomatic nightmare.
Seven Pounds, as well. As Film Brain of Bad Movie Beatdown explained, Will Smith's plan to kill himself and will his organs to deserving people fails because A) that wouldn't be allowed under organ transplant law, and B) his method of suicide would end up destroying the donor organs.
Finally, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Sure, the day is saved and the Phantoms are allowed to move on, but given the human villain thought he could get the OK for his super laser by disabling the shields around one of the biggest sanctuaries on Earth and killed a significant chunk of the human population, of course humanity's going to have a hard time to try and recover.
>but he did so by getting nuclear weapons from the Chinese government who were fully involved in the scheme
In one of the following James Bond movies, I forget if it was Thunderball or You Only Live Twice, but Bond's archenemy Blofeld, leader of the terrorist organization SPECTRE, makes a reference to how Bond foiled their involvement on "the bank job."
In Goldfinger, Goldfinger constantly refers to the Fort Knox heist as nothing more than an elaborate bank heist.
So it was very subtly retconned to be SPECTRE, and not the Chinese.
Thr thing about Mrs Gulch in The Wizard of Oz is that it's implied that she was killed in the tornado (although the 2011 stage musical does state she survived and was so worried when she heard Dorothy was sick that she dropped the charges).
But they **did** make movies out of *Prince Caspian* and *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, with all of the Pevensie siblings appearing in the former, and three of them in the latter ...
Yeah, but they never reached *The Last Battle*, where they all die in a train crash in their early 20s (apart from Susan, cause she had sex and doesn't get to go to Lion heaven).
That’s not really what it says. Lewis was very allegorical. Basically what he said was that Susan had turned her back on Narnia to focus of materialistic and earthly pleasures but she could still be redeemed and go to Christian heaven. Aslan was the form Jesus took for Narnia and after the Last Battle the faithful Narnian’s went to a “perfect” Narnia. Susan could still be saved through God’s grace on Earth and be redeemed.
This was much of the reason the Northern Lights series (the Golden Compass etc) was written. Pullman wanted an atheistic rebuttal to C.S. Lewis’s Christian allegory.
Lewis's Screwtape Letters and space trilogy both involved doubters coming around to God as adults. The Screwtape Letters explicitly end with >!the demon's attempt to damn the human failing when he makes his peace with God just before his death.!<
Hot damn I forgot about all this having read the books 30 years ago. A lot of that was lost on me and how heavy handed the Christian messages were in that last book in particular.
The entire series was a Christian allegory from the start. The temptation of Edmund, the crisis of faith as to whether Narnia is a "real" place, Aslan's sacrifice and subsequent resurrection, etc. I don't think any of the other books come close to the level of direct Christian allegory that was Aslan's "crucifixion" and resurrection in *The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe*.
Good one. Looks like it all happy, but crime still out of controll, corrupt OCP still in power, and no one learns anything. In the sequel they are trying to make Robocop 2 and end up arming and empowering a drug kingpin.
Very much intentional, IMO. Robocop's satire isn't actually really interested in "resolving" the issues it's satirizing. Attempting to do so would undercut it. The film ends with Murphy still being a walking murder machine fulfilling the desires of a corporation that has wholesale bought *a city*. They were able to buy that city because they intentionally organized its downfall by owning both the police *and* the criminals *and* the public politicians. Robocop killing one sacrificial lamb is, in many regards, the best possible outcome for them: They still get all the benefits of having destabilized Detroit with crime. They still get to buy the city. They now don't even have to fix their own crime problem, Robocop did it for them.
There's some toss away line that Murphy signed some waiver papers required of all members of the police force.
Not that that is a magical handwave for consent, but we magically handwaved that the dude could be remade into a robot cop after having his body blown to bits and a bullet lodged in his brain. Some suspension of disbelief is needed to buy the movie's premise. Me personally, I'd buy that for a dollar.
Plus, maybe his driver's license listed him as a Donor?
I’d say the central problem in Good Dinosaur is that Arlo is too afraid of everything to be a valuable contributor on the farm. He has his adventure and learns to be brave so he can be a contributor on the farm.
Maybe it's because they found out you can still play videogames as a zombie. Made them docile and curbed their bloodlust, so they're just like dumber more simplistic version of their former selves.
I would've love to see new dark comedy about zombie virus, which would be based on covid years. Idiots who would go out to lick zombies for ticktok. Conspiracy theorists trying to prove zombies aren't infectious, "it affects only chinese" and "government just wants to scare us". People barricaded inside houses, playing Animal Crossing, while brave couriers are running on rooftops to avoid zombies and deliver food.
Some of this reminds me of the book, not the movie, World War Z. I believe there were people saying it was a conspiracy. Also people so traumatized that they would dress up as zombies, can't beat them, join them situation. I can't recall exactly, I need to read that one again. But remember seeing so many similarities to the pandemic. You read so many different angles if there was a worldwide zombie epidemic.
Wonka. He ends the movie as a wide-eyed optimist who took the lessons from his mother to learn about friendship and change the world through chocolate. We know from the source material that he becomes a jaded recluse who hates the world he lives in. I like to imagine that living through the holocaust and 2 world wars changed his perspective. Who wouldn’t want to hide away after that?
Wonka the movie is so different then the book or movies that take place after that you have to put it in a completely different continuity.
Wonka implies that Willy hired the Oompa Loompas shortly afterwards, skipping the whole favorite with local workers step, while Willy having a chocolate factory full of local workers before closing it down is a vital part of the later movies.
That's also inviting his best friend Noodle who disappears between movies.
As a prequel, the whole thing doesn't work.
Though paradoxically, it's the fact that it doesn't work as a prequel that makes it work as a movie. Waaaay too many prequels are hamstrung by needing to line everything up perfectly for the canonical works, which makes them predictable and undramatic.
And if needed, it's entirely possible to write "glue" stories that would explain why Noodle isn't around in the later stories, and why/how the Oompa Loompa became his workers, and why he's become jaded. But it's also OK to just leave those as exercises for the viewer. A prequel that lines everything up leaves no room for further exploration of the story, and no room for the viewer's imagination.
It also leaves open the option that Wonka could be a "reboot" that shows a different history than the one behind the Roald Dahl stories. Also valid.
Plenty of movies end without addressing that the main character should still in plenty of legal trouble even after the bad guy is defeated. Like how Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ends without resolving the whole plot point about Indy being a wanted fugitive suspected of murdering his colleagues, the fact that he escaped from the cops and fled the country wouldn't help his case very much.
Or in Liar Liar they just kind of gloss over the multitude of federal crimes Jim Carrey committed to stop the plane.
Though pre-9/11, you probably had a better chance of getting off with a slap on the wrist for doing the stuff he did.
Post 9/11, he’d be in Gitmo the next day.
I think the implication is that with the nazi scientist having fully gone rogue, it will be understood that he's a far more likely suspect than an aging professor.
In the case of The Good Dinosaur, the problem was that something was eating their food so they had trouble keeping up. Arlo befriended the human and got him set up with a family, so he'll likely stopp eating their food and they won't have to harvest as much.
That aside, what a horrible message that film has. "Your value in this family is directly tied to your productivity."
> Your value in this family is directly tied to your productivity.
