Is there a story you loved, except for the ending?

The Mist

Worst. Movie ending. Ever.

From Dusk Till Down by Tarantino

It went from really dope, to becoming a cool movie only.

Well, since me and @Earthgirl have been discussing Wuthering Heights today, I’m going to go with that. Why didn’t “you know who” just do “the deed” earlier on instead of waiting years and years? It didn’t make any sense. He could’ve done what he wanted about 20 years earlier and enjoyed the “proverbial jizz.” I’m trying not to give away the story, sorry it sounds so messy.

Yes Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love …. it was so good until the lead man got stepped on by an elephant. All you want is the guy to get the girl and instead he gets stepped on by an elephant… How can you do that in a movie?? I still can’t believe they would do that

Another ending puzzled me was how Unfaithful ended…. what was that they just sat at a traffic light???

My marriage was amazing, except for the ending.

Corelli’s Mandolin, by Louis de Berniere is an almost perfect novel, until the author felt the need to add the last chapter.

every movie where the “good guys” win.

@gailcalled That was exactly what came to mind for me, too! So disappointing.

@digitalimpression Wow, you were not kidding. I don’t understand why they changed it from the original story… to that.

@creative1 ” it was so good until the leading man got stepped on by an elephant” lololololol
OMG! That’s laugh of the day…I mean…how could they DO that!” haha

@auhsojsa I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did you not see Tom Savini rocking a cock-pistol?

I recently watched this movie on an airplane my entire reaction..about 20 to 30 minutes before it ended can be summed up in three letters:
W – T – F

They kill off the only likable character in the entire movie.

I actually liked the ending of The Mist….

It’s hard to say, none come to mind immediately that I just hated because most that I hate I also love. Like the endings of Steppenwolf and Demian. But one that I just hated… hmmmm… any that go from a good movie to corny ending. I dislike corny endings with a passion.

Stephen King’s Dark Tower ending. What makes it even more of a travesty is that, he actually informs the reader they won’t like it. Well, in that case, dumb-ass, write a better ending!

In the Woods by Tana French. I enjoyed the story and it even inspired a short story of my own. It was fun and suspenseful to read. But the main idea behind the story was that there were two mysteries: the mystery of what happened to the missing girl in present day and the mystery of what happened to the cop’s missing friends when he was a child. The book talks about both mysteries, though of course spends more time on the first one since that was the primary focus of the story. Well, the first story is resolved. The second story, however, is not. Just a “maybe someday he would remember what actually happened that day”. THE END

It was awful. To me that just showed the author had no idea how to resolve that second mystery and decided not to. Especially since there were even possible supernatural hints in there, despite no supernatural elements elsewhere in the story. It really seemed like the author was creating a puzzle she couldn’t solve.

@digitalimpression You got that right. The whole movie was great, but the ending was so retarded. You’d think an event like that would make you want to protect your close ones even more. But then they throw in this uber plot twist shock value shit. And I read the story this is based on, it doesn’t end like that. Nothing dramatic about the book ending, but still. Meh.

Several Stephen King movies. There are some notable exceptions, but several of them change the endings in the books, and by a lot. They tend to go with more of a ‘feel good’ ending, when the books were quite grizzly and somber.

@augustlan Or you have The Shining, where the movie ending was just bizarre in comparison with the book ending (which was a bit more positive).

@DominicX And I actually liked The Shining. :)

@augustlan Aye. Ever read Cujo, then watched it? The movie is damn faithful to the book, but it kind of fails to respect the premise of the book by giving the movie a whole generic slasher ending. You know like, how the story isn’t so much about a Saint Bernard with rabies killing people, rather than it is about a fucked up family that gets fucked up by every day normal stuff, like how poor normal dogs can get rabies outta nowhere…er…hm. Hidden meanings aside that don’t actually have anything to do with what I’m saying, I can’t believe I’m arguing both fence sides with two extremely similar endings.
But yeah, I totally see what you’re saying. I guess it’s just poetic, but the book ending seems to put a depressingly fitting lid on top of the whole thing, while the movie’s all like, well let’s not shock too many people, hmm?

@Symbeline Yes, Cujo was one of the ones I was disappointed in, movie-wise.

I don’t like cliffhangers sometimes, like Resevoir Dogs, it just kind of ended randomly.

The novel Vurt by Jeff Noon.

I love the concept, the beginning and the middle. The end sucks.

The Giver. Really interesting premise and development, and then the end is left totally open to interpretation in a way that seemed really sloppy and lazy to me.

Lost

Six sit on the edge of your seat with a tissue box for your tears seasons. One terrible series finale.

@jonsblond So agreed. :) I just wasn’t a fan of the 6th season in general. It could’ve ended with the explosion at the end of the 5th season and I would’ve been happy :P

@jonsblond Which immediately brings the BSG remake series to mind. Talk about not understanding who your audience is.

Chuck. Amazing series, horrible finale.

@jonsblond I think LOST will go down in history as the biggest let-down in series finale history. (Oh, no, have I just dared some Hollywood exec to try and out-crap the LOST finale?)

