The main character thinks things are hopeless and kills all the others with him to save them from a horrible death. Then the mist clears and he realizes they would have been okay.
I grew up on the original Star Trek series. Star Trek: The Motion Picture was mediocre, but I excused it because I allowed for the fact that it takes actors, producers, writers, etc. some time to regain their sea legs when reviving a show that was canceled over a decade before. So along comes Wrath of Khan. Bringing back a villain from the original series was a pretty good idea, but then the writers did the unthinkable. Not only did they kill off Spock, they also left an opening to bring him back to life. Either kill a character or don’t. Don’t cheapen a main character’s death by bringing him back through some technological hocus pocus. It cheapens the death to begin with by making it “not such a big deal.”
I thought the “Mist” had the perfect gut-punch, unexpected ending. I don’t know how else you would’ve ended “No Country”, but I get why you wouldn’t like it. You either like movies that focus more on commentary of human nature without a satisfying ending, or you don’t. I think it worked for that, but definitely not in others. If you’ve read/seen other Cormac McCarthy stuff, none of it has an ending that leaves you satisfied.
My list:
Original Blade Runner - Director’s cut was marginally better.
Terminator Salvation - very promising and I loved the dystopian vibe of the movie. Horrible ending. The others after T2 aren’t even worth mentioning.
I Am Legend - they wussed out on the original ending, which would’ve totally changed the vibe for the better.
War of the Worlds (Tom Cruise) - visually awesome movie with one of the worst endings ever.
The lady was caught as a spy and killed herself instead of possibly facing torture.
No Country. Sometimes the bad guy isn’t caught and life goes on.
Never saw Mist but reading the plot I like the ending. People are terrified, no hope in sight, afraid of being torn apart the decide to just end it. Unfortunately they were seconds away from being saved
The Alien franchise. It should have ended with “Aliens”. There was NO topping that. The prequels have been so-so at best. Alien 3 and everything else SUCK. Resurection was possibly one of the worst movies ever made.
The Terminator(s). Same thing. At Terminator 2… Drop the mic and walk off stage. LET IT GO. The rest… SUCK. Especially Rise of the machines and Genesys.
The Martian… Totally and completely plagiarized and STOLE the ending from “Red Planet” with Val Kilmer. It was the last good flick that Val made. The Matt Damon one was a total rip-off.
Having Captain Marvel show up at the most opportune time to save the day while not really contributing anything else to the story was just lazy writing.
How else could it have ended? The only thing I can think of is if Morgan Freeman had dusted him, instead. It was a little too on the nose that Brad Pitt would shoot him, but I would’ve laughed if he’d let him live.
They broke time pretty badly with that movie. I enjoyed the movie, quite a lot. But they broke time in the first movie that involved time travel. At least Terminator took until T3 to do the same. (And the only good thing about Genesys is that the fact that time was broken was openly acknowledged.)
I also thought that the end of Allied was fine. It was bittersweet. She was a German spy. And her husband was going to have to kill her - or they’d both be killed and their child left an orphan. If they’d escaped, they’d have had to have been on the run for the rest of their lives. Which is no way to raise a child. So she killed herself to save her husband and her child. And they (husband and daughter) lived happily-ever-after on a ranch in Western Canada.
I was also fine with the end of The Mist (although I’ve never seen it) because, well, I think one should never give up. They gave up. And the one dude had to live with the consequences of having given up.
I did not like how No Country for Old Men ended. In fact, I don’t like that movie in general.
And the ending of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was that Spock was dead. D-E-D, dead. Leonard Nimoy didn’t want to play the role any more. He pretty much made them kill Spock. So they did. And then ST2 did really well, critically and at the box office, and someone got the brilliant idea to bring Spock back for it - and make the hook for ST3 literally The Search for Spock.
No, Star Trek: Into Darkness. They played the entire thing from Wrath of Khan with Kirk like it was some sort of joke and then skipped the whole, “long, arduous journey of great personal risk,” to bring back Kirk using Tribble blood. This same movie that basically rendered ships like the Enterprise obsolete, since they can now use transporters across many lightyears.
I only saw the first “rebooted” Star Trek movie. Should have renamed it either “Star Dreck” or " I was a teenage starship captain" because it was a juvenile piece of crap that bore about as much resemblance to true Star Trek as Wacky Races looks like the Indy 500. Horrible.
Honestly, I think that’s what made the movie work. That is truly a horror movie. It’s kind of like the end of The Omen, when the little kid turns around and grins at you.
Also, Two Lane Blacktop. I never got it. Did he burn in or was it a commentary on the futility or meaningless of his life?
I need concrete endings. I aced narrative literature through film in college, got an a in the 8th grade for the paper I wrote on 2001 A Space Odyssey, wrote essay after essay in honors english. I’m done with trying to fathom what some writer means, I need closure, in other words a concrete ending.