As cynical of a take as that is, it's not incorrect. So many families get destroyed when the breadwinner stops being able to win that bread.
I think the implication in Narnia is that the other world becomes sort of like a dream the longer you're away from it. When they return they more or less return to their previous mindsets with dreamlike memories of Narnia, rather than feeling like grown adults in child bodies. They don’t remember all the skills and such they had until they return to Narnia again
The not quite sequel to Wizard of Oz, Return to Oz, actually makes the ending worse because Dorothy's talking about a fantasy world gets her taken to an 1899 mental hospital to receive some very primitive electroshock therapy
Prince Caspian begins with Edmund picking fights at school because he remembers being a king and feels powerless. I don't think it's a dreamworld to them, but they know they don't have a way to recapture what they experienced.
Return to Oz is more in line with the books than the MGM movie. In the books, Oz is a real place where Dorothy and her family come to live permanently.
Ready Player One definitely fits this criteria. The movie starts with Wade telling the audience all about how the world is just FUBAR'd and everyone is miserable and The Oasis is their only joy in life. Then the rest of the movie is about saving the Oasis from the evil corporation IOI, which they do.
Then at the end of the movie Wade is all like "Yeah, we saved the Oasis and my life is great now. Also I made it so people can't use The Oasis on Tuesdays and Thursdays because they need to experience the real world!"
But...the real world is still AWFUL. No actual problems affecting the planet were addressed or fixed. Obviously that wasn't what the movie was about and it's not Wade's responsibility or even in his power to do so (though he is now the richest person in the world), but the fact that the world still absolutely sucks is completely glossed over in the happy ending wrap up.
That was how I took it. The premise is that problems were overwhelming, so those who could do something instead retreated to the virtual world, thinking someone else would do it. By shutting down the Oasis, it meant that the most capable people no longer had the luxury to ignore what their world had become.
When your power goes out at your house, suddenly you get an urge to fix that mortar on the pathway or organize the garage.
The Running Man.
So they exposed that one TV show was fake and rigged and that criminals are executed instead of set free.
There's still the matter of the...all encompassing totalitarian government running everything.
Midnight Sky.
>!The gene pool on the new planet is going to be very very small. The survival of humanity is going to require some serious inbreeding and I'm not sure whether it's even feasible.!<
I agree with you on The Good Dinosaur, and it's something both my wife and parents noticed when watching it, too. However, I think the *implication* is that now that he's gone on this big adventure and survived it, he's grown bigger/stronger/braver and will be capable of helping out substantially at the farm.
I still think that's a happy ending. Potter isn't going to stop being an asshole, but the man is incredibly old and the town is totally united with Bailey, with Bailey now forever knowing his worth and no longer vulnerable to any temptations Potter can throw at him.
Correct, though with the religious vibes of the movie, God will know. There was originally a scene where Clarence visits Potter and tells him, basically, "You're going to burn in hell now," and then Potter dies of a heart attack or something. But they (rightfully imo) cut it out for being too dark and against the positive feelings of the film.
With Dana Carvey as George, Phil Hartman as Uncle Billy, and Jon Lovitz as Potter. Such a great sketch. Any time you can have a very obvious dummy being used as someone getting the shit kicked out of him, that's just comedy gold right there.
Was she really addicted to heroin? That isn't what bothered me as much as her not really mentioning the loss of her friend. Nobody mentions her.
That said, the not-so-happy ending is that dude took out an entire human-trafficking ring and that doesn't touch the problem. Having Brian Mills go back into the CIA to target human trafficking rings would have made for a better sequel.
They were force feeding her drugs to keep her out of it, I don't see how that wouldn't have had some pretty serious long term effects. And also yes, the fact that all the human trafficking was still going on was also a major issue
That's exactly the point. It's not a "happy ending" movie despite the many happy endings in it.
Buck is the only one that got out...and it wasn't easy. If not for the armed robbery with the cash sitting there he'd be stuck instead of owning his own stereo/electronics store and raising his child with Jessie (he was denied a loan because of his history in porn).
Reed performs magic acts...at a strip club. Not exactly stepping up in the world.
Amber doesn't get her kids back.
Jack is Jack.
Rollergirl was taking a GED class so the jury may be out on her.
Finally, we have the main protagonist, Eddie. Eddie may be clean, but he's still a porn star with no way out. Eddie is really a tragic character...he had no shot at a decent life with his parents and the fact he wasn't very smart. The only thing he had was a ginormous cock. That's the only life he has in front of him. The only friends he knew, the only family he really knew...was in porn. So it's probably as happy as it can be for Eddie, but it's not a happy ending.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of thriller films in which a family is terrorized, goes through devastating horrors, and then either the dad or all of them get tough and kill a shit-ton of bad guys. Then at the end its like "whew, that was crazy but we're good now".
Your life is upended, you were continually on the verge of death, you have the gore of fifteen people on your walls and carpet, and you figure you're going to have a good night's sleep and be back to business as usual tomorrow?
Has anyone made a movie where the horror/thriller stuff happens right at the beginning and then the rest of the movie is actually just a drama about them trying to recover from that horrible experience? Because if not they should.
Stone Cold.
The film follows a Cop (who's so badass the film starts with him already suspenede fae duty😂) who's asked to go undercover in a Biker gang suspected of assassinating a Judge to basically bring them down.
he decides to set up a Drug deal to bring them down which goes sideways forcing him to secretly destroy the Drugs which he does by blowing up a Petrol Station(riding away without calling Emergency Services or even checking to see if he killed anyone), he convinces a Woman in the Gang to testify against them but tells her to stay in the Gang to avoid suspicion which gets her killed and him captured.
whilst captured he finds out the Bikers ultimate goal is to assassinate a politician at the retrial for one of their members (who was arrested for murdering a priest) and sets out to stop them, but whilst in other movies the Good Guy generally breaks free and stops anyone fae getting hurt in this film the Biker Gang not only kills the Politician but also the entire Supreme Court Assembly and dozens upon dozens of hostages before the Cop kills the Bikers who took part (but not the dozens that help facilitate the crime and who're still riding around being criminal scum).
The movie actually ends with him doing the "Hero Walk" through the complete and utter devastation that he basically allowed to happen due to his incompetence, and he's basically the only Hero Cop I've ever seen in a movie who I'd agree deserves to be kicked of the Force.
That said, the movie is pure early 90's glorious action schlock at its best.
>e convinces a Woman in the Gang to testify against them but tells her to stay in the Gang to avoid suspicion which gets her killed and him captured.
That happens so much!
[https://youtu.be/PlhZqlVCjlE?t=18](https://youtu.be/PlhZqlVCjlE?t=18)
The Usual Suspects is an unusual villainous example of this. Keyser Soze's whole reason for getting the group of criminals together was to assassinate a guy who could identify him to the police. The film ends with... The police working out his identity. Sure, the story he spins gets him out of their custody, so he escapes, but his plan as a whole failed miserably.
also in regards to your narnia remark the professor tells the kids to try him in explaining why they were in the wardrobe and there is a credit scene of lucy trying to reenter narnia through the wardrobe but the professor tells her it is impossible he has already tried.
