posted 06-25-99 05:16 AM ET        

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The ending of "Long kiss goodnight" *gak*, or "Total Recall" *unbelivable-factor 10*, or...

Bishop

posted 06-25-99 05:50 AM ET            

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I think that Total Recall was one very long bad ending!

What about Hercules in NewYork? Arnolds first movie. Horrible ending....

Ambro2000

posted 06-25-99 12:13 PM ET            

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How about Armageddon? "I need to sacrifice myself because we can't figure out how to work up a timer."

Blue Steel (flick with Jamie Lee Curtis) "I am super psycho. You can shoot me, run me over, but I still keep coming! HA HA HA."

Escape from L.A. "I just destroyed civilization, because it annoys me."

posted 06-25-99 01:13 PM ET         

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For honorable mention, this bit from L.A. Confidential:

"Some guys get fame and fortune, others get an ex-hooker and Arizona." (Kim Basinger's character)

Someone in the theater where I saw it actually blurted out, "Oh, THAT'S deep." The audience laughed a lot.

posted 06-25-99 02:42 PM ET         

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Wild Things - Everytime it seemed to end they toss out another plot twist. The first two were interesting, when it got to five I was saying "Just put an Amen to it Padre!"

Your faithful and obedient servant

(T-minus 870 and counting)

posted 06-25-99 03:41 PM ET            

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Frodo: Nope. Depends if you like unfinished endings that leave you room for more. In order to be a truly bad movie ending, it needs to tie up it's loose ends really really badly and leave important ones completely ignored.

Like, though I haven't actually seen Armageddon, I know how it ends, and whew... if they bothered to have a "scientific check" department hired, they probably committed suicide. God help us if we just train some oil drillers to be astronauts in a week (you'd think that it's easier to learn to be a driller in a week than to learn how to use a million bits of high science in a space craft), let a shuttle get destroyed and NOT have the mission a failure on the spot, as well as split a bigger asteroid than we ever found by drilling a lousy 250 m inside it and putting the equivalent of a cap gun shot inside it, and not just split it but split it perfectly. Um, no.

I'm going to have to say, since I haven't seen a lot of movies that my friends have told me have terrible endings, Independence Day. Alien computers are Macs? They really let a craft with humans in and didn't destroy it easily once it was inside? And how long were these shields disabled downstairs? Why didn't the separate ships simply sever contact with the mothership and reboot the system? I can understand the loss of the ship near Area 51, but even without shields, those beasts are formidable. Simply don't open up your superweapon with anything threatening nearby and use your fighters to frag anyone who gets too close. And please, please, please spare me the sappy speech at the end.

posted 06-25-99 04:02 PM ET         

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Hope this isn't too much of a sidetrack but in regards to asteroids there was something in the paper of few months ago about some research on the nature of asteroids(It may have been comets though) which said that a nuclear explosion wouldn't be able to destroy one because they are not necessarily solid but made up of more loosely grouped solid material. Blowup one and you have thousands and thousands of large chunks. You also wouldn't be able to nudge it off trajectory for the same reason. Never saw armageddon so I can't comment on it's bad ending.

As always, I remain,

Your faithful and obedient servant

posted 06-25-99 05:38 PM ET            

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Alien computers are Macs?

This is, in fact the case. Haven't you always wondered why Mac users are so smug about their awful computers? Why they insist on using outdated, incompatible machinery? They are Aliens, that's why! They have to use the Macintosh to stay in contact with the mothership. They're here!

posted 06-25-99 06:43 PM ET            

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Ambro
What about Hercules in NewYork? Arnolds first movie. Horrible ending....

Horrible movie altogether I�d say...

jsorense & Raven of despair
Arrghh, just when I managed to forget it�s existence

Bishop

posted 06-25-99 07:45 PM ET            

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Argh! Krushala, don't remind me .

Valtyr
President, Citizen(s?) Against Sci-Fi

posted 06-26-99 11:32 AM ET            

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I disagree about the Star Wars films -- I just can't.

Anything by Michael Crichton is going to have a lame, deus ex machina ending.

Andromeda Strain: Oh, good, it mutated to something safe just in time.

