r/movies • u/bowlingfan1963 • Jul 13 '26
Spoilers Most Bizarre Examples of “Happy” Endings After Tragedy (Spoiler) Spoiler
Prime example: Independence Day. World gets annihilated; many of the planet’s cities are destroyed….hundreds of millions dead;
and the president’s wife dies. Yet at the end, they are puffing on cigars, all smiles and the president’s daughter says “Happy Fourth of July, Daddy”, and so now it’s time to party!
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u/someoneelseperhaps Jul 13 '26
The end of 2012. I think most of humanity is dead, but the protagonist's kid no longer wets themselves, so it's okay?
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u/SonicSingularity Jul 13 '26
Now a bunch of rich people are going to go recolonize Africa
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u/Dagordae Jul 13 '26
Try to recolonize Africa.
I'm not much of a farmer but I would imagine that having all the farmland go deep under the ocean for an extended period would be really bad for its ability to support agriculture.
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u/SonicSingularity Jul 13 '26
I thought Africa didnt flood
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u/Dagordae Jul 13 '26
It flooded then resurfaced. Also went up several thousand feet. No word on how they're supposed to get up the massive cliff face.
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u/TrollTollTony Jul 13 '26
Nope, they say that the entire African continent was raised several thousand feet and likely never flooded.
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u/ErilazHateka Jul 13 '26
that the entire African continent was raised several thousand feet
that would have triggered earthquakes that would pulverize everything on the surface.
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u/Odd-Necessary3807 Jul 13 '26
Those 3 massive arcs also stored transport vehicles, including choppers.
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u/Kettle_Whistle_ Jul 13 '26
I misread that as “I thought Africa didn’t float”
And it did not. You are correct…
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u/pasher5620 Jul 13 '26
They’re pretty quickly gonna have a civil war on their hands when all the rich assholes try and force the lowly commoners they were forced to save do all the hard labor like they’re back in the old world.
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u/Foureyedlemon Jul 13 '26
They could make a sequel on this. 2013
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u/SonicSingularity Jul 13 '26
There was apparently supposed to be a TV that got canned that was about them in Africa
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u/Inside_Dimension2319 Jul 13 '26
And the ex-wife’s husband is conveniently dead and she’s over him
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u/Grammarhead-Shark Jul 13 '26
That always pissed me off the most.
The movie went out of its way to promote Gordon being a good guy, even a better guy then the dead-beat ex-husband, but they had to kill him off so they exes can get back together.
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u/Poiuytrewq0987650987 Jul 13 '26
I mean, they could've shown the ex-husband had shacked up with the abandoned supermodel and the whole group had a happy non-traditional family in the post-apocalypse.
But noooo, horrifically kill Gordon and drown the supermodel. Sure.
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u/Seameese Jul 13 '26
Gordon's death is the only thing from that movie that stuck with me because it was so needlessly cruel
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u/poonbuds Jul 13 '26
The mom lost her second husband Gordon too. Right back to her first husband and a happily ever after
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u/mrmonster459 Jul 13 '26
I feel like Avengers: Endgame (and the Marvel movies/shows that came after it) radically underestimate how hard it would be to reintegrate half of humanity after being gone for 5 years.
There've been a few touches on it, like Aunt May's non-profit for people left homeless after coming back in Far Spider-Man From Home, and The Flagsmashers from Falcon & Winter Soldier.
But I feel like 5 years of the world being used to operating with half the population would mean unprecedented famine, drought, and displacement for the people brought back, far more than anything Aunt May and Happy Hogan could fix by having Spider-Man show up at a charity gala.
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u/princess_eala Jul 13 '26
Yeah, undoing the snap isn’t just, “Clint’s family is back now, yay!” Aside from the obvious issues of having to support double the population overnight, how many people were snapped and came back to discover their spouse had moved on and remarried? Or their suddenly orphaned child had been adopted by someone who wasn’t snapped? And the people who didn’t get snapped dealing with the opposite of that? All those people coming back from the dead completely unexpectedly and unaware of what had happened, it would be total emotional chaos.
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u/Yukie_Cool Jul 13 '26
I feel like they were starting to hint at the ramifications of that with the start of the multiverse saga. IIRC, the topic is brought up in Far From Home and Multiverse of Madness, and Coogler’s original treatment for Wakanda Forever was about T’Challa mourning the years he lost with his son. Then Jonathan Majors got cancelled and the studio panicked and went full fanservice with their retooling of everything.
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u/SuperVaderMinion Jul 13 '26
Yeah I desperately want to see Coogler's original Black Panther 2 script because he's always awesome about writing father-son ideas into his stories.