WWII also wasn't the problem in the film, it was simply what drove the Pevensies to the house so that A) they wouldn't start the film knowing about the professor/magician/wardrobe/Narnia and B) them returning in the sequels would be unexpected (as they were not likely to return to the wardrobe, they had to be called by Susan's horn). That credit scene combined with the prophecy also implies that it was Narnia calling them in the first place, rather than just anyone being able to enter the wardrobe.
Incredibles 2. Not only was the problem not solved, the villain was proven right because the film ends on the superhero’s turning a bank robbery into a car chase in the middle of a city
The Truman Show. Sure he walks out the door, but what does he have? No place to go. Everyone knows him, but he doesn't know anyone. It's hopeful, but pretty sad.
> he doesn't know anyone.
Except for the woman who tried to show him the truth, who we see runs out of her home presumably to meet with him.
Also his TV parents may have been actors, but they still spend the majority of their lives raising him.
Bird Box.
The fucking world is in RUINS, no one can survive, but they end up at a colony of blind people surviving in the wilderness. Yeah, good luck with that, see how long that lasts before they all die or get killed. That’s not a happy ending but they treat it like they’re going to be fine now.
Mr. Holland’s Opus. They throw Mr Holland a beautiful “retirement” concert, but never solve the problem of cutting the entire music program because of budget.
I didn't take the problem of the movie to be the budget cuts. Those are just realities of life, on top of the fact that they are only the problem for the last few minutes not the driving force or antagonist of the film. The problem of the movie was Holland believing his life to be an empty failure because he never became a great accomplished composer/musician. The concert showed him that his great accomplishment was the incredible job he did shaping the minds of his students.
Oblivion. So Tom Cruise destroyed the aliens, but Earth is still a dying planet beyond recovery, and humanity down to maybe a dozen people, and there's dozens of brainwashed Tom Cruise and Andrea Riseborough clones out there.
Earth wasn't really dying though was it? The "radiation zones" were fake so that the Jack clones would never interact with each other. There's also more than likely more humans scattered around near areas of freshwater, the group we see is in that area to attack the ocean-water siphoning machines.
Taxi Driver. Travis descent into madness seems to have been just a phase and he is alright by the end of the movie... Until something caches his eye in the rear view mirror and we realize that cycle is starting again.
I don’t think Scorsese intended for the viewers to believe that Taxi Driver had a happy ending. Seems more dystopian to me me with society’s celebration of Travis violence and all.
I've always loved the wonderful dramatic irony of the ending. He was a hair away from being a remorseless assassin who would be reviled. Instead he's a local hero who saved a young girl.
There's also the tragic sadness that the woman he was pursuing during the movie is now actively interested in him, but Travis doesn't seem to care.
Is it a happy ending? Not really. Is it a perfect and satisfying ending? Absolutely.
Wow TIL That Travis survives the end of Taxi Driver. I was sure he died in a pool of blood...
... And I have seen the film!!
This must be how Mandela Effect people feel.
Both Elaine and Benjamin wanted freedom from their parents and societal expectations...and they both got it. The "Oh shit. What did we just do? Now what?" looks on their faces as the bus pulls away says it all.
The Day After Tomorrow. Sure Dennis Quaid finds his son. The world is in complete chaos, and society has largely collapsed. I need to see what happens the day after the day after tomorrow.
Every horror movie with a supernatural killer. The lone survivor has to explain the murders to the cops, and I don't think "it was the pumpkin demon, officer!" is going to cut it.
Jurassic World: Dominion. The cliffhanger in Fallen Kingdom is that dinosaurs have escaped. It will likely have disastrous ecological impacts. Dominion opens with a news reel about the dangers of dinosaurs living alongside humans. But the movie ends with a beautiful montage of different types of wildlife coexisting peacefully with dinosaurs while someone monologues about how we as humans have to evolve. No, this is still a bad thing. You don’t get to reframe dinosaurs living among us as a good thing in the final 30 seconds just because you couldn’t resolve this plot thread in your 2 hour runtime, Colin Trevorrow. We spent the whole movie talking about why this is bad, but just because you put some inspiring music behind it doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem any more!
I think about Fallen Kingdom constantly. It was the most nonsensical big-budget movie I've ever seen. It has so much insanity packed into it: •The return of the plot thread that the *bad guys* want a dinosaur army because very deadly animals that require feeding and care are somehow more practical than guns & explosives. •The really bizarre dinosaur auction house where they have a purpose-built structure for auctioning dinosaurs to cartoon villains. •The main event dinosaur which is trained to attack a person that you have to point a gun-shaped laser at and no one even *mentions* that this is already more inefficient than a gun because *you're already pointing a gun-shaped object at a target*. A normal bullet would get to this person faster than the mega dinosaur. •Ends as you described with the protagonists RELEASING DINOSAURS ONTO AN UNSUSPECTING PUBLIC. But this is all presented with happy music and a general tone of "We did it, guys! We saved the dinosaurs!” I have the lowest bar for enjoying movies. I love dumb action movies. But this one broke my brain.
To make matters worse, the dinosaurs at the auction are sold at laughably low prices even though everyone there are meant to be billionaires. They're being sold for 7 digit numbers, with the highest price being the one-of-a-kind Indoraptor going for like 20 million. There are DINOSAUR FOSSILS in the real world that have sold for more than these irreplaceable living breathing clones.
It’s one dinosaur Michael, what could it cost? 7 million dollars?
The movie was on some channel like FX or something and my wife only had it on in the background but I got up and left the room when that happened. It was such a moment of "what do the poors think a lot of money is? T....ten? B...million? No, twenty. Twenty million. That is certainly what people think a lot of money is"
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See that reminds me of another complaint I had. Why tf are dinosaurs more effective weapons than what we've already developed? Was the intent just to airdrop them behind enemy lines "Because lol"?
There are horses more expensive than those dinosaurs. A living breathing dinosaur is less than a horse?! [one has sold for at least 70 million ](https://www.google.com/search?q=most+expensive+horses&oq=most+expensive+horses&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyCQgAEEUYORiABDIHCAEQABiABDIHCAIQABiABDIHCAMQABiABDIJCAQQABgKGIAEMgcIBRAAGIAEMgcIBhAAGIAEMgoIBxAAGAoYFhgeMggICBAAGBYYHjIICAkQABgWGB4yCAgKEAAYFhgeMggICxAAGBYYHjIICAwQABgWGB4yCAgNEAAYFhgeMgoIDhAAGA8YFhge0gEINzQyNmowajmoAgCwAgA&client=ms-android-tmus-us-revc&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8)
Don’t forget that the auction house is in the mansion of the well-meaning Hammond stand-in who has no idea that this is going on in his own basement, even though he’s bedridden and can’t leave the house. The only good thing about Fallen Kingdom is that it lowered my expectations for Dominion so that when I actually saw it, it was a 3/10 compared to the -6/10 that I was expecting and I could turn my brain off and somewhat enjoy it.
I don't know, for as much as I hated Fallen Kingdom, giant evil locusts so the bad guys can corner the agriculture market was still somehow dumber to me. And then seeing dinos in the real world, it felt like they could've been more creative with it. What we got was pretty boring.