Aside from the gawd-awful ending it also really bugged me that they randomly named characters after philosophers. The link was tenuous at best and just made them look like cunts for trying to seem deep when, once you were able to see the whole picture, it was obvious they didn’t know what in tarnation they were up to.

They wrote some good characters, but the buggers couldn’t plot their way out of a wet paper bag.

@fundevogel That was really what bothered me about it, the fact that it became really obvious that they were making it up as they were going along and really didn’t know how to tie it all together.

@DominicX I saw (or read I can’t remember) a bit of an interview with J.J.Abrams and he talked about a mystery-magic box he had as a kid and how much he liked not knowing what was in the box. It didn’t matter what was in the box just the not knowing. And that’s why Abrams sucks at writing. He’s all mood, it’s not a mystery wrapped in an enigma. It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma locked in a trunk, buried in the backyard with a shed build over top of it. Except if you actually knocked down the shed, dug up the trunk, smashed the lock, unwrapped the enigma and peeled back the mystery there would be…...nothing. Or possible a rolled up sock.

And that is why at this point nothing puts me off a new tv show faster than “from the writers and creators of Lost”.

I didn’t love the movie, but I did enjoy “The Quick And The Dead” with Sharon Stone.
The ending totally sucked, though.

SPOILER ALERT

During the big, last gunfight, Gene Hackman (the bad guy) stands in the street so that the sun rises behind him. Sharon Stone, momentarily blinded by the sun, shoots. She appears to miss, and as Gene Hackman laughs and begins to shoot Stone, he notices his shadow now has a hole in the middle of his guts, allowing to let the light beam through.

I was throwing things at the TV when that happened.

The end of Stephen King’s Under The Dome still pisses me off when I think about it.

The story was great until he had to find a way to wrap it up and then it turned in to the most let down I’ve ever been by any author.

The Dark Tower series, in my opinion, ended brilliantly. What else could Roland’s reward be than to forever continue the only passion in his life?

@fundevogel Agreed, but although I didn’t watch Lost, I am enjoying Fringe quite a lot.

@dappled_leaves I tried that, I don’t know if it will end any better than Lost (its hard to imagine it not), but I really couldn’t handle how they treat science like magic. I’m fine with magical stories and I’m fine with technobabble, but there is mass eye-rollage when your technobabble is propped up with magical thinking.

The last John Grisham book I read, The Innocent Man. I love, love his books, but that one…man. It was like he just got lazy toward the end. I was really disappointed.

Oh, the story was about a black man on death row for a murder he didn’t commit. It was very interesting reading…right up to the point where they actually killed the innocent guy. I couldn’t believe Grisham let him die! So I kept on, thinking that there has to be something amazing to come out of this sad, pointless thing…but nothing more did. It just kind of fizzled out.

Yes, all of Chip Kidd’s novels. He writes funny, engaging stories with needlessly apocalyptic endings.

@fundevogel So far on Fringe, they answer a lot of questions fairly quickly (though, then they make up new ones). I think it’s a lot episodically weaker than Lost, though, and sort of not as enjoyable except for the mystery parts. I am liking One Upon A Time, which is done by a couple of writers from Lost, but not JJ Abrams (who seems to be the main culprit). I think if Abrams partnered with Joss Whedon, they might balance each other out and create the greatest show ever.

@fundevogel Oh I know – I used to watch it regularly with a group of fellow scientists. It’s definitely a hoot from that perspective, but after all, this is sci fi, not a documentary!

@Aethelflaed I find the writing is a lot better on Fringe – I could never get through an episode of Lost, because I found the dialogue so awful. Fringe is much cleverer by comparison, I find. The storyline intrigues me as well.

I would love to see an Abrams/Whedon project – that would be incredible!

@geeky_mama YES ! Exactly what came to my mind when I saw the title of this thread. I read the book and was hoping for a meaningful ending and then it just seemed like the author had gotten sick of his story and decided to end it. My god. Such a disappointment !

Also, Inception ! You don’t see if the spinning top falls. Hate open endings.

I love open endings, though it may be for the sake of being amused at the reaction of others. Anyway, I also do enjoy how it suddenly gets you wondering what happens/happened and now suddenly you have to think to figure it out.

@Aethelflaed & @dappled_leaves I think the characters were better written on Lost, but Fringe, at least what I saw of it, was infinitely better at resolving plots. Neither was the right balance for me. Now you might be onto something with pairing Abrams with Whedon. I thought Dollhouse had a lot of potential, but I could definitely see Whedon benefiting from a more character oriented partner—so long as he slapped Abrams hand away whenever he started playing with plot.

You know, I bought Possession with the express hope that at some point I would have the time and inclination to edit my own cut of the film restoring the original ending. The idiots at the film company changed the ending making a really creepy love story into a half-assed thriller.

@fundevogel It’s definitely better at resolving plots, especially the episode’s plot. And I should point out, I don’t really care about most of the episodes’ plots, and I really hate all the graphic forensic stuff – I never, ever watch CSI or NCIS or any of that – so it’s more about the character development and backstories, and the larger mysteries for me. If I enjoyed all that, would my perspective be different? Probably.