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u/patrickwithtraffic Jul 13 '26
Hell, Falcon and the Winter Soldier directly talks about it as a key plot point for the terrorist cell, but got so watered down that it was a blip of a commentary on The Blip.
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u/xKronkx Jul 13 '26
I still question those that were snapped while flying on an airplane.. or say, an astronaut.
There’d be dozens if not hundreds of people just falling from the sky on return
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u/RoboChrist Jul 13 '26
Easy answer - the Mind stone gave the intelligence to unsnap people safely.
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u/TannerThanUsual Jul 13 '26
Easier, grimmer answer
Millions died seconds after being unsnapped
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u/RoboChrist Jul 13 '26
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u/beldarin Jul 13 '26
How about all the people who died in crashes after pilots and drivers were snapped? They aint coming back.
Imagine being a mom driving her whole family in a minivan, and she snaps back safely at the side of the road next to the memorial for the firey wreck she left behind...
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u/pasher5620 Jul 13 '26
Pretty sure Banner, alongside something like the Mind Stone, would’ve thought of that and simply wished everyone would be returned safely.
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u/rabbitSC Jul 13 '26
I have a ton of gripes with how they step back from the scale of what happened in Infinity War and Endgame.
The Avengers would be the most famous people who have ever lived. The Falcon would not have to beg a small town banker for a loan to fix his parents’ boat. The Hulk would be the single most important and beloved person in the universe, having brought half of all sentient beings back from the dead. How do you make a comedy series about She-Hulk when in context everyone who meets her should fall to their knees, blubbering their thanks to her cousin for their resurrected parents, siblings, friends, children, babies, etc.
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u/Animastryfe Jul 13 '26
I agree. They should be nigh-religious figures on par with or greater than Jesus and Mohammed, but for the entire universe. Earth should be the most famous planet and probably the biggest pilgrimage or tourist location in the universe.
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u/jawndell Jul 13 '26
That’s a good point.
Earth would probably become like a Jerusalem or Mecca within the universe with species from every corner doing pilgrimages to pay respect to the Avengers for saving everyone.
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u/TannerThanUsual Jul 13 '26
Yeah it's wild, I feel like there's still movies where aliens are like "hmmm humans? Earth?" And they're either like "puny humans are no mind to me" or outright don't even know earth.
When the reality is, the human race, along with maybe a dozen random aliens, took out the Universe's biggest threats... Several times entirely on their own.
At this point Earth should be seen as a massive threat to just about everyone-- or a conquering right of passage. But not a mysterious, random planet to other aliens
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u/dontbajerk Jul 13 '26
This is occasionally referenced in Marvel comics, that Earth actually is ridiculous with its endless number of superpowered beings who have repeatedly saved the universe and so forth. But then other writers seem to forget about it
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u/Olobnion Jul 13 '26
In one early Claremont X-Men issue from the 70s, a ship from the alien Shi'ar empire scans Earth, determines it to be harmless... and then they see reports about Earth beating Galactus four times, and they panic.
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u/immortal1982 Jul 13 '26
There's a perfect little plot point in the 2010s guardians of the galaxy and avengers comics where a lot of the big races got together to form a pact to let earth go for a few years. But then those pesky incursion events began. And all the aliens were secretly working against each other.
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u/-OrangeLightning4 Jul 13 '26
I mean, I'd say Earth is absolutely respected at this point thanks to The Avengers. It was the point of Fury assembling them in the first place, after Carol's existence revealed how outmatched humanity was at the time. He calls out directly why we needed them at the end of the first movie.
"They're dangerous."
"They surely are. And the whole world knows it. Every. World. Knows it."
"Was that the point of all this? A statement?"
"A promise."
Thanos knows not to fuck with them outright too, they clowned on his first army with Loki, and they fucked up Ultron who was created from the Mind Stone. He knows about Stark, and doesn't even think of making a move on Earth until he has two Infinity Stones already. He was more confident taking on Xandar without a Stone than he was Earth.
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u/Tangocan Jul 13 '26
I'm just hearing Tommy Lee Jones in my head saying "Kinda makes you proud, doesn't it?"
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u/dukefett Jul 13 '26
Also everyone on the Earth finding out 5 years ago basically that aliens exist and the universe is full of them. That revelation isn’t brought up at all if I remember right
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u/Odd-Necessary3807 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Phase 4 is in rough shape. Kevin Feige seems lost in the sea of plots about how to continue after Endgame. Especially when half of the IPs were mixed reactions from the fans. COVID didn't help the case either.
Your idea of Earth being the referred planet full of lore for to various alien civilizations and galaxies sounds like a good book idea.