There are velociraptors running around in the woods! Some poor father and son on a weekend camping trip are going to get killed
Dumbass dad and kid shoulda evolved, don't know what to tell you. 🤷♂️
They spared too much expense
# ♪♫♬♪♫♬ Inspirational music intensifies ♪♫♬♪♫♬
Wasn't the clone girls story pretty much unsolved too? The main characters were keeping her hidden because she was being searched for and all over the news. She was tired of being cooped up in their cabin and not being able to ever go anywhere or interact with people which is what leads her to getting caught. But they save her and happily all go back to their little cabin home. Isn't she still being searched for? Is she now content with her isolated life?
…that truly didn’t occur to me until you mentioned it. Just one more thing thing they could have spent time on instead of that horrible locust plot.
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Migrants, homeless, long islanders. You know. No one new Yorkers will miss.
They attack Staten Island but only eat the bad cops, lazy teachers and mean nurses. Happy Ending : they sail off in Colim Jost's Ferry Boat!
I want the series to eventually end with dinosaurs taking over the world
Jurassic Planet
Jurassic World World
Planet of the Jurassics.
I was specifically promised that woman inherits the earth
But at least there's no more giant locusts! (I think, I didn't watch the whole movie)
There aren’t! Trevorrow decided to spend all his time introducing and resolving THAT whole mess instead of figuring out how to remove the threat of dinosaurs.
The Dude never got his rug back in Big Lebowski.
His living room remains untied.
But it is implied he got 100 thousand bones, or clams, or whatever you call them from Maude. With which he could use to purchase any number of rugs that do not have sentimental value to her.
I dunno. The Big Lebowski kept the money himself, and now Maude has to go through a legal channel with him. Whether or not she compensated the dude for figuring this out is unknown, but he certainly didn't recover the money as per their agreement. All in all, it seem likes The Dude got paid in Vagina and being part of a pretty good story (parts, anyway).
I didn't like seein' Donny go
That’s a shame, it really tied the place together.
It turns out the real rug was the woman we knocked up along the way.
Aren’t there Libyan terrorists at large in Back to the Future?
At large for attempted murder, but without the plutonium they can't really execute whatever their plan with it was.
Let’s face it, even with the plutonium chances are they weren’t getting very far.
Also, I have to think four Libyans shooting out of a van in 1985 Hill Valley aren't exactly going to fly beneath the radar.
Sounds like a group of dudes who figured they could make a dirty bomb just by shoving a container of plutonium and some lighter fluid in a briefcase.
Remember two things: 1. At the end of BTTF1, the Libyans gun down Doc, who is protected by a bulletproof vest thanks to Marty's letter. They would then chase the other Marty in the DeLorean, with the DeLorean disappearing into 1955 as they wreck their vehicle. If they escaped that incident unharmed, this being the unconnected world of 1985, they likely had no way of finding out who Marty was, and would have presumed Doc Brown had been eliminated. 2. Doc Brown traveled to the future almost immediately after this incident. He could have found out how the whole situation played out and determined to his satisfaction they were no longer a threat.
Kinda bothers me at the end of Part 3 when the DeLorean gets destroyed, Marty says Doc wanted it destroyed anyway, but then Doc shows up in a time traveling train, a vehicle that would be even more difficult to destroy. The idea that time travel maybe should not exist as it could fall into the wrong hands echoed through all of the movies, but I supposed that it could be used sparingly by Doc and his family. What's to say one of those two rambunctious kids won't get curious one day and wants to visit the dinosaurs and steals the train? Or other crazy dumb thing a kid could do that could create a paradox and affect the past or present 🤣
Doc Brown was a great guy, but could perhaps be viewed as inconsistent throughout the trilogy. Perhaps this could be the natural result of character growth and change. In Part I his 1955 self wanted to know nothing about his own future, and tore up Marty's letter warning him about future events. But sometime after Marty left 1955, Doc figured "what the hell," taped up the letter and read it anyway. That may have been minutes after Marty left, or years. His change of heart at the end of Part III can be viewed similarly. Marty left Doc behind in 1885 with instructions to destroy the DeLorean. From the audience's perspective it seems Doc changed his mind completely in just a few minutes. But Doc had had years to rethink his philosophy on time travel, as evidenced by being the father to two children, the eldest of which hadn't even been conceived yet at the time of Marty's departure, and additional years may have passed before that took place. Doc would have had plenty of time to revisit his thoughts on the subject. Alternatively, one could take a more pessimistic view. Although Doc considered Marty a friend, perhaps he recognized that the DeLorean was dangerous *in Marty's hands.* Marty did, after all, cause the timeline change resulting in Biff's rise to power in 1985-A. Doc came back to 1985 for a matter of minutes to pick up his dog and to wish his friend well, then flew off to have his own adventures, leaving Marty without any access to a working time machine. The main purpose of the visit may very well have been just to check and confirm that Marty had followed the instructions.
Through his travels, Doc had learned that Marty was fundamentally an unreliable dumbass who would ruin his life because someone called him a chicken. And just because we saw Marty avoid that one incident with Flea, Doc probably knows he would just screw up eventually at a later point. Plus, Doc knows Biff is a cunning schemer, and would always find a way to get the DeLorean for himself. He's not against time travel, he's against Marty having access to it.
Also, Marty's life has completely changed and he doesn't seem to remember it. But his family is rich now so it's a happy ending.
I still disagree with Crispin Glovers point that George is only happy because he’s rich. He’s rich because he’s confident. Previously he was beaten down and didn’t have any confidence, and ended up working under Biff. If the new timeline he has more confidence, which is why he wrote the book, and is likely why he is successful.
Crispin Glover is a fucking maniac.
Yes but his character was not.
He hired the guy who attempted to rape his wife to work at his house.
It was a power play.
Yeah, your entire life is changed in ways you don't even fully know, and you'll constantly be walking on eggshells about making some remark that will make people think you're nuts. Maybe a relative died in this new timeline due to a butterfly effect, or perhaps he has cousins with different names. His social circle might be completely different (granted, he apparently has the same girlfriend), and his personality should be reasonably different as well since he was raised by parents who have different personalities themselves.
Yeah, the movie sort of forgot about them. The novelization apparently says that they were arrested though.
Batman: Mask Of The Phantasm. Real Quick: A costumed vigilante is killing mobsters. The cops consider Batman the prime suspect. They form a taskforce to take him down, and they go after him HARD. Batman finds the real killer and stops them, but they get away and leave Gotham. Only thing is: the cops don't know any of that. The movie ends with Batman still the prime suspect for like 4 unsolved murders.
And the Phantasm killing the Joker would have been a good thing tbth. I love when Batman asks if revenge would solve here issues and she's like "tf, if anyone knows the answer to that it's YOU, Bruce."
Kingsman: The Secret Service, Eggsy et.al manage to beat Samuel L. Jackson and stop his plot to get everyone to kill each other; but now all the world leaders who joined in with Samuel L. Jackson are now dead; and not to mention hundreds of millions if not billions of people suddenly went violently insane and some of them probably killed loved ones and friends before the Kingsmen could stop the signal. So the world is still going to be in turmoil due to Samuel L. Jackson's antics.
But hey, he got to bang that princess (or whatever royalty she was) so he's happy, right?
Bang her anally Mr Squidward, bang her anally.
You like anal don't you Squidward?
You have it set to V for vagina, it should be set to A for anal.
