Perfect Movies Destroyed by Their Endings

I’m not sure what brought this to mind actually.  I’ve done other blog posts on movies likeMovies vs. Books, The Five Best (and Five Overrated) Christmas Movies…, Dystopian or Apocalyptic Movies, orVietnam War movies.  It may have been watching the remake of The Predator with my wife back in September or a conversation with a friend about one of the movies listed below.  I was able to suspend disbelief–right up until guys jump onto a moving spaceship, don’t fall off, and the hero winds up trapped between its forcefield and the hull while one buddy is cut in two and the other throws himself in to the unprotected rocket engine, crashing the ship.  Yeah, there’s a point it goes too far.  Jason Statham’s The Transporter does this, too.  …I guess I’ve got another idea there now for a list–good movies that have a ‘no way’ moment that takes you totally out of the movie’s vibe.

Anyways, this one is about great movies, brilliant movies, possibly perfect or as near as humanly possible–right up to the ending (by the way, I mean ‘perfect’ to me–movies like Titanic could go here for other people because of its horrible ending).  And in the space of the film’s final five minutes, the director/writer/producer destroy the perfection.  They don’t think they are doing that–but they are.  It’d be a waste of time-travel ability, but I’d love to go back and fix these.  I’ve put them in chronological order.

SUPERMAN (1978)  Without this movie, you don’t have any of the superhero movies made in the 21st century whether DC or Marvel.  There’s no CGI here–but there’s a great story about coming of age, the responsibility of power, and Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor–and he even manages to kill Lois Lane!  It’s a gripping film and still enjoyable to watch more than 40 years later…until the cheesy ending.  They got scared killing off Lois Lane, so in his rage, Superman starts flying fast…really fast.  And he goes counter-clockwise, too.  He stops the Earth, spins it backwards (because that’s how time-travel works…’Star Trek’ taught us that moving counter-clockwise send us back in time, clockwise goes to the future), so that he has time to stop the collision of cruise missiles the government has armed with live warheads AND save Lois AND capture Luthor.  Everyone lives happily ever after.  Not only is Superman super–he’s Cher…he can turn back time.  Someone should’ve smacked Richard Donner.

BLADE RUNNER (1982)  One of my favorite science fiction novels (as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick).  It’s about Decker, a bounty hunter who ‘retires’ androids who escape to Earth looking for freedom.  Earth is dying, it’s grungy, dark.  It is an unbelievable film noir.  The novel’s end is generally ambivalent–life has gone on and Rachel Rosen is malicious/amoral, not a heroine.  Instead, after 2.5 hours of grit, grime, and the best cinematography of the 1980s, you get Decker and Rachel driving into sunshine with all sorts of green (Earth was dying just 60 seconds before, right?).  Rachel’s an android, but she doesn’t have an expiration switch like everyone else, so voila–happily ever after.

Ridley Scott gets rid of the voiceover in the director’s cut, the addition of an origami unicorn, and the cut of the automatically happy ending (though the origami suggests it).  That’s the 1990s version.  It gets spliced into a new version again about a decade ago…still looking to fix the original screw-up.  I don’t blame Scott–it’s well known the production company forced the happy ending.  They didn’t believe anyone could like an ambiguous ending.  Sigh.

And even with the flawed ending–there is nothing like watching Blade Runner on a big screen.  It remains my favorite sci-fi movie…so, so very close to perfect.

RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983) First, I refuse to call this Star Wars, Episode 6.  It’s Return of the Jedi, dammit. The final Star Wars movie, it sees the rescue of Han Solo, the building of a second Death Star, the Emperor suspicious of Darth Vader’s loyalty even as he sets a trap to destroy the Rebel fleet.  Yoda dies, leaving Luke on his own…how will the heroes overcome these odds?  *THIS* is pulp sci-fi, this is entertainment.  Oops–by the third movie, Lucas had his eye on product licensing…gotta remember those little kiddies.  Do our heroes save the day?  Yeah, I guess…relying on an army of midget Wookies called Ewoks (kinda like Wookie…notice?) who use sticks and rocks to charmingly overrun the Imperial troops guarding the Death Star’s shield generator.  Three movies in and we’re going to let midgets do this?  Ugh.  And then it’s over, we get the celebration–and then magically, you have Yoda and Obi-Wan there in wraith-form along with Luke’s dad (no longer Darth Vader).  That’s a problem made worse in the sequels…Luke’s dad slaughters a whole lot of people in the prequels, including single-handedly slaughtering a school of Jedi children.  Yuppers–celebration time!  Lucas had a chance for a perfect pulp sci-fi ending (Star Wars nails the end perfectly) and blows it.

STAR TREK VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) We always joked that after the horror that was Star Trek V that this should have been titled ‘Star Trek VI: The Apology’.  It is a perfect movie for its time–an allegory of the end of the Cold War set as the Federation and Klingons negotiate peace (a planet exploded–the equivalent ofChernobyl).  It was an end of a political era and also an end to the original Trek era as well.  The movie has treason on both sides, honor on both, and a race at the end that sees Sulu with some great scenes that make the movie even better.  And then we get to the end.  Well, not the very end.  With the galaxy saved, the Klingon leader gets a blank look and asks, “What does this mean?”  Do any delegates answer?  Nope.  It’s Kirk who gets a long soliloquy.  Everyone then claps as we see the Star Trek stars stand there.  It’s just phony.  What comes after that loses its effectiveness because of it…when the bridge crew is back on the Enterprise, they hit the warp drive, and fly off ‘into the sunset.’

It’s still a great movie, just a 9/10 instead of a 10/10.  When in doubt, watch the even-numbered Trek films–II, IV, VI, and First Contact.  ST II sticks the ending the best, by the way.  In any event, Kirk saved alien General Custer:

THE LAST SAMURAI (2003) See, not all are sci-fi!  This is the story of an American in Japan after the Meiji Restoration and the end of the samurai.  Many are unhappy with the changes–in real life, this is the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877.  You have to ignore that the US isn’t responsible for Japanese actions (Japan was) and it’s 2003, so, of course, Tom Cruise’s character regrets atrocities committed against Indians on the frontier.  Still–it is filmed beautifully.  Cruise is ambushed by the rebels, eventually saves the rebel leader’s life from ninja, and sides with the rebels.  Easy to go along with in terms of the movie (and Cruise’s acting along with Ken Watanabe) is fabulous.  And then the Emperor’s army arrives, the big battle ensues, and the rebels are wiped out by the better-armed, larger army.  Surprise, surprise–larger, better winning a battle.  You’re ready for the moment–Cruise is one of those shot and felled in the battle.

If The Last Samurai ended here or with Cruise’s body being removed from the field or buried, you are looking at a perfect film.  Nope.  Tom Cruise can’t die in his movies (save for Taps and Valkyrie–so we fast-forward in time.  Still wounded, Cruise interrupts a meeting with the Emperor (hah!), presents the rebel commander’s sword and tells the Emperor he has to remember the value of old ways and the sacrifice made by the rebels.  The Emperor agrees, changes his mind, and decides a socialist course for his decisions.   Dammit–look, I knew that scene was coming.  My friends who were with me (Sean and Baron), I guarantee they knew it was coming, and the first two hours still sucked us in.  The ending is so jarring, such a switch, we left the theater annoyed by the film.  The ending takes a 10/10 and makes it a 7.5/10.  Ugh.  Here’s the battle at the end…sadly, without Cruise getting hit:

NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007)  You can’t blame the ending on the Coen Brothers…well, you can–their endings usually suck.  In this case, it was based on a book, so it isn’t their fault.  It’s a complicated story set in 1980.  A hitman escapes custody, gets hired to recover drug money found by an ‘innocent’ guy who found it with dead men all around (drug deal gone south).  Breaking into the guy’s home brings a sheriff into the picture who now tries to track down the illegal money and the hitman.