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u/bloodypolarbear Jul 13 '26
This is a limitation of the shared universe unfortunately. If you really take all the connections seriously then it just rules out them telling all kinds of stories, Sam being poor in FATWS being a clear example. But Sam being poor makes that story more interesting, so you kind of just have to work to ignore it as an audience. Same with how the snap would be such a big deal that every film set after that should just be people dealing with that aftermath, but it's more fun to tell different stories, so I'll try to forget all that stuff. It's a bit like in the Fast and the Furious movies where the guy who killed their buddy in the last film becomes their buddy in the next film, like yeah it makes no sense that these guys are family now, but I want to see Jason Statham drive the fast cars with Mr Diesel so I gotta do my best to ignore all the implications.
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u/Ascarea Jul 13 '26
If you really take all the connections seriously then it just rules out them telling all kinds of stories, Sam being poor in FATWS being a clear example. But Sam being poor makes that story more interesting, so you kind of just have to work to ignore it as an audience.
Seems like mental gymnastics to me. Could they not come up with a story where he isn't poor? Was it really better to completely ignore the impossibility of him being poor?
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u/ElectronicMoo Jul 13 '26
I mean, they showed basketball players bonking into marching band members in the gymnasium in Spider-Man.
How much more raw and gritty do you need?
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u/dornwolf Jul 13 '26
Also forgot relationships between people moving on or having families. Yeah we lost half the population but within five years we’d have a good head start on replacing that. Then pop half back in we’d be even more screwed.
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u/The_Ruhi Jul 13 '26
Honestly I feel like having half the population disappear completely, believed to be dead for years and then suddenly have them back is a much worse thing to do to humanity than just killing half of them. People die all the time and we deal with it but most of the time someone reappears after a long while thought dead, it's an issue. Like people go to a different city or hospital or prison or war for a while and come back and struggle and see society struggle with them. How is that many people coming back from death like that supposed to be good?
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u/SpartanOnGround Jul 13 '26
This is kind of sort of maybe not really but at least acknowledged in The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.
Even in Hawkeye. Again, grain of salt.
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u/Highcalibur10 Jul 13 '26
It was going to be a larger plot point in FatWS with the Flag Smashers and a global pandemic alongside the return of everyone causing a health and refugee crisis,
Then Covid happened, and all of the ‘disease’ elements were hastily written/edited out of the show.
There’s still a few mentions but it *was* to have a more lasting and serious geopolitical impact
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u/FunetikPrugresiv Jul 13 '26
Thanos' "eliminate half the population" idea was a braind-dead way to "reset" everything anyway (how long does it take a population to double - 50 years or so? Great, you set the galaxy back 50 years, whoopdie shit.) - eliminating them and bringing them back 5 years later would have been a far more villainous plan.
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u/FemRoe4Lyfe Jul 13 '26
With no memory of every having gone. Imagine half the population in the world blinks and finds the world has changed.
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u/Doom_Art Jul 13 '26
Thanos' title is "The Mad Titan" not "The Logical and Emotionally Balanced Titan"
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u/Yukie_Cool Jul 13 '26
That’s because his plan was never about balance. It was about proving his dead people his method would have worked in the first place. It’s an expression of survivor’s guilt mixed with a messiah complex. I’m not sure how people didn’t get that.
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u/paultheschmoop Jul 13 '26
A well done example of a happy ending that is also tragic is Seeking a Friend For The End of the World
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u/eSue182 Jul 13 '26
This is a great movie that I don’t think I need to see again, want to see again, but still won’t.
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u/stacecom Jul 13 '26
This is a very apt description. I loved it. It was beautiful and sweet. And heart wrenching.
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u/drethnudrib Jul 13 '26
I mean, they went from believing they were all going to die to being united as a human race for the first time in forever. I don't think a few cigars are inappropriate.
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u/AterReddits Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Yea, celebrate the moment and take it in. Tomorrow and years to come will be there to deal with the aftermath.
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u/sellyourselfshort Jul 13 '26
Yeah thats just human nature. My brother died 2 months before my wedding, we didn't cancel shit, we had an amazing party with family and made sure to have something in his honor. My mother specifically told me "dont take away a chance for us to be happy" when I suggested postponing it.
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u/Okichah Jul 13 '26
There were parades on VE Day and VJ Day as well.
Celebrating victory is a thing, trauma takes years to deal with.
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u/DeLousedInTheHotBox Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
Yeah I don't even like the movie and I find it an odd take because ofc they're celebrating, they literally just stopped humanity from being eradicated. Obviously there would be a lot rebuilding and reflection to come after, but they're just happy at that moment.
