I'm going to pick the movies that I recently watched. Otherwise my list and reasons will be 30 pages long!
The Best Ending: The Mist - In a horror movie, the ending should always be tragic, depressing or mean-spirited. No heroism. No happy ending. The final last minutes of The Mist was perfect.
The Worst Ending: War of the WorlRAB (remake) - I enjoyed the movie but I was bitterly disappointed that...
...Tom Cruise's teenaged son survived and found his way home.
It just didn't fit in with what the movie accomplished up to that point.
Daftest Ending: The 40-Year-Old Virgin - I wasn't expecting a musical number.... especially one from the musical play HAIR.
This is a toughie and my opinion will probably differ from time to time. But off the top of my head I'm going for "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly" with the whole Ecstasy Of Gold/circled in a graveyard/who's gonna shoot who scene. Amazing stuff. Either that or the original Planet Of The Apes.
Worst Ending
Another toughie. I'll probably go for either Death Proof or Mission Impossible 3. I couldn't believe how naff the end of Death Proof was, with Kurt Russell
crying like a baby because he's been shot, then gets karate kicked to death by a bunch of unloveable foul mouthed tarts who if I'm honest I wanted him to annihilate
I also couldn't accept in MI3 that Tom's missus, with absolutely no training in weaponry or having ever even held a gun before
blows the bad guy away and kick-starts Tom's dead ticker!
NOOOO I've got a brain thank you very much I don't need this kind of excrement in my mind!
Saying that tho, the end to the Matrix trilogy was appalling too.
Daftest Ending
Hmm, another tough one! I'm gonna plump for Burton's remake of Planet Of The Apes. I really enjoyed the movie, thought aesthetically it was staggering, and it was completely ruined by that ridiculous ending that nobody in the known Universe including Stephen Hawking can decipher. In fact when quizzed on it I'm sure I heard his Text-To-Speech machine exploded, causing a minute black hole in the back of the Odeon cinema.
I can't list the ammount of films I've enjoyed and felt let down by the ending, I've waffled enough.
Yes, that Planet of the Apes one was utterly illogical wasnt it? I remember coming out of the cinema and saying to my friend "That doesnt make any sense??!"
Worst ending: Well, not horrendous but v disappointed with AI, there was a bit at the end where the boy was staring underwater at the fairground queen of ever and ever, then suddenly he got whisked away to a bedroom to have a MUm for the day. Unlikely "happy"ending...
Wierd one: Holy Grail. Wanted a proper solution to the film rather than everyone being arrested by the boys in blue....
Best endings:
(Cos Im a guffy old sentimentalist- no, really!)
Shawshank Redemption "I hope, I hope...."
The lion King- the birth of the new hier... the cycle (or circle!)of life goes on....
And the ultimate ending- USUAL SUSPECTS!! What a hummdinger THAT was!!
One of the best film endings has to be 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', when all the knights are about to have a huge battle when suddenly police vans pull up and arrest the whole lot of them.
And I also can't really think of a sillier ending to a movie either, so it covers daftest for me as well
For worst ending, now that's trickier. I'm tempted to say AI, just because most of the last third of that movie was awful. Can't think of anything else offhand.
Best ending? Thats a tricky one, most memorable ending for me would have to be 'Alien'. I'm not sure if it was the first to employ the 'just when you thought it was safe' ending but it scared the beJesus out of me when I first saw it, pity nearly every horror film that came after that employed the same format.
Worst ending? Not so tricky, just look at my gripes in the 'I Demand My Money Back!' thread. Worst ending is when a film starts off promising and you think 'OMG, this is going to be a classic' and then suddenly in the last 20 minutes, just nose drives into the gutter, eg. Sunshine.
The ending I disliked the most was Jacob's Ladder because it makes the whole movie pointless.On second viewing it is ok,but the first time left me feeling very annoyed.
I've read the book both movies were based on, and all I'll say is Tim Burton's ending was the one most faithful to the book...
- best ending
For me, Apocalypto. Some great ones mentioned though, like The Mist
The other categories are difficult because I've rarely had movies been amazing all the way through up until the end - if they're bad, they're usually crap from the start, e.g. Revenge of the Sith, The Da Vinci Code.
Enlighten me and Stephen Hawking then Fromez, just what in Sam Hill did that ending mean? Might be ok for a sci-fi book but not a much-anticipated blockbuster surely?
Apocalypto's ending would have been great were it not for the fact it was historically innacurate. By the time "white men" landed that civilisation was long gone.
Best ending: i love One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. the ending is so fitting to the rest of the film. Also Clue. I love the way you get three endings to choose from, rather than a definitive one. And my final one is Face/Off. I love the whole last hour of that film, and the ending just caps it off.
Worst ending: Four Wedding and a Funeral. It's not a great film anyway but to top it off with the "is it raining? i hadn't noticed" just makes the film unbearable.
Daftest ending: i agree about Holy Grail. It's so funny but so unexpected. One of the classic scenes in a film still though.
That's not true. Whilst the largest cities had been abandoned by that point, there were still several cities doing just fine when the Spanish arrived. In fact, the Mayan city Petzen Itza was inhabited until the Spanish sacked it nearly 200 after their first contact with the Maya.
Those that spring to mind just happen to be mainly sci fi...
The worst ending for me has to be Alien Resurrection with the newborn alien doing its 'puppy dog' look. That's when the franchise died for me.
Recently War of the WorlRAB (the Spielberg version) had a particularly daft ending but I Am Legend is up there too. By 'daft' I mean neither made a lot of sense.
Best ending - Star Wars - A New Hope mainly for sentimental reasons. Honorary mentions for Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Wild Bunch, Jaws and Brazil. Suprised no-one's gone for The Italian Job.
The Mist ending was a real mishmash and not as good/chilling as the novella's IMO, regardless of what Stephen King himself thinks.
I know it comes in for a lot of stick, but I thought it sat well with the the 1950s b-movie sci-fi vibe of the film. Although the ambuguity over the reason for Spalko's immolation is all a touch confusing.
