*SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! IN THIS POST, I WILL BE DISCUSSING THE ENDINGS OF MOVIES! SOME OF THEM WILL BE VERY RECENT WHILE OTHERS MAY NOT BE! IF YOU DON’T WANT ENDINGS TO BE SPOILED, SKIP THIS POST!”
A while back, I made a post discussing my favorite movie endings. Some of them were happy endings, some were ambiguous, and others were fairly downbeat. I bring this up because what most audiences will take away from movies is how they end. That is why certain movies have to end certain ways. There are a lot of elements to a movie that are important: Acting, direction, visual effects, and editing. I would argue that one of the most ESSENTIAL parts to making a movie is writing. Now, it’s not just about writing memorable characters or situations, but it also involves writing how a movie begins and most importantly, how a movie ends. In fact, some might argue that the ending of a movie is the most important aspect of the film-going experience, and I find it difficult to disagree with that assessment. What’s the last thing you’re going to remember from seeing a movie? The end. I bring up this topic because the last few movies that I saw haven’t really had a pleasant ending, so-to-speak. For example, and this is a big one: The ending to Avengers: Infinity War. Now that the film has been out for a couple of weeks, I think it’s time to address the ending to that film. The bad guy wins. Thanos succeeds in getting the Infinity Stones and slaughtering half of the universe. That includes a large number of the Avengers. When the end credits rolled, I noticed a bunch of people giving the screen the finger. Obviously, they were frustrated and I certainly understand that. For this particular story in the Avengers, this ending needed to happen this way. Everything in the MCU had been building up to this point, and Infinity War had to bring things to a standstill, because the next film is going to deal with the aftermath. How did I feel about how Infinity War ended? I loved it. I loved the fact that it wasn’t a fairy-tale happy ending like many comic book movies end up having. To me, Infinity War ended the way it did, because that was the only way it could. Now, will some of the events that transpired by retconned by the next movie? Probably. But I also do expect some of the deaths to have a permanent impact.
Infinity War has recently been compared to the likes of Empire Strikes Back in terms of its tone and ending, and I think that’s pretty fair, actually. Empire didn’t exactly end on a positive note. The good guys got their asses handed to them on a silver platter and they were trying to figure out what their next move is. For me, the ending of a film doesn’t necessarily need to have a happy or downbeat ending to be effective. It has to be satisfying and compelling, just like the rest of the film. I just finished watching a movie called Paradox a few hours ago, and that film’s ending was very bleak. But that was a film that had a story dealing with a particularly brutal issue facing our world: Trafficking, or in the case of Paradox, organ trafficking. The actions of a particular character at the beginning of the film led to the events that ended the picture, and to be honest, it was an ending that drove home the point that actions can have serious consequences. I appreciate the ending, because it was the kind of ending that the film had earned, and that’s a huge part of the problem with a number of films today: They don’t earn their endings. I’ve seen a lot of movies where a happy ending was tacked on when it wasn’t warranted. Taken is a good example. The ending of the film had Liam Neeson’s character saving the girl without her being harmed in almost any way. For a film that deals with human trafficking, I would have expected the daughter to have been more traumatized physically and emotionally than what we were given. Instead the film ends on a very pleasant note. To me, that’s a cheap cop-out considering the subject matter.
On the flip-side, having a movie end on a downbeat note for the sake of being mean-spirited is equally frustrating. I can’t begin to tell you how many times a movie where you feel and believe that the good guy should win and all of a sudden, the rug gets pulled out from under you and the good guys suddenly lose. To me, that’s not satisfying. That aggravates me, actually. I can see that happening in horror movies, as one would expect, but for other movies, it feels like it comes out of nowhere. Now, don’t get me wrong: Ending a film properly is a tricky business. The film has to earn a particular ending through certain awareness of the story and the writing, and if you don’t get those two aspects right, you end up with something like The Matrix Revolutions where the ending doesn’t make a lick of sense. It’s one thing to have a clever ending, but you can’t be seen trying to be clever, otherwise the jig is up and you end up pissing off the audience.
Make no mistake, I love a happy ending as much as the next guy. But in order to keep a film compelling, sometimes you have to end it in a way that may not be to everyone’s expectations. Sometimes, you have to hit the audience right in the gut. But it has to be done in a way that allows the audience to have some kind of catharsis. That’s what it comes down to in my opinion: Give the audience what they need, not necessarily what they want. They’ll thank you for it in the long run, or they’ll never watch another film of yours again. That’s the risk you take when making a movie. The proper ending to a movie has to be one that’s satisfying and compelling. It shouldn’t always be a happy ending, though, because real life isn’t always happy. Sometimes, you gotta keep it real. So, what you guys think? Do you agree with me, or do you think I’m totally off my rocker? Feel free to comment below.