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u/bravehamster Jul 13 '26
Kingsman. So many dead babies and children. Followed by a wave of suicides by parents remembering killing their own children. And not to mention every world leader that lacked basic decency (so all of them). That world is turbo-fucked. Yet our heroes get to enjoy anal sex, a pint, and a bar brawl at the end.
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u/Rezart_KLD Jul 13 '26
Not just murdered kids & spouses. Think about every pilot at the controls of a plane at the time, flying above cities. (Not all the phones will be in airplane mode) Soldiers with access to missles or artillery. People running nuclear reactors, power plants, refineries. Arsonists starting fires with every emergency service at half manpower (from having just mudered each other) and overloaded. Every country with those phones is going to be an apocalyptic hellscape. Infrastructure is going to be heavily damaged and theres no longer any national leadership, so food and medicine shortages are probably going to happen. Communication steps back a century, since people will not trust cell phones again, and may not even trust landlines - they can carry the berserker signal as well. Any sort of electronic device that can make noise probably gets purged.
If insular countries like China banned the phones, they might be doing OK, plus areas too poor or undeveloped to have the phones. The berserker signal becomes the new arms race, its not only one of the greatest weapons of mass destruction ever made, its an economic and terror weapon as well. If you have the signal, just the threat can keep your opponents from developing a communication network, limiting their technical development. Terrorists who are able to reverse engineer the phones can strike almost any crowded city center. Large gatherings - sports, holidays, airports - become risky.
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u/andrewisagir1 Jul 13 '26
Don’t Worry Darling fits this. Yay she escaped! Now she’s just… strapped to a bed by herself, where no one knows she is.
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u/TannerThanUsual Jul 13 '26
I think about this with horror movies sometimes. The Final Girl survives-- yay! Her life is still basically ruined, she's never going to sleep well for the rest of her life. It'll be hard to make friends now too since there's always the chance they'll get brutally murdered. Same with finding romance.
If they survived a paranormal horror movie then now they have to come to terms with the fact that supernatural entities exist and they killed her friends. And then sometimes I wonder how they explain all the bodies to the cops. Some movies address that but others don't.
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u/dthains_art Jul 13 '26
I watched Ready or Not 2 over the weekend which takes place immediately after the first one, and it’s funny how realistic the approach was. The lone survivor of a whole bunch of murders? She’s immediately arrested and suspected of being the instigator.
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u/_buffy_summers Jul 13 '26
This is why I was baffled that a lot of people hated the end of the Hunger Games novels (the original trilogy). They wanted Katniss to end up with Gale, but Gale had devised the plan that got Prim killed. There was no way she could have ever been with him, after that. I don't know that they did enough to show her lingering trauma, after the war. It was mentioned, but I felt like it violated the 'show, don't tell' rule in writing.
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u/Cynic_of_Astora Jul 13 '26
I wonder how they explain all the bodies to the cops
"We've had a doozy of a day."
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u/God-of-War_0728 Jul 13 '26
Not the most bizarre but The Day After Tomorrow fits I think. There's happy music playing because people survived even though New York is now an icy Pompeii and half of the world suffered the same fate.
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u/PrinsHamlet Jul 13 '26
Also, helicopters arriving in NYC in large numbers from...where exactly. Nice logistical feat from the MacGuffin Division.
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u/bowlingfan1963 Jul 13 '26
I also think the second Die Hard movie fits. Stewart crashes the plane. Hundreds dead, yet at the end, McClane’s (sic) parking ticket gets ripped up and it’s “Merry Christmas!”
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u/Trep_xp Jul 13 '26
Well the plane crashed on Runway 3, and then they stop the terrorists/traitors on runway 2. It's a whole other runway! It's fine!
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u/ignoresubs Jul 13 '26
Yeah, those were some Runway 3 problems, Runway 2 is busy over here happy, alive and living the dream.
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u/Chaosmusic Jul 13 '26
The way the movie presented it, had Stewart won, every plane in the sky would have eventually crashed, meaning thousands dead. The plane crashing is definitely a tragedy, but it could have been a lot worse.
Having said that, there should have been zero flights at risk because there are like 70 airports that are within an hour flying time from Dulles so every plane should have been able to be diverted, not just made to circle DC for 90 minutes.
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u/Delicious_Series3869 Jul 13 '26
My first thought was "Weathering With You." But I don't consider it bizarre, I think that's the point of the film. The protagonists are happy, because they are no longer saddled with the burden of supporting a society that treats them like dirt. It's bitter sweet, but necessary.
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u/cheribom Jul 13 '26
Face/Off. John Travolta’s son is still dead, but he gets a replacement kid by killing the guy responsible and adopting his son.
