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I watched 28 Weeks Later last night and it doesn’t end well, especially if you are French.
What films do you think would benefit from a sad ending?
I’ll kick off with Return of The Jedi. It would have been much better if Boba Fett had lived, Vader had sliced Luke in half and the Stormtroopers had rounded up the Ewoks and turned them into fur hats.
A.I. should have ended when the wee boy robot finds the angel at the bottom of the sea and gets trapped there. It would have been a classic. But all the following alien rescue guff is pure Spielberg schmaltz and not how Kubric would have envisaged it.
I really admired No country for old men, for its totally uncomprimising sad ending. Nice work.
As what should have a sad ending- anything on the Disney channel. (Hanna Montana for a start.)
and the Stormtroopers had rounded up the Ewoks and turned them into fur hats.
Where did the Ewoks get all those logs traps and various crushing devices from. The attack on the Bad guys seemed pretty ad hoc yet the little mechandise freaks/Ewoks appeared to have had lots of time to cut trees etc.
[i]I watched 28 Weeks Later last night and it doesn’t end well, especially if you are French [/i]
And this is a sad ending because..?
the constant gardener:
he loves her, she loves him, she dies, he finds out she never loved him and was only using him, he finds out she really DID love him, he falls in love with her memory, he dies.
quite simply the most depressing film i've ever seen.
Betty Blue - he's in love with her but ultimately has to kill her in a mercy killing 🙁
Of Zombie films though. The re-make of Dawn of the Dead doesn't end particularly well...
Kill'em all!
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Das Boot
The end of the Dawn of the Dead remake is by far and away the best bit in it. I love that film just for the last 5 minutes or so.
Despite being absolutely bloody hilarious all the way through, the end up Withnail and I is really sad and poignant
Love Story.
ET. when the feds got hold of him, they should've got the anal probes out and carried out loads of tests on the wrinkly little bastid. Let's see how they like?!
people are just posting the names of sad films
re-read the OP people
Sad endings
Atonement
English Patient
Walk the Line was quite sad throughout I thought, would have been a blubfest if they had finished with 'Hurt'
Thelma and Louise
Eden Lake
Open Water
3 fab films with quality endings. Probably "downbeat" rather than "sad".
The Amerivan remake of The Vanishing (Jeff Bridges one) - a great film spoiled by the American hero ending - better off watching the original Dutch version.
henry - portrait of a serial killer, bleakest ending to a film i've seen
Miracle on 34th Street.
The court finds Chris Kringle mad as a sack full of badgers.
No Christmas ever again.
Actually, that wouldn't benefit the film. It'd be hella sad though.
Bambi.
She experienced a moral learning curve with the tin man, the lion and the scarecrow and was duped by trickery but finally made it back to Kansas where, I think Dorothy and Toto should have ended up under this.
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How about The Great Escape? McQueen hit by machine gun fire and his bleeding corpse left hanging mournfully on the barbed wire?
The Great Escape is based on a true story so they couldn't really change it surely?
the last Bourne film.
Logan's Run - the first time I watched it, it was introduced by Mark Kermode, who advised turning off ten minutes before the end. I did and it was a great film.
I made the mistake of watching it right to the end years later and was dreadfully disappointed!
As for films with 'sad' endings already - I loved Invasion of the Body Snatchers, particularly the 1978 remake - top notch ending 😀
But all the following alien rescue guff is pure Spielberg schmaltz and not how Kubric would have envisaged it.
i was under the impression it was the other way round! the schamltzy ending was in fact kubricks originial idea. it was on wikipedia anyway, referenced from here http://www.movingpictureshow.com/dialogues/mpsSpielbergCruise.html so could well all be nonsense.
"People pretend to think they know Stanley Kubrick, and think they know me, when most of them don't know either of us. And what's really funny about that is, all the parts of A.I. that people assume were Stanley's were mine. And all the parts of A.I. that people accuse me of sweetening and softening and sentimentalizing were all Stanley's. The teddy bear was Stanley's. The whole last 20 minutes of the movie was completely Stanley's. The whole first 35, 40 minutes of the film – all the stuff in the house – was word for word, from Stanley's screenplay. This was Stanley's vision."
Ian's actual end was not quite as simple as the movie "Control" implied.
Atrocity Exhibition, indeed...
Can't see the point in films with sad endings, I watch films for escapism and enjoyment, not to be left miserable at the end.
Million Dollar Baby. probably the most gut-wrenchingly, desperately sad ending to a film ever.
But well worth watching cos it's 100% of ace and has got the lovely Hilary S**** in it.
OMG
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grievoustim - Memberpeople are just posting the names of sad films
re-read the OP people
"Groundhog Day".
My fantasy ending was - they dance happily through the snow to the restaurant.
Bill asks "What's the special today?" and waitress says:
"Blood sausage"...
The wrestler
Oh yes. I've just re-read the OP.
I prefer a list of films with sad endings though. Sorry 😉
in respect to the OP asking for films that SHOULD have had sad endings I recommend the Shawshank Redemption what a preposterous American Hollywood Shmaltzy unrelaistic ending ........feel sure this will be a poular choice as that ending just ruined the film
my dog skip
the fountain
I once ruined a "happy ending" film for the rest of the cinema.
"Sleeples In Seattle".
The bit where Meg Ryan's character makes it to the top of the Empire State Building as Tom Hank's character and his son are on the way down. She walks onto the observation platform and I go (loud enough for everyone to hear):
"Backpack".
Independence Day. Massive alien spacecraft look like they're going to annihilate the human race but they missed the fact that THE USA HAVE GOT WARPLANES, AN EX-FIGHTER PILOT PRESIDENT AND WILL ****IN SMITH.
God bless 'em.
It'd have been much better if the film ended with a very big alien weapon followed by a large cloud of dust and molten rocks.
Titanic should have had a sadder ending. Then it wouldn't have needed "My Heart Will Go On" as the credits rolled.
I am a fan of Blood Diamond, but the ending is too upbeat. We leave the fatally wounded hero fighting off the dead-eyed EO troops, and then we see that his friends are actually creating a happy ending. We don't need to see that. It needs to stop at exactly the point that For Whom The Bell Tolls does.
Independence Day is perfect as is, no need to change it.
+1 on wishing for a sad ending to Hannah Montana, death to her and her father, "Jackson Triumphant" or similar.
A poignant ending to Toy Story 2, the camera slowly zooming out on Woody beating uselessly on the museum glass case he's stuck in, the lights dimming, the kids going home...
the original Tarantino scripted ending to "True Romance" had Christian Slater's character killed in the final shoot out.
Tony Scott changed it to a "look, he's not dead really" ending
Aliens has a fairly happy ending (in that Ripley, the little girl and the bloke from terminator all survive) - but then she wakes up at the start of Alien 3 and the girl and her boyfriend are both dead, and she has an Alien in her stomach. Kind of takes the shine off!
T2 could've done without that bloody corny thumbs up at the end.
I loved the ending to The Departed - looked like it was setting up for the very predictable ending (all round ace film, actually).
I'm not a fan of musicals, so Chicago and Moulin Rouge should have had sad (gory) endings IMHO. Perhaps Renee Zelwegger could have fried in the chair?
Any fillum with the face pulling boy, what's his name? A h yes, Leonardo de Caprio would be vastly improved by seeing him torn limb from limb during the closing credits.
And Mutiny on the Buses would have been brilliant if Blakey had sacked Stan and Jack and run off with Olive.