What TV or movie endings would you rewrite? One reason I don't watch soap operas is that I can always think of something much more exciting or compelling that should have happened instead.

And I don't hate happy endings per se; I just hate artificial happy endings.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

Answers

The ending to "Pretty In Pink" - it was originally filmed as Andi ending up with Ducky but test audiences were all like, "No! Andrew McCarthy is so much cuter!" so they changed it.

So wrong. Blaine was totally spineless. If he let a weasel like Stef walk all over him, he didn't deserve Andi.

The book, however, retains the original endi

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

Oh, man, I forgot about Pretty in Pink. But I didn't think she should be with Ducky, either; I liked the character, but she wouldn't have ended up with him. She should have ditched Blaine and decided she didn't need a boyfriend.

In fact, that's my main gripe with most happy endings -- the woman would clearly be better off without either of the guys she's forced to choose between, but they never go that direction.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

I am a sap. I admit it. I like sappy endings. I cry everytime I see E.T. Life can be rough. I go to the movies to entertained, sometimes to be cheered up. I want the guy and girl to get together and live happily ever after. I want the bad guy to pay for his crime (s). I can remember watching "It's a Wonderful Life" one Christmas, and my son asking me, "Didn't you cry at that LAST YEAR?!" My children love to embarrass me in theaters. They ask loudly, "ARE YOU CRYING, DAD?" I recently saw an action packed, psychological thriller that I loved right up to the end. And then the bad guy won. What a bummer.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

I like the downer endings. The first draft of Moby Dick had a happy ending; can you even imagine that? I know this is supposed to be about movies and TV (The ultimate Buffy ending would have been cancelling the show after season 2, with Angel in hell), but the most tacked-on happy ending that ruined an otherwise perfect book was Corelli's Mandolin. It could have been a contender. The original draft of "Great Expectations" had an unhappy ending too, and was a better book for it. So the public has been clamoring for happy endings for over a century.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

My father always used to get furious at the ending of "The Wizard of Oz" because she wakes up and it was all a dream. In the book she really does go to Oz (and goes back in subsequent books.)

I don't mind if the bad guys win, if it makes sense, but some sad endings to books and movies really get me down. I always figure, though, that that's because they were well written and the characters became real for me. I wouldn't care if they were just cardboard characters.

Recently I was annoyed by the ending to "Memoirs of a Geisha" but I won't say more in order to not spoil it. I thought of a bittersweet ending that I thought would have been much better.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

I like ambiguous endings to movies, like the ending in "Henry Fool."

Happy endings are fine too, as long as they aren't *too* contrived.

Sad endings are often great as well. I don't watch movies just to be entertained, at least not in the sense of always wanting to see happy endings.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

The ending of What Dreams May Come would have been so much more tragically romantic if he had stayed in Hell with her, rather that the schmaltzy Hollywood finale. Doesn't anyone in Tinseltown have a backbone?

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

Endings should fit the way the story wants to be. For example, the ending to the movie "SEVEN" (one of my personal favorites) was perfect. The choice between good and evil or, better yet, evil and evil. It seemed a logical conclusion for that movie. The endings for "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" or "Mash" ,in the comedic vein, were perfect for that type of show.

Endings that can be predicted within the first few minutes of a show or movie are the worst for me. "STAR WARS" (ugh!) comes to mind -- or anything that comes from Hollywood these days.

Let the independent films reig

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

When Harry Met Sally.

Argghhhhh!!

I saw this with a male friend...a guy I had been friends with for years and years....who dragged me to it because of the Harry Connick and Meg Ryan connection....and as we the movie ends, and...I don't think I am giving this away here, everyone has seen it, Harry and Sally get together, I looked over to see him standing in his seat, gesticulating wildly at the screen, and I am thinking to myself this is the first time I am glad to be deaf, because if I could actually hear what he is yelling *at the movie screen*, I would probably die of the embarrasment of sitting next to him.

The only way I could calm Dave down was to repeatedly reassure him that in an alternate universe somewhere, the movie really ended with Harry and Sally just being really great friends their whole lives, while going on to marry other people. In this alternate universe, I told him, they really just bought a full share in a place in the Hamptons together, and *that* is why they were hugging. Really.