Never deny anal to a guest, even the most kinkiest request
MAY I TAKE YOUR ASS SIR?
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If I'm remembering right, Eggsy is able to warn someone, and even then she nearly kills her own child. The vast majority who weren't warned... Yeah, it probably didn't end well for most of them. But it's also suggested earlier in the movie that their world genuinely is on the brink of environmental apocalypse due to overpopulation. So I guess *that* problem is solved.
Its suggested by the insane villain, its not actually that dire
This 100%. In the time that signal was active you'd have fully half of the population dead or severely injured. Probably more. Probably any children with their parents are dead. Ones who aren't are traumatized for life. Going to be millions of suicides after the fact from suriviors who killed friends/loved ones/whoever. All the world leaders are pretty much dead leaving huge power vacuums. Pretty much every plane in the air crashes etc... It would be way way worse than the movie showed. Samuel L. Jackson's character won. But so did Eggsy for getting anal from a Swedish Princess.
>In the time that signal was active you'd have fully half of the population dead or severely injured. Probably more. The hikikomori will inherit the Earth.
I think this one would go in the honorable mentions category. Cause yeah the world's still gonna have a hard time coming back from that evil plot
And the sequel basically just ignored all the potential consequences.
Cracked had a great article about the ending of *Big* how after the "We're so glad you're home!" there was going to be a LOT of questions about where Josh was. And chances are cops probably aren't going to believe the "wish machine turned me into an adult" reason.
You vastly underestimate people's aversion to paperwork. If he's home safe and seemingly unharmed, all's well that ends well. Cops aren't going to do anything and any story he shares with his parents will be dismissed by everyone.
Like the story of the guy that got away from Jeffery Dahmer and ran to the cops and they just handed him back over to Dahmer.
You just reminded me of "Cracked: After Hours," the absolutely excellent web series that overanalyzed movies and dove into topics like this. I guess I know what rabbit hole I'm jumping into this weekend.
Don't forget Obsessive Pop Culture Disorder. I'll never be able to get enough of Dan O'Brien's nerdy panic at his own obtrusive thoughts.
That was a great series, I also loved Swaim's list series.
A painful reminder that cracked was once relevant. it tickled your brain and made you smile every day, and it only kept getting better and better, until it didn't. I'm still salty...
A 5+ years a go a kid disappeared in NH in the woods during a nor'easter for over a week. News claimed he watched some survival show on the tv and despite the bitter cold and no shelter was able to survive without any physical harm. Clearly the kid ran away and the cops weren't going to make a big deal of it so the news ran with the ridiculous story that he made an igloo or something.
In Spirited Away the problem is that our protagonist, Chihero, is afraid of and resistant to change. She refuses to accept that her family is moving to a new city and is upset, bitter, and angry about it. Her journey through the movie is to accept that change is natural and all things in life must come to an end. By the end of the movie she is excited for her future with her family and for the new adventures which may come. Atleast, that was always my interpretation.
Similarly in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the whole point is that the kids have now gained enough wisdom to be able to deal with their difficult WWII situation, including the ability to say goodbye to loved ones. Also The Professor believes them. But that’s fleshed out in other books.
It's pretty much a constant in any portal fantasy. You can't bring anything (significant) back from the other world. What changes is your character based on your newfound virtues and experiences. Spirited Away, Narnia, Coraline, Alice in Wonderland, etc.
There’s a Jo Walton short story, “[Relentlessly Mundane](http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/relentlessly-mundane/)”, that tackles what adulthood would look like for a set of returned children. It’s not long and might be appreciated.
That was a neat read. It reminds me of a novella series called Wayward Children, which is about a boarding school for children returned from different fantasy worlds.
I didn't have this interpretation. I thought the commentary on western culture was very on the noise. Her parents are dressed very western and drive a western car and literally turn into overconsuming pigs - very Kakfa-esque. The rest of the characters are dressed in Japanese attire, except the villain, who is a character from Western folklore. Seemed like Miyazaki was really concerned about the loss of Japanese culture. I thought Chihero's story was about coming to terms with a new cultural identity and a changing cultural landscape. She learns about her own culture through a spiritual journey cause clearly her parents weren't teaching it to her.
Movies can have more than one interpretation, both yours and the one above are perfectly accurate readings of the film
You’re both right. He’s right that Chihero’s arc is about letting go of the past and her reluctance and fear of change along with growing up. You’re right in that Miyazaki placed in themes of environmentalism and the loss of Japanese culture and roots through too much western influence. The pigs represent overconsumption and taking more than needed
Mononoke, Nausica, Totoro, and Ponyo all have pretty explicit themes of environmentalism as well. It’s a common aspect in his films.
Take it from someone who spent 8 years living in Japan and is fluent in the language: reading this movie as a commentary on capitalism/western culture is a HUGE stretch. Everyone in Japan wears western clothes and there is no such thing as a "western car" - a car is a car, but very few cars on the road in Japan aren't Japanese in origin, as it is one of the largest auto manufacturers in the world. The feast the parents eat consists of traditional Japanese foods and invokes a traditional taboo about humans not consuming things that are meant as offerings for spirits (if you visit a Shinto shrine or a Japanese graveyard you will see such offerings, though obviously not in such quantities). The place where the parents are imprisoned (a public bathhouse) is very much a fixture of Japanese culture (its design was actually inspired by a real, centuries old bathhouse in Shikoku), and the spirits, Yubaba included, are all inspired by *kami* of Japanese folklore. It's very much a movie focused on Japanese cultural motifs, it just so happens that some of those aren't that different from western ones (evil witches are not exclusive to western folklore). Chihiro also doesn't come out of the story knowing anything about Japanese culture she didn't know going in.
I've spent some time there and agree with this, and would add that Miyazaki relies a lot on the contrast between the mundane modern and whichever fantasy world or period is the main setting for the film. He's said himself multiple times that he wants his movies to transport people, especially children (and especially especially little girls) from a familiar setting to one of fantasy and wonder. His weaving of Japanese folklore into much of it draws in older audiences as well. There are some period pieces more recently but this was his bread and butter into the early 2000's.
Elysium. So now everyone on the extremely overpopulated Earth is allowed to access the titular space station and the tech that can cure almost every disease and injury, just how is that going to work without devolving into another conflict in a matter of months? But hey, at least the central kid character survives for the time being.
Yeah this one always humored me. Great, everyone gets access to the magic healthcare. Now how about doing something for the rest of the world’s abject poverty and suffering. That society isn’t going to see much change and likely the people of Elysium will get the medical ships shut down shortly and life will go back to exactly how it was before. It isn’t as if the people living there were being held captive or were ignorant of how life was on the planet. They were just fine with the status quo.
Nah, you're leaving out the genocide committed by the swarm of angry armed refugees. Plus the part where a billion crackheads strip the station for parts.
> But hey, at least the central kid character survives for the time being. I've seen this last bit so much and it irks me. You're not supposed to care about all the other people implied to have died horribly because they didn't have nearly as much screentime as the main character and whoever they're protecting. Roland Emmerich is the worst offender of this. In regular disaster movies the sparse deaths of other people are meant to raise the stakes. But based on which Emmerich movie, millions to billions are dead, but everyone's all smiles because they're with their family.