Sphere: Let's just say it didn't happen.

Jurasic Park (the book): They're artificial, so they can't raise their young and will die out.

What about Waterworld? We've found dry land, but I'm still a fish out of water (HA!).

Showgirls just sucked, period. Strippers struggling for the top, yeah. Reminds me of Roadhouse, the stupid story of a bouncer fighting to save his bar. Patrick Swayze at his low point.

posted 06-26-99 11:42 AM ET            

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On Jurrasic Park: Umm, no! In the movie, they just happily leave an island full of dinosaurs behind with not a care in the world. In the book, they escape to the mainland after the island is firebombed and survive by eating those soy products. And it was put quite scarily and in a subtle way, too.

I agree with you on Sphere and the Andromena Strain, though. The people in the Terminal Man were idiots from the start. I still think that Crighton's best book was his first, The Great Train Robbery.

posted 06-26-99 04:48 PM ET            

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DerekM
Patrick Swayze at his low point.

Did Patrick Swayze have any high points ?

Bishop

posted 06-26-99 04:54 PM ET            

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DerekM
Your comment on Waterworld wa not in place. This was realy a nice movie, and the ending had much more to say then the words you posted here.

MiKaeLe
(Drowning in beer, not in water)

posted 06-26-99 06:48 PM ET            

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The worst ending of a movie comes at the end of the worst movie ever made. I refer of course to "Monster A Go Go", a piece of Grade Z tripe so low on the rankings of bad movies it has to look way up the list to see where "Plan 9 from Outer Space" is.

At the end of this little glob of cinema the director reveals that the monster that has been terrorizing everyone in the film for the last ninety minutes never really existed at all. No explanation is given for how such a non-existant monster could kill five people and terrorize dozens of others. The director just leaves little details like that to the audience's imagination.

posted 06-26-99 11:52 PM ET            

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Acutally, if I remember correctly, the book Jurassic Park ended with Grant implying that Isla Sorna would be bombed by Costa Rican 'copters, but several raptors or compys escaped on a boat and were eating their way (intelligently, eating the nutrient they were provided by the humans by themselves) to the isolated mountains.

Not exactly dues ex machina, i'd say in this case.

For Sphere movie, it was boring enough that i just decided to occupy myself by doing something else.

posted 06-27-99 12:49 PM ET            

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Imran: You're both right on the Andromena Strain. It mutated to something safe just in time, and to prevent it from mutating into something nasty (which would happen if you nuked it), he had to save the day.

Q^3: Exactly what I said, the dinos escape. I mean, they had to- if you read the beginning of the book, you know that some took a boat ride already.

It's Isla Nublar, by the way.

posted 06-28-99 06:40 AM ET            

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Jurassic Park pissed me off because Crichton was simply rehashing Westworld...

Starfire:
Why should the aliens in Independence Day even bother using their Big Gun at all? I mean, their forcefield seems pretty effective...why not simply sit on anything you wanted destroyed...those ships are so big anything would get flattened.

posted 06-28-99 08:32 AM ET            

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OK, wasn't there a part of the NOVEL Jurrasic Park where the characters have stumbled upon a velociraptor hatching ground, and the babies are all being ignored and stepped on because, apparently, raising young isn't instinctual but learned?

In the book version of Sphere, the three survivors with their "superpowers" all agree that nothing happened -- of course, they weren't nice enough to bring back all of the people who died during the book at the same time.

Are you joking about Waterworld? Costner's acting was so wooden, he should have bobbed up to the surface. The ending was very lame. Why did he have to leave? Primarily, it was the old cliche about the tragic hero, but watered down with 90s family values. Boo hoo.

Read "Beyond the Physics of Trek." The author talks about how ships the size of the ones in Independence day would have caused massive devestation just from flying over the cities. The mother ship (if it was as large as it was supposed to be) would have played havic with the Earth due to tidal forces, or some such thing. They could have just flown in, let the Earth fall to pieces, and THEN invaded.

posted 06-28-99 08:36 AM ET            

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On the book: I like Hammond as a bastard far more than the friendly grandfather figure in the movie. Hammond pissed me off to no end in the movie. Aside from a little preachiness, the book was superior to the movie in every way.

