10 Good Movies Ruined By Bad Endings

Screen Rant ^ | August 7, 2014 | Andrew Dyce

[Stepan12]

2001 is the all time winner for bad endings. It seems as if they just ran out of ideas and hoped everyone was stoned while they burned up miles of film on light show garbage.

2001 was a lousy film -- PERIOD! It was completely unintelligible from start to finish. However, it was a good movie to get stoned to as I saw many people toking pot in the movie theater.

[PhiloBedo]

Funny...

[Jack Hammer]

World War Z - really wimped out in the end.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Khartoum

I thought it was an exceptionally good movie, about as historically accurate as possible, and the ending reflected the most heroic of the available accounts of < SPOILER ALERT> Gordon's death. Actually considering current events maybe there will be a remake, "Kobane", without the heroism, only the bloodshed. About 10,000 residents of Khartoum where slaughtered, and they were never offered the opportunity to surrender.

[Hot Tabasco]

2001: A Space Odyssey. I hated the ending but I also hated the beginning and the middle. I even hated the credits.

...and the popcorn sucked too!

[notdownwidems]

2001 is the all time winner for bad endings. It seems as if they just ran out of ideas and hoped everyone was stoned while they burned up miles of film on light show garbage.

It is incomprehensible, until you read the book; that explains the ending much better than they did in the movie.

[Dr. Sivana]

And don’t forget the edited “Love Conquers All” version of “Brazil”.

[Dr. Sivana]

Superman (1978) had a horrific ending, as it broke a cardinal rule of DC comics’ Superman: You cannot change the past. I would maintain that that movie was ruined when they hired Mario Puzo to do the script. They would have been better off with one of the comic book writers (Cary Bates, Len Wein, John Broome, Gardner Fox) with a screenwriter partner.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I saw Khartoum a week ago on one of the movie channels.
It’s awful.

[DeaconBenjamin]

It struck me as a generally well made movie that ran out of money before they finished the story.

[CatherineofAragon]

“The Devil’s Advocate” is the Pacino movie, right? There was a line in that movie that was really blasphemous...I can’t recall what it was, and I don’t want to. But it was so bad that chills went over me. I said to my husband,
“We really have to leave”, and we did...we walked out.

[CatherineofAragon]

"Scarlett is a selfish narcissistic bitch."

She was. I didn't dislike her as much as syrupy-sweet doormat Melanie, though.

[CatherineofAragon]

"The Mist. Loved the rest of it (except for the mischaracterization of Christians at the grocery store), but I hated that ending soooo much."

Yep, that's Stephen King, all right.

"The Mist" was a great adaptation of, IMO, one of his best shorter stories...until that ending. It was like a punch in the stomach. After seeing it, we were depressed all the way home.

[mad_as_he$$]

I always thought the perfect ending to Castaway would be when he hands the woman the package she says: “Oh, my satellite phone, It's OK I got a replacement.”

[Old Teufel Hunden]

Add the movie “Gone Girl” to this list. Just went and saw it. Great movie, right up to the disappointing ending.

[ifinnegan]

Great post.

I’d forgotten that tidbit about Rosebud.

It had to have Marion Davies, not his wife.

[Borges]

The film was NOT based on the novel. The novel was written during the making of the film and after the script was finished.

[Borges]

The sled/Rosebud thing is a red herring and is irrelevant to what makes the film great. The actual subject of the film is the modernist mode of storytelling - collecting fragments and seeing how they are interrelated and whether the same event can be seen differently from different people. It’s praised because it was a huge influence on other filmmakers and opened up new avenues of cinematic storytelling.

[FredZarguna]

The film is truly awful, and one of the best examples of “Emperor’s New Clothing” ever devised.

[FredZarguna]

No it was not. They were written at the same time as a collaborative effort between Kubrick and Clarke, based on Clarke's earlier short fiction, and Kubrick is on record saying that he rejected the ending because he'd already done it once before.