In the end, the guy dies, the guy’s wife dies, a whole bunch of other people looking for the money die…great, a lot of tension.  And then the sheriff has a conversation with his wife that he’s had a couple dreams–in the first, he lost money his dad gave him and in the second, his dad went up ahead in the snow to make a fire and was now waiting for him to show up.  What. The. Crap.  I have no problem with the bad guy winning or carrying out vengeance.  Killing the wife–a bit cold, but then again, this is what happens if you jack around with drug cartels, I suspect.  I just wish they would’ve left it with the hitman leaving the scene after checking his shoes for blood.  Javier Bardem–totally creepy in this.

LINCOLN (2012) When Stephen Spielberg made this, he did it with such reverence, he wore a coat and tie while directing.  I dare you to watch and see Daniel Day Lewis there.  That’s not him on the screen–they freakin’ brought Abraham Lincoln into 2012 to portray himself.  The film covers 1865 and the last few months of Lincoln’s life as he fought for passage of the13th Amendment (such a big fight for such simple text) and a permanent end to slavery in the U.S.  The film captures Lincoln properly–including rage and frustration, but also as a brilliant political in-fighter/tactician.  It gets right basically the process for how things become legislation or amendments (up until the Gingrich Congress in 1994 and afterwards…but that is for a different day….).  You are swept away by all this, southern attempts to negotiate an armistice before slavery can be eliminated, Lincoln delaying the peace parlay–because he can’t say no…because too many want the war over, even so close to victory.  And finally, the amendment passes, Lincoln is successful.  He is at the White House, talks with his butler as he prepares to put on his coat and join his wife in the carriage.  He is finally taking a night off to go see ‘My American Cousin’ at Ford’s Theater–and everyone knows, that’s where Lincoln gets shot…you get taught this as an American starting as a six-year-old.  Lincoln walks down the hall towards the exit, departs, and the screen fades to black.  FREA-KING-PER-FECT!!! 

Nope…the screen lights up again and *SURPRISE* we find out that Lincoln gets shot, we see still scenes, and a last line of “Now he belongs to the ages.”  No shit–we’re making a full film about a few months of his life 150 years after his administration; multiple states claim him as their own; he’s on multiple types of money; he’s on Mt. Rushmore!  All the ending does is take a perfect movie and frustrate a viewer.  

Want the best way to watch this?  Stop as soon Lincoln walks out of the White House.  I promise, promise, it’s better that way.

NOTE: When I put this together, I found there are ‘international’ trailers for the film.  It was fascinating to see the differences–basically, the US ones presume knowledge of the Civil War while the international take time to explain–this is the bloodiest American war ever, it’s about slavery, the war’s almost over, etc.   It’s not criticism–just that we should never take for granted our knowledge of a subject.  How many Americans understand Hungary, 1956?  Prague Spring?  Solidarity?  Know who Sun Yat-Sen was?

LA LA LAND (2016) Cute title for a musical.  You get the musical note ‘la’ and it takes place in Los Angeles “L.A.” and it is about the fantasy of making it big–I mean, so many people try, they are always told they are in ‘la-la land,’ right?  This is filmed wonderfully.  I don’t care that the actors are not professional–they do all right dancing and singing, so no worries there.  Heck, you even start with a great show-stopping number.

So what’s the problem?  It’s a big one.  Musicals have certain ‘notes’ (ha, ha) they need to hit.  Among these is that if the musical is about a boy and girl falling in love, they better wind up together–>the exception being ‘West Side Story’, but that’s based on Romeo and Juliet, so you know how that ends in advance.  Nope, you have everything setting up for the happy ending and then–boom.  It changes.  You can’t even call it apathy.  The main characters seem happy with the end, but they aren’t.  Or are they?  You just can’t end it that way.