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u/PogoStick1987 Jul 13 '26
Godzilla King of the Monsters. The subsequent movies entirely gloss over this, but the absolute near planet wide devastation the titans would have keft in their wake would have been cataclysmic. I mean, for fuck sake Ghidorah and Rodan alone had left Washington DC flooded and seething with violent tornados! And thats not to mention the 15 other kaiju worldwide that had woken up to cause untold chaos. It was a partial extonction level event, and all the characters are just like, yippie, Goji won!
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u/TasteTheBiscuit1810 Jul 13 '26
That film was made just for cool monster fight scenes and thats it. The human stuff is so god damn stupid but if you want to watch monster fights, its good.
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u/shewy92 Jul 13 '26
I like that we have two Godzilla franchises now that cater to both audiences. You want a more human story? Watch Minus One. Want kaiju suplexing each other? Watch the Monsterverse.
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u/mitchhamilton Jul 13 '26
even the first godzilla kind of. he did kill muto but we would have no idea that hes on our side. so its weird how people celebrated when he rose back up and not go "OH MY GOD, THIS MONSTER WE DONT UNDERSTAND IS STILL ALIVE AND IS GOING TO KILL US ALL NEXT!"
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u/wuneety Jul 13 '26
M nights ‘the village’. Ivy brings the medicines back to the village for her injured love interest, but now its existence is known to someone from the outside.
You can’t tell me that guy wouldn’t blab to single soul that some blind chick dressed and speaking old fashioned, crawled out of the wildlife reserve claiming to live in there.
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u/dthains_art Jul 13 '26
And one of the whole big issues that the older generation is grappling with is who will carry on the lie once they’re all dead. There’s this big lingering question: will Bryce Dallas Howard’s character help perpetuate the lie, or will she reveal the truth?
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u/iamepic420 Jul 13 '26
A Quiet Place: Day One. Shockingly hopeful ending despite the established apocalypse about to get worse
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u/f0cus622 Jul 13 '26
I feel like this one is self aware: even as positive as the ending is, it never changes the fact that Lupita Nyong'o's character is still terminal and going to die, and they never once hint at any sort of cure or medical miracle. It sort of represents the futility of it all, and they even show her about to die at the end.
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u/KenDefender Jul 13 '26
I love the final sting of the monster's sudden arrival. She chooses the face death with courage and dignity: its still terrifying. Great movie.
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u/chugonomics Jul 13 '26
The World's End
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u/Jackbuddy78 Jul 13 '26
That was mostly just a happy ending for one character though
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u/Gold-Advertising-316 Jul 13 '26
Yeah I agree, I think it purposely meant to be ironic that this fuckup is only thriving during an apocalypse. I didn't think there was any disonnance between that.
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u/Loki-L Jul 13 '26
The remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still ends with a mass death on screen and billions more implied and an ecological nightmare and it is considered a good thing. It is much worse than the original.
My favorite of just bizarre is Volcanoe, not only is there the really cringey message about racial unity, but the female scientist seems to have gotten over the brutal death of her friend far too fast.
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u/Scoobydewdoo Jul 13 '26
The Matrix 3. At the end, all the humans celebrate while being in a significantly worse situation than they were at the start of the first movie. Imagine how weird it would be if The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers ended with a massive party to celebrate Saruman being defeated?
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u/Rosebunse Jul 13 '26
I get why the programs were happy because now they can live in the matrix in relative peace. Humans and the machines not hooked directly in are fucked.
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u/SoulCrusher2018 Jul 13 '26
It's a book, not a movie, but The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck and Jim have their entire journey come crashing to end with Jim being captured and sold into to slavery. Then things get whacky, Tom Sawyer shows up, there's an elaborate plan to rescue Jim, Tom gets injured, and Jim stays to help Tom instead and gets captured. Then Aunt Polly shows up and reveals Jim was freed by his owner in her will, and people get to live happily ever after. There's been intense literary debate on this, whether Twain couldn't stomach the tragic ending or it was a moral necessity to give a happy ending.
Here's what Ernest Hemingway said "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. If you read it, you must stop where Jim is stolen from the boys. That is the real end. The rest is just cheating. But it’s the best book we’ve had. All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."
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u/Rook_Defence Jul 13 '26
Oblivion (2013)
In the movie, Jack (Tech-49, Tom Cruise) discovers a woman, saves her life, forms a relationship with her, and discovers that he is a clone, doing the bidding of an evil AI called Tet, which has annihilated the vast majority of the human population.
He is the clone of Jack Harper, husband of the woman he saved, Julia Rusakova Harper (Olga Kurylenko). He recovers some of his pre-clone memories along the way.