"StarFire?" I'm going to assume that's me. Exactly, I've said the exact same thing on other threads (like the fact that considering the size and speed of the thing, the cities would be flattened by sonic booms before they'd even need to use their weapon).

posted 06-28-99 10:02 AM ET            

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Ooops...don't know what I was thinking, cos I even went throught the thread to double check I had the right poster!
That's Monday mornings for you I suppose.

I remember sitting in the pub after seeing ID with my mates and we hashed through all the absurdities in that film...the chief ones being:
1) The dumb Big Gun...
2) Alien tech compatible with Macs...
3) Aliens needing to use our satellites to stay in touch with each other...(I might have that last one wrong...)

Anyway...bad endings. Hmmmm...I know I've seen loads, but I seem to have blanked them all from my memory.

posted 06-28-99 04:22 PM ET         

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Khan Singh,

What movie did "Wizard of OZ" ripoff?
It was made in 1939 and while other things have ripped it off(Dallas comes to mind) I
don't recall any movies prior to 1939 that used that particular device. Can yo tell me which ones have?

Your faithful and obedient servant

posted 06-28-99 07:16 PM ET            

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This proves my point that independence day was not a science fiction film. It was a big budget blockbuster action flick.

The aliens weren't interested in strategic targets anyway. They just wanted the natural resources. I suppose they felt that humans would get in the way of them taking the natural resources (whatever they are). Was will smith's ship supposed to be going mach one. I don't remember. I think he slowed down in the canyon. But he certainly learned how to fly an alien ship pretty fast. Completely different physics of flight.

posted 06-29-99 02:40 AM ET         

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One of the all-time classics for bad endings (and bad advertising) was a video I say once - "Final Approach". It had heaps of pictures of a SR-71 on the front and seemed to promise a great flying movie - there was a 2-minute flight sequence at the start and a few flashbacks through the movie. The rest of the time was spent with the pilot in a Psychiatrists office discussing his life. At the end you find out the Pilot's dead and the psych is actually God. *blecchh*

James

posted 06-30-99 06:19 AM ET            

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Zombie Flesh Eaters.

Horrible ending

Ambro2000

posted 06-30-99 08:36 AM ET            

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walrus: The movie "The Wizard of Oz" ripped off the book called "The Wizard of Oz."

Alice in Wonderland is definitely the worst in that category, though, "It was all a dream!" Well then why did I read the darn book?

posted 06-30-99 04:41 PM ET         

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Sorry, still a bit confused. How is a movie based on a book a ripoff? Is Sir Laurence Olivier's Hamlet a ripoff? I'll admit that a movie may BADLY reproduce a book but I would think a ripoff is claiming something is new or your own invention when in fact it was done before. And of course there is always the fine line, Homage - Ripoff, Homage - Ripoff.

"I'm Ready for my close-up Mr. DeMille!"

Your faithful and obedient servant

posted 07-01-99 01:32 PM ET            

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SPOILERS below
(naturally, since this is an Endings thread)

I agree with Octopus on Ronin. Not a bad ending.

The Abyss has a goofy ET kind of ending and a very fake looking spacehip. I thought it would have been much better had Ed Harris died down below while saving everybody. A sacrifice. Too many movies are chicken about killing off main characters and instead pull punches for a tidy, happy ending.

The Rapture took an okay movie and gave it an utterly silly ending which was opposite in tone from the entire film.

But the big prize goes to a 1950's version of 1984 that completely missed the boat. Winston and Julia are convicted and shot by a firing squad, shouting "Down with Big Brother". A flag-waving voiceover came on before the end credits about the need for vigilance against communism. Very sickening what they did to the book.

Most summer blockbusters (ID4, Armageddon) should get automatic entry on this list.

posted 07-02-99 04:41 AM ET            

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I think, essentially as Earwicker says, that a truly bad ending is one that is bolted on the end of an otherwise half-way decent film...the sort of ending where it's clear the producers (not the director) thought that the film needed a happier ending to it, for instance. The big summer films have a tendency to be ****e throughout, so a crappy ending is only to be expected...

Of course, having said that, I still can't think of a good example.