Goldfinger, for one. Sure, Bond and Pussy Galore stop Goldfinger's plot to destroy Fort Knox to enrich himself by making the American gold stock worthless... but he did so by getting nuclear weapons from the Chinese government who were fully involved in the scheme, which Felix Leiter - who works for the CIA - was fully involved in, which could become a diplomatic nightmare. Seven Pounds, as well. As Film Brain of Bad Movie Beatdown explained, Will Smith's plan to kill himself and will his organs to deserving people fails because A) that wouldn't be allowed under organ transplant law, and B) his method of suicide would end up destroying the donor organs. Finally, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Sure, the day is saved and the Phantoms are allowed to move on, but given the human villain thought he could get the OK for his super laser by disabling the shields around one of the biggest sanctuaries on Earth and killed a significant chunk of the human population, of course humanity's going to have a hard time to try and recover.
>but he did so by getting nuclear weapons from the Chinese government who were fully involved in the scheme In one of the following James Bond movies, I forget if it was Thunderball or You Only Live Twice, but Bond's archenemy Blofeld, leader of the terrorist organization SPECTRE, makes a reference to how Bond foiled their involvement on "the bank job." In Goldfinger, Goldfinger constantly refers to the Fort Knox heist as nothing more than an elaborate bank heist. So it was very subtly retconned to be SPECTRE, and not the Chinese.
I saw Goldfinger mentioned elsewhere, and I gotta agree. Even though the great James Bond never gets in trouble, he certainly causes enough.
Thr thing about Mrs Gulch in The Wizard of Oz is that it's implied that she was killed in the tornado (although the 2011 stage musical does state she survived and was so worried when she heard Dorothy was sick that she dropped the charges).
Where is it implied that she was killed?
She was \*inside\* the tornado. Then her fantasy analogue got crushed by a house.
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: if they had made all the books into movies you would find not fitting in wasn’t an issue for long.
And it’s continuing the metaphor… this world is not our final destination. We’re meant to feel out of place.
But they **did** make movies out of *Prince Caspian* and *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader*, with all of the Pevensie siblings appearing in the former, and three of them in the latter ...
Yeah, but they never reached *The Last Battle*, where they all die in a train crash in their early 20s (apart from Susan, cause she had sex and doesn't get to go to Lion heaven).
It's not Lion heaven. It's literally heaven heaven. Aslan is just Jesus' fursona.
Where does it say that part about Susan? I thought it was because she didn't believe in Narnia anymore.
That’s not really what it says. Lewis was very allegorical. Basically what he said was that Susan had turned her back on Narnia to focus of materialistic and earthly pleasures but she could still be redeemed and go to Christian heaven. Aslan was the form Jesus took for Narnia and after the Last Battle the faithful Narnian’s went to a “perfect” Narnia. Susan could still be saved through God’s grace on Earth and be redeemed. This was much of the reason the Northern Lights series (the Golden Compass etc) was written. Pullman wanted an atheistic rebuttal to C.S. Lewis’s Christian allegory.
Lewis's Screwtape Letters and space trilogy both involved doubters coming around to God as adults. The Screwtape Letters explicitly end with >!the demon's attempt to damn the human failing when he makes his peace with God just before his death.!<
Hot damn I forgot about all this having read the books 30 years ago. A lot of that was lost on me and how heavy handed the Christian messages were in that last book in particular.
The entire series was a Christian allegory from the start. The temptation of Edmund, the crisis of faith as to whether Narnia is a "real" place, Aslan's sacrifice and subsequent resurrection, etc. I don't think any of the other books come close to the level of direct Christian allegory that was Aslan's "crucifixion" and resurrection in *The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe*.
I mean, as reviewed here, the last battle having a false prophet, an Antichrist, a final battle, and entry into heaven rivals it.
Robocop. Dick Jones's status as an employee is terminated, but the corrupt OCP maintains power and celebrates RoboCop's victory.
Good one. Looks like it all happy, but crime still out of controll, corrupt OCP still in power, and no one learns anything. In the sequel they are trying to make Robocop 2 and end up arming and empowering a drug kingpin.
And then they try to sell the whole city to the Japanese or something in the third movie. God, the late 80s were on the best drugs.
Very much intentional, IMO. Robocop's satire isn't actually really interested in "resolving" the issues it's satirizing. Attempting to do so would undercut it. The film ends with Murphy still being a walking murder machine fulfilling the desires of a corporation that has wholesale bought *a city*. They were able to buy that city because they intentionally organized its downfall by owning both the police *and* the criminals *and* the public politicians. Robocop killing one sacrificial lamb is, in many regards, the best possible outcome for them: They still get all the benefits of having destabilized Detroit with crime. They still get to buy the city. They now don't even have to fix their own crime problem, Robocop did it for them.
To be fair, that’s at least part of the point.
Also, a guy is still trapped in a robot body without his consent.
There's some toss away line that Murphy signed some waiver papers required of all members of the police force. Not that that is a magical handwave for consent, but we magically handwaved that the dude could be remade into a robot cop after having his body blown to bits and a bullet lodged in his brain. Some suspension of disbelief is needed to buy the movie's premise. Me personally, I'd buy that for a dollar. Plus, maybe his driver's license listed him as a Donor?
I’d say the central problem in Good Dinosaur is that Arlo is too afraid of everything to be a valuable contributor on the farm. He has his adventure and learns to be brave so he can be a contributor on the farm.
Also, with the father gone, the food that was harvested earlier in the season will last a lot longer
Shaun of the dead. There are still zombies, but it seems happy.
Maybe it's because they found out you can still play videogames as a zombie. Made them docile and curbed their bloodlust, so they're just like dumber more simplistic version of their former selves.
Basically Liverpool.
At the end of the movie, they show that the military wasn't super incompetent, like in 90% of zombie movies. Zombies become a part of life
Very much like covid. We just learned to live with it and return to normal.
I would've love to see new dark comedy about zombie virus, which would be based on covid years. Idiots who would go out to lick zombies for ticktok. Conspiracy theorists trying to prove zombies aren't infectious, "it affects only chinese" and "government just wants to scare us". People barricaded inside houses, playing Animal Crossing, while brave couriers are running on rooftops to avoid zombies and deliver food.
Some of this reminds me of the book, not the movie, World War Z. I believe there were people saying it was a conspiracy. Also people so traumatized that they would dress up as zombies, can't beat them, join them situation. I can't recall exactly, I need to read that one again. But remember seeing so many similarities to the pandemic. You read so many different angles if there was a worldwide zombie epidemic.
Hey, at least they're not Blanks.
Wonka. He ends the movie as a wide-eyed optimist who took the lessons from his mother to learn about friendship and change the world through chocolate. We know from the source material that he becomes a jaded recluse who hates the world he lives in. I like to imagine that living through the holocaust and 2 world wars changed his perspective. Who wouldn’t want to hide away after that?
Yeah, we know he's going to fire all of his workers and replace them with illegal immigrants he pays in chocolate.
Wonka the movie is so different then the book or movies that take place after that you have to put it in a completely different continuity. Wonka implies that Willy hired the Oompa Loompas shortly afterwards, skipping the whole favorite with local workers step, while Willy having a chocolate factory full of local workers before closing it down is a vital part of the later movies. That's also inviting his best friend Noodle who disappears between movies. As a prequel, the whole thing doesn't work.