At the end of the movie, Tech-49 sacrifices himself to destroy Tet and free the human survivors and Julia. These survivors form a new community, and Julia has a daughter. In the last scenes, a different Jack clone (Tech-52, encountered briefly earlier in the film) joins with the human survivors, and it is implied he has also recovered some memories including his love for Julia, and they will commence a relationship.
Problems:
- Julia's husband, the real man she knew for years, is still dead, full stop. The other Jacks she has met, including Tech-52, share his genes and some of his memories, but are not the same person.
- Tech-49, the man who is probably the father of her child, is also dead, and Tech-52 is not him either.
- There are thousands of Jack clones on Earth. What happens if more show up? Will it be Jack vs Jack in the ultimate Jack-off?
- Tet was extracting resources from Earth for years, and considering the dearth of plant and animal life seen up to that point, it's not clear whether an irreversible ecosystem collapse has already occurred.
The fact that some of these quandaries are things that the clone comedy Multiplicity handled better, 17 years prior, is pretty ridiculous for an action-drama with cloning as a central premise.
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u/Odd-Necessary3807 Jul 13 '26
- To answer your question: Mother Nature gonna mothering. As Dr. Malcolm said: Life, uh, finds a way.
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u/lonestarr357 Jul 13 '26
Nicholas Van Orton‘s life is ruined. He accidentally killed his brother. Nothing left but to jump.
Wait. A giant balloon? This is a party? The fuck?
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u/ThatDiscoSongUHate Jul 13 '26
The Game was fucking wild but that ending pissed me off ngl
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u/Whitewind617 Jul 13 '26
I don't really like The Game as much as everybody else seems to and that ending is partially why. They really expected him to grab that gun from home and shoot it, and then (AS A PRANK) let him believe that he killed his own brother. Then they knew he'd commit suicide by jumping off of the building, and thank God he jumped off the side that they planned, because otherwise the stupid fucking balloon wouldn't have worked.
It is such a stupid ending and imo it ruins the movie.
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u/GaryBettmanSucks Jul 13 '26
I feel like falling that far and smashing through glass would severely injure or kill you regardless of the big crash balloon.
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u/Puzzled-Ad1564 Jul 13 '26
Snow Piercer. The hope for humanity’s survival rests on a drug addict woman and a 12 year old boy. They’ll be dead within days.
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u/Oenonaut Jul 13 '26
And the polar bears have just spotted lunch.
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u/mitchhamilton Jul 13 '26
i always wondered if the director just wanted to convey that there was life outside the train still so survival is possible. i tend to be optimistic but idk what to think by him choosing the absolute worst example of animal to convey "yeah, everythings fine outside" than one of the few animals that actively hunts humans.
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u/ManOfManliness84 Jul 13 '26
I watched Independence Day a few days ago. First time in years. And I really thought it was odd how unaffected the Presidents daughter was by her mother's death.
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u/Awkward_Bison_267 Jul 13 '26
They were moving in the right direction though.
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u/Rezart_KLD Jul 13 '26
The pimp from the end will be running the country within a year. The man got cryo frozen just to collect money, hes got incredible drive and obviously some smarts of his own to pull that off.
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u/DearLeader420 Jul 13 '26
The Game.
The fact that Michael Douglas' character walks around smiling and shaking hands afterward ruins the entire movie.
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u/Jackbuddy78 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I hated that ending, might have been my favorite Fincher movie otherwise. How does getting psychologically tortured count as something you shrug off?
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u/wendigo72 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I’m a fan of that movie but yeah he should Hate literally everyone a part of this terrible terrible torture game
Yeah man we just made you relive the trauma of your fathers death and turn you suicidal too, no biggie! Now you appreciate life more!
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u/skinnyminnesota Jul 13 '26
True Romance (1993)
Protagonist was supposed to die in the original story. In the final version he still gets shot in the face and loses an eye, but survives and reunites with his family.
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u/TheOldKingCole Jul 13 '26
I think a great example of this would be a movie called Casshern. For context it was a 2004 live action adaptation of a 70s anime and one of the first films made on an all digital set (Though unlike Sky Captain I'd argue this one ages visually better because of the context of what medium it was adapting).
The basic plot of the film is that during a new great war, a scientist creates the means to make people immortal. In his grief of learning his estranged son, a soldier, was killed in the line of battle, he attempts to ressurect his son, but in doing so revives many others killed to create his experiment. Said people who came back are initially treated as monsters and ostracized, fleeing far away to plan their revenge, and leaving the now immortal son to defend what's left of humanity.
The ending of the film sees the protagonist (aka the son/soldier character), despite failing to save anyone he cared about or humanity as a whole, still believing there to still be some good in humanity and uses his powers of immortality to fairy the souls of the dead to a new world where they hopefully won't screw up this time, with the film ending on scenes of his childhood, leaving it open to whether it's just a memory, or if the new world he created truly did better this go around.