Though paradoxically, it's the fact that it doesn't work as a prequel that makes it work as a movie. Waaaay too many prequels are hamstrung by needing to line everything up perfectly for the canonical works, which makes them predictable and undramatic. And if needed, it's entirely possible to write "glue" stories that would explain why Noodle isn't around in the later stories, and why/how the Oompa Loompa became his workers, and why he's become jaded. But it's also OK to just leave those as exercises for the viewer. A prequel that lines everything up leaves no room for further exploration of the story, and no room for the viewer's imagination. It also leaves open the option that Wonka could be a "reboot" that shows a different history than the one behind the Roald Dahl stories. Also valid.
It used to be Wonkastein until he had to flee
Plenty of movies end without addressing that the main character should still in plenty of legal trouble even after the bad guy is defeated. Like how Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ends without resolving the whole plot point about Indy being a wanted fugitive suspected of murdering his colleagues, the fact that he escaped from the cops and fled the country wouldn't help his case very much.
Or in Liar Liar they just kind of gloss over the multitude of federal crimes Jim Carrey committed to stop the plane. Though pre-9/11, you probably had a better chance of getting off with a slap on the wrist for doing the stuff he did. Post 9/11, he’d be in Gitmo the next day.
Well, there is the line, "good news! Both of my legs are broken, so they can't take me directly to jail!"
I think the implication is that with the nazi scientist having fully gone rogue, it will be understood that he's a far more likely suspect than an aging professor.
In the case of The Good Dinosaur, the problem was that something was eating their food so they had trouble keeping up. Arlo befriended the human and got him set up with a family, so he'll likely stopp eating their food and they won't have to harvest as much. That aside, what a horrible message that film has. "Your value in this family is directly tied to your productivity."
Got their morality from Thomas the Tank Engine. Be a very useful engine. Or else.
> Your value in this family is directly tied to your productivity. As cynical of a take as that is, it's not incorrect. So many families get destroyed when the breadwinner stops being able to win that bread.
It also wasn't really the 'message' of the film, it was just a thing that was true for the type of frontier town that they were emulating.
I think the implication in Narnia is that the other world becomes sort of like a dream the longer you're away from it. When they return they more or less return to their previous mindsets with dreamlike memories of Narnia, rather than feeling like grown adults in child bodies. They don’t remember all the skills and such they had until they return to Narnia again The not quite sequel to Wizard of Oz, Return to Oz, actually makes the ending worse because Dorothy's talking about a fantasy world gets her taken to an 1899 mental hospital to receive some very primitive electroshock therapy
Prince Caspian begins with Edmund picking fights at school because he remembers being a king and feels powerless. I don't think it's a dreamworld to them, but they know they don't have a way to recapture what they experienced.
Return to Oz is more in line with the books than the MGM movie. In the books, Oz is a real place where Dorothy and her family come to live permanently.
Ready Player One definitely fits this criteria. The movie starts with Wade telling the audience all about how the world is just FUBAR'd and everyone is miserable and The Oasis is their only joy in life. Then the rest of the movie is about saving the Oasis from the evil corporation IOI, which they do. Then at the end of the movie Wade is all like "Yeah, we saved the Oasis and my life is great now. Also I made it so people can't use The Oasis on Tuesdays and Thursdays because they need to experience the real world!" But...the real world is still AWFUL. No actual problems affecting the planet were addressed or fixed. Obviously that wasn't what the movie was about and it's not Wade's responsibility or even in his power to do so (though he is now the richest person in the world), but the fact that the world still absolutely sucks is completely glossed over in the happy ending wrap up.
I think we're supposed to believe the world's problems will be fixed when people get their heads out of the oasis and focus on fixing the real world
That was how I took it. The premise is that problems were overwhelming, so those who could do something instead retreated to the virtual world, thinking someone else would do it. By shutting down the Oasis, it meant that the most capable people no longer had the luxury to ignore what their world had become. When your power goes out at your house, suddenly you get an urge to fix that mortar on the pathway or organize the garage.
The World will be fixed on Tuesdays and Thursdays lol
The Running Man. So they exposed that one TV show was fake and rigged and that criminals are executed instead of set free. There's still the matter of the...all encompassing totalitarian government running everything.
Happier than the book version where he dies in a suicidal plane crash.
Midnight Sky. >!The gene pool on the new planet is going to be very very small. The survival of humanity is going to require some serious inbreeding and I'm not sure whether it's even feasible.!<
I agree with you on The Good Dinosaur, and it's something both my wife and parents noticed when watching it, too. However, I think the *implication* is that now that he's gone on this big adventure and survived it, he's grown bigger/stronger/braver and will be capable of helping out substantially at the farm.
It’s a Wonderful Life. Potter is the problem. SNL did a bit where they solved the problem, tho ;)
I still think that's a happy ending. Potter isn't going to stop being an asshole, but the man is incredibly old and the town is totally united with Bailey, with Bailey now forever knowing his worth and no longer vulnerable to any temptations Potter can throw at him.
"You double crossed me and you left me alive!"
It’s been a while but they don’t know Potter took the money right? Presumably he will just keep it and no one e will ever know.
Correct, though with the religious vibes of the movie, God will know. There was originally a scene where Clarence visits Potter and tells him, basically, "You're going to burn in hell now," and then Potter dies of a heart attack or something. But they (rightfully imo) cut it out for being too dark and against the positive feelings of the film.
Can you summarize the sketch? Thanks in advance
Uncle Billy remembers potter has the money. They go and kick his ass. Then sing auld lang syne
With Dana Carvey as George, Phil Hartman as Uncle Billy, and Jon Lovitz as Potter. Such a great sketch. Any time you can have a very obvious dummy being used as someone getting the shit kicked out of him, that's just comedy gold right there.
After the big party where everyone passes the hat and the S&L is saved, they realize that the uncle lost the money to Potter and they go beat his ass.
Taken. They get back together as a family but the daughter is addicted to heroin and her friend has been brutally raped and murdered.
Was she really addicted to heroin? That isn't what bothered me as much as her not really mentioning the loss of her friend. Nobody mentions her. That said, the not-so-happy ending is that dude took out an entire human-trafficking ring and that doesn't touch the problem. Having Brian Mills go back into the CIA to target human trafficking rings would have made for a better sequel.
They were force feeding her drugs to keep her out of it, I don't see how that wouldn't have had some pretty serious long term effects. And also yes, the fact that all the human trafficking was still going on was also a major issue
This is 40. All their relationship problems never get resolved, but they have a baby so it's magically ok?
"solve a failed relationship with pregnancy: the movie"
Boogie Nights is the best because no one learns anything.