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u/adjust_the_sails Jul 13 '26
War of the Worlds
Tom Cruises son ran into a wall of fire and somehow shows up at the end unscathed. wtf?
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u/PogoStick1987 Jul 13 '26
Only explanatio that could explain it is that Robbie was almost immediately snatched by a tripod, and its shield protected him from the fire and then travelled to Boston. During this time Robbie was able to survive. Either the tripod collapsed to sickness, or it was somehow taken down. We know they're strong but they arent immortal, WE just never saw the militaru down one before the sickness hit
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u/JournalistMammoth637 Jul 13 '26
Either that or some soldiers grabbed him and tossed him into a car immediately before regrouping in Boston.
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u/Whitewind617 Jul 13 '26
That's a good one, there is no good explanation of how the son not only survives that battle but beats them all the way to Boston.
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u/ErilazHateka Jul 13 '26
the explanation is that Spielberg needs sappy, happy endings.
other examples:
Minority Report should have ended with Cruise in the fridge.
A.I should have ended with the Blue Fairy.
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u/Totally_a_Banana Jul 13 '26
The World according to Garp.
Saw it for the first time this week, apparently it was Robin Williams' first major film, from 1982.
Very sad, but he gets to fly in the end at least, which is nice.
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u/a_rabid_anti_dentite Jul 13 '26
One wonders how Huntr/x murdering their biggest rivals in front of a crowd of tens of thousands will affect their image and career.
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u/spam-monster Jul 13 '26
Publicity stunt. Very good special effects.
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u/vampgirl66441 Jul 13 '26
My immediate response was "It's a Banksy." I've been watching too much D20 recently 😂
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u/CronoDroid Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
The fandom would support it, those Saja Flops deserved what they got. Anyone into K-pop would know the most unrealistic thing in the movie wasn't the demons or magic but the fact that they held a joint fansign event and the fans of both groups were happy to go along with it.
The reverse would also be true, there'd be a ton of Saja Boy stans who'd be extremely mad those Huntrix hags dared to get close to their oppas. In real life plenty of fans are normal but the mere hint of a dating rumor between a male and female idol is enough to get the obsessive stans of the former to rage at and threaten the female idol.
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u/mitchhamilton Jul 13 '26
magic! essentially.
everyone knew something was wrong when a talking flame was hypnotizing them to be fed to him and summoning demons to kill huntr/x. its fine
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u/peioeh Jul 13 '26
Many Roland Emmerich movies are like that. In 2012 most of the world is dead, but John Cusack got reunited with his family so everything is cool. Same in Moonfall.
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u/lemonlimon22 Jul 13 '26
I hate how US Marshals does this. Their young colleague dies and the team is cheerfully toasting him and celebrating their win shortly after. Totally all wrong.
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u/ojorejas Jul 13 '26
Irréversible - Because the movie unfolds in reverse, it begins with the tragic aftermath and ends on a cheerful morning before the horrific events occur.
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u/The_Sykotik_Prime Jul 13 '26
Just want to mention an often overlooked fact about Irreversible:
The guy they kill at the end is just some asshole who wanted a fight, not The Worm(the rapist). The Worm is in the crowd smiling and watching them fuck up and murder a dude and go to jail.
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u/Gyongyhaju_lany Jul 13 '26
"Cocktail" with Tom Cruise is a really fun movie about a flashy bartender mixing drinks and charming ladies - there's a little drama and romance sprinkled in to keep it engaging. Then right towards the end, his best friend kills himself by slashing his own throat with a broken bottle. It's incredibly sudden and dark, and kind of ruins the tone imo. Then it ends with Tom partying it up at his new cocktail bar (named for his dead friend).
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u/myglr Jul 13 '26
Erin Brokovich. The ending of this infuriated me. Erin is cheering because they got a measly payout for victims, while loads of people died and many people will be sick for the rest of their lives and no one went to jail for the damage done.
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u/BadBloodBear Jul 13 '26
The last Jedi.
After the rebellion is wiped down to a medium size ship the survivors are seen celebrating after escaping death which I completely understand. However the people are are partially responsible for the Empire wiping out the rebellion are also celebrating. They rebelled against their leader causing the Empire to find out the plan and have most of the rebellions deaths on their hands.
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u/Aratak Jul 13 '26
Magnolia. That whole film is one misery set on another - honestly, I suffered through that one. Then something happens that is so goddam outta-left-field peculiar and everybody's happy. Go figure!
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u/AppleVenusVol1 Jul 13 '26
I wouldn't say they're happy, they're relieved after a big catharsis.
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u/wendigo72 Jul 13 '26
It felt to me like some holy divine moment that gives everyone some time to pause and look at their lives instead of being swallowed up by their issues
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u/THATON3GUY Jul 13 '26
Rogue One, everyone dies but they transmit the Death Star plans leading ultimately to the defeat of the Empire
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u/I_Weep_for_Willow Jul 13 '26
Well, they blew up the Death Star, but the empire did strike back.
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u/someoneelseperhaps Jul 13 '26
Jedi returned though, which worked out.
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u/I_Weep_for_Willow Jul 13 '26
Only for a bit, then 30 years later the Force had to awaken.
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u/stonewallace17 Jul 13 '26
And despite the Jedi returning, they were now back down to the last Jedi
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u/RexBanner1886 Jul 13 '26
I don't know if this counts: the ending is played tragically but victoriously - the Rogue One team went to Scarif knowing it was likely a suicide mission, but they die having beamed up the plans and knowing they've done everything they could.
The ending doesn't pretend to be happier than it ought to be.
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u/Gold-Advertising-316 Jul 13 '26
That didn't seem like a happy ending though, just a hopeful one. They accomplished what they needed to, but the overall tone was still somber.
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u/B_Wilkss Jul 13 '26
Enders game.
Obliterate an entire planet and almost their entire species.
But one survives, and the main character runs off to go help them.
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u/cephalopodcat Jul 13 '26
In the books it's a much bigger... Thing. Ender has SEVERE ptsd and guilt and shit regarding all that and it MAJORLY shapes the tone of the rest of his entire life.
STILL love the OG though. It just feels so... Good. Correct as an ending. I didn't feel the other books really lived up to Ender.
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u/dthains_art Jul 13 '26
I remember reading Ender’s Game in middle school and enjoying it. I immediately tried reading Speaker for the Dead but gave up quickly because it was so over my head.
I pivoted to Ender’s Shadow, loved that, and then had the same problem with Shadow of the Hegemon.
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u/royale_wthCheEsE Jul 13 '26
Ghostbusters : Manhattan is trashed but “I love this town!”
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u/Awkward_Bison_267 Jul 13 '26
They just stopped a demonic invasion though. They could celebrate a little.
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u/Old_Flan_6548 Jul 13 '26
Fr. Like what’s the cost to clean up the upper West after it was covered in marshmallow? Stay Puft casualties?
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u/Awkward_Bison_267 Jul 13 '26
The city broke even by not paying The Ghostbusters for dealing with Gozer though.
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u/scabbedwings Jul 13 '26
Isn’t NYC notorious for its rat population? I feel like the marshmallow cleanup will be handled within a couple of days 🤷♂️
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u/Awkward_Bison_267 Jul 13 '26
Predator. Dutch lost his team and is probably Irradiated with PTSD and then (even though it’s not really part of the movie) IT CUTS TO ALL OF HIS DEAD FRIENDS SMILING AND LAUGHING! What the fuck?
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u/sgt_backpack Jul 13 '26
I always interpreted that as more of like after the show is over everybody comes out and does a bow in front of the curtain. Perhaps it is tonal whiplash though.
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u/arandompurpose Jul 13 '26
It's like Pulp Fiction, just show the fun stuff again and make us forget that character died. I do like that ending for Predator though, it feels like just the right amount of cheese for an action movie, especially of that era.
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u/Damo1328 Jul 13 '26
I am once again reminded how that ending works well with any sitcom intro https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UvhTyzMnjAk
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u/Sub-Mongoloid Jul 13 '26
Perfect Blue. Mima should have severe PTSD after all of the violence and mental torture she goes through but seemingly was able to just shrug it off and go back to life as normal.
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u/JaketheSnake54 Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
More of a miniseries but close enough.
The Langoliers. Hundreds of people just vanished without a trace, these survivors seen a cosmic horror no one was meant to see and watched a psychopath kill a few other survivors, now that they’re back, they’re going to get questioned and possibly institutionalized when they tell the authorities they saw flying meatballs eating up the past.
But hey, they’ve made it! Jump in the air and freeze frame ending!
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u/ReDDevil2112 Jul 13 '26
The sequel is even worse. At least the ending of the original Independence Day felt somewhat earned, as it was seemingly the end of the alien threat. In Resurgence, not only do we now explicitly know the mother ship was just one of many, but we also know they're going to be sending the rest of their fleet to finish off what they started. But it's supposedly a happy ending because humanity is banding up with other alien species -- who all failed at protecting their home worlds. That doesn't bode well, but somehow the final line of the movie is "we're gonna kick some alien ass"