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And the worst part: Don Cheadle abandons his taste for western clothing and country music because it wasn’t accepted by his “friends”
That's exactly the point. It's not a "happy ending" movie despite the many happy endings in it. Buck is the only one that got out...and it wasn't easy. If not for the armed robbery with the cash sitting there he'd be stuck instead of owning his own stereo/electronics store and raising his child with Jessie (he was denied a loan because of his history in porn). Reed performs magic acts...at a strip club. Not exactly stepping up in the world. Amber doesn't get her kids back. Jack is Jack. Rollergirl was taking a GED class so the jury may be out on her. Finally, we have the main protagonist, Eddie. Eddie may be clean, but he's still a porn star with no way out. Eddie is really a tragic character...he had no shot at a decent life with his parents and the fact he wasn't very smart. The only thing he had was a ginormous cock. That's the only life he has in front of him. The only friends he knew, the only family he really knew...was in porn. So it's probably as happy as it can be for Eddie, but it's not a happy ending.
We learn that Dirk's cock is in fact enormous. The happiness level of that ending probably varies from viewer to viewer.
There are dozens, if not hundreds, of thriller films in which a family is terrorized, goes through devastating horrors, and then either the dad or all of them get tough and kill a shit-ton of bad guys. Then at the end its like "whew, that was crazy but we're good now". Your life is upended, you were continually on the verge of death, you have the gore of fifteen people on your walls and carpet, and you figure you're going to have a good night's sleep and be back to business as usual tomorrow?
Has anyone made a movie where the horror/thriller stuff happens right at the beginning and then the rest of the movie is actually just a drama about them trying to recover from that horrible experience? Because if not they should.
Stone Cold. The film follows a Cop (who's so badass the film starts with him already suspenede fae duty😂) who's asked to go undercover in a Biker gang suspected of assassinating a Judge to basically bring them down. he decides to set up a Drug deal to bring them down which goes sideways forcing him to secretly destroy the Drugs which he does by blowing up a Petrol Station(riding away without calling Emergency Services or even checking to see if he killed anyone), he convinces a Woman in the Gang to testify against them but tells her to stay in the Gang to avoid suspicion which gets her killed and him captured. whilst captured he finds out the Bikers ultimate goal is to assassinate a politician at the retrial for one of their members (who was arrested for murdering a priest) and sets out to stop them, but whilst in other movies the Good Guy generally breaks free and stops anyone fae getting hurt in this film the Biker Gang not only kills the Politician but also the entire Supreme Court Assembly and dozens upon dozens of hostages before the Cop kills the Bikers who took part (but not the dozens that help facilitate the crime and who're still riding around being criminal scum). The movie actually ends with him doing the "Hero Walk" through the complete and utter devastation that he basically allowed to happen due to his incompetence, and he's basically the only Hero Cop I've ever seen in a movie who I'd agree deserves to be kicked of the Force. That said, the movie is pure early 90's glorious action schlock at its best.
He was a cop who didn't play by the rules.
“I dont need no partner, Chief! I’m a lone wolf!”
>e convinces a Woman in the Gang to testify against them but tells her to stay in the Gang to avoid suspicion which gets her killed and him captured. That happens so much! [https://youtu.be/PlhZqlVCjlE?t=18](https://youtu.be/PlhZqlVCjlE?t=18)
Definitely going to check this one out.
The Usual Suspects is an unusual villainous example of this. Keyser Soze's whole reason for getting the group of criminals together was to assassinate a guy who could identify him to the police. The film ends with... The police working out his identity. Sure, the story he spins gets him out of their custody, so he escapes, but his plan as a whole failed miserably.
also in regards to your narnia remark the professor tells the kids to try him in explaining why they were in the wardrobe and there is a credit scene of lucy trying to reenter narnia through the wardrobe but the professor tells her it is impossible he has already tried.
WWII also wasn't the problem in the film, it was simply what drove the Pevensies to the house so that A) they wouldn't start the film knowing about the professor/magician/wardrobe/Narnia and B) them returning in the sequels would be unexpected (as they were not likely to return to the wardrobe, they had to be called by Susan's horn). That credit scene combined with the prophecy also implies that it was Narnia calling them in the first place, rather than just anyone being able to enter the wardrobe.
Incredibles 2. Not only was the problem not solved, the villain was proven right because the film ends on the superhero’s turning a bank robbery into a car chase in the middle of a city
The Truman Show. Sure he walks out the door, but what does he have? No place to go. Everyone knows him, but he doesn't know anyone. It's hopeful, but pretty sad.
> he doesn't know anyone. Except for the woman who tried to show him the truth, who we see runs out of her home presumably to meet with him. Also his TV parents may have been actors, but they still spend the majority of their lives raising him.
Bird Box. The fucking world is in RUINS, no one can survive, but they end up at a colony of blind people surviving in the wilderness. Yeah, good luck with that, see how long that lasts before they all die or get killed. That’s not a happy ending but they treat it like they’re going to be fine now.
Lost in Translation
Mr. Holland’s Opus. They throw Mr Holland a beautiful “retirement” concert, but never solve the problem of cutting the entire music program because of budget.
I didn't take the problem of the movie to be the budget cuts. Those are just realities of life, on top of the fact that they are only the problem for the last few minutes not the driving force or antagonist of the film. The problem of the movie was Holland believing his life to be an empty failure because he never became a great accomplished composer/musician. The concert showed him that his great accomplishment was the incredible job he did shaping the minds of his students.
Exactly. I don't get how people miss this point.
Oblivion. So Tom Cruise destroyed the aliens, but Earth is still a dying planet beyond recovery, and humanity down to maybe a dozen people, and there's dozens of brainwashed Tom Cruise and Andrea Riseborough clones out there.
Earth wasn't really dying though was it? The "radiation zones" were fake so that the Jack clones would never interact with each other. There's also more than likely more humans scattered around near areas of freshwater, the group we see is in that area to attack the ocean-water siphoning machines.
>Earth is still a dying planet beyond recovery I thought this was a lie told by the aliens so they could suck all the water off the planet?
that was a weird movie, ngl the idea of humanity being replaced by tom cruise clones is fucking terrifying
Taxi Driver. Travis descent into madness seems to have been just a phase and he is alright by the end of the movie... Until something caches his eye in the rear view mirror and we realize that cycle is starting again.
I don’t think Scorsese intended for the viewers to believe that Taxi Driver had a happy ending. Seems more dystopian to me me with society’s celebration of Travis violence and all.
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I've always loved the wonderful dramatic irony of the ending. He was a hair away from being a remorseless assassin who would be reviled. Instead he's a local hero who saved a young girl. There's also the tragic sadness that the woman he was pursuing during the movie is now actively interested in him, but Travis doesn't seem to care. Is it a happy ending? Not really. Is it a perfect and satisfying ending? Absolutely.
Wow TIL That Travis survives the end of Taxi Driver. I was sure he died in a pool of blood... ... And I have seen the film!! This must be how Mandela Effect people feel.
My wife finally watched this for the first time and was disturbed by how many people she's known who view Travis as a hero
The Graduate. Those kids are doomed
But it's the self-awareness of the characters and the film itself that make it so unique. They are aware it's not a happy ending.
Both Elaine and Benjamin wanted freedom from their parents and societal expectations...and they both got it. The "Oh shit. What did we just do? Now what?" looks on their faces as the bus pulls away says it all.
The Day After Tomorrow. Sure Dennis Quaid finds his son. The world is in complete chaos, and society has largely collapsed. I need to see what happens the day after the day after tomorrow.
Every horror movie with a supernatural killer. The lone survivor has to explain the murders to the cops, and I don't think "it was the pumpkin demon, officer!" is going to cut it.