One bad movie ending made a lot of women/men friendships a perfect nightmare for a few years.

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

Anybody even glancing at this area should be prepared for spoilers, I guess. I will try to avoid them. The ending of Devil's Advocate pissed me off. It wasn't a bad movie, but then they get to the ending and proceed to wimp out. Twice. They wimp out on their wimp-out-iness. It angered me. I've always wanted to see the original ending to the more recent Little Shop of Horrors. I think I saw a still from it many many years ago, with Audrey II taking over what may have been the Brooklyn Bridge. Last week I saw both The Sixth Sense and The Third Man. That's nine, if you're counting. These both ended extremely well. (I'm injecting a positive note, here.... appreciate me.) What I liked was that neither was completely contained; in both movies you had a sense that these were real characters who were going to continue on after the movie ended. I saw The Muse this weekend. It ended too abruptly. I wanted a little more depth and exploration, but suddenly Mr. Brooks decided it was time to try to wrap things up all nice and neat. I'm pretty sure there was a movie at some point where it all turned out to be a dream and I actually didn't mind. I can't remember which, though. Help me out... can anybody think of a movie where it was all a dream and it -worked-?

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

Well -- I think that if they couldn't have left Chris in hell with his wife in What Dreams May Come then they should at least have gone with the other ending they were planning for it. It's on the DVD version. In that ending Annie cannot remain in heaven and must be reborn. Chris chooses to be reborn with her, but she will die young and he will live on for 40 years after she's gone.

That would have been a far better ending than the Hollywood happy ending that they went with. If the ending had been different, that movie would have been FAR more powerful and had the impact that by all rights, it should have. Instead it was dissipated by the happy happy joy joy ending.

I like endings that make sense with the rest of the story and bring the story to its logical conclusion. It all depends on what the story is telling.

For example, I love the ending of "Mystic Pizza" which is essentially a happy ending -- Julia Roberts' character forgives her rich-boy boyfriend, Lili Taylor's character marries her bf and Annabeth Gish gets over the older guy and presumably goes off to college to bigger and better things. Of course, in there, you really get three endings -- a different one for each character, so it's hard to go wrong.

There was a book I read once though, that had a girl crossing a barrier into an alternate reality and the author works up the tension slowly and then before the big confrontation with Evil, the girl gets pulled back into this reality and it's all a dream and that's the end of the book.

Extremely unsatisfying.

With most fantasy stories, I expect a happy ending, or at least a happy ending with a twist or a bittersweet ending. It's no fun if the whole world ends up swallowed up by doom n' gloom, y'know? For example, "The Elfstones of Shannara" has a bittersweet ending. Yes the good guys win the day -- but at a price.

With straight fiction, or non-fiction, I expect things to be more complicated.

But overall, it has to make sense and fit with the flow of the whole story. Sometimes endings are clapped onto stories and they make the whole thing just fall apart.

One of my favorite movies with a non-happy ending, is "Phenomenon." Not great movie, by any stretch of the means -- but at least a good movie. There the ending is a surprising twist that makes sense but doesn't cheat you out of the sort of "supernatural" feeling that the rest of the film built.

Anyway -- on The Vampire Slayer. They should both go down fighting IMHO. Try this on for size -- Angel loses his soul again and makes Buffy a vampire. But, right before she changes, Buffy stakes him. Then, Buffy stakes herself, or faith stakes her. That'd be satisfying. Then, both souls wind up in the same heaven -- recognition for their long years of service and atonement. After all, Angel's already BEEN to hell. What would be the point? Tragedy and happy ending, all rolled up into one. Woo!

-- Anonymous, September 02, 1999

The ending to 'Seven' a good one? Get off it! I could see that coming even before the movie started. That film takes the world 'predictable' to a whole new level. But I guess I'm the only one who feels that way. Everyone I know loves it, so I suppose I'm the one that's in the wrong here. Anyway, I would have changed the ending to Goldeneye - in my version, Brosnan would have perished, execution style, for turning James Bond into the most boring civil servant on the face of thgis Earth.

And I adored the ending to 'When Harry Met Sally'.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999

hey beth, i read your ending to the Buffy series and I have to admit that it is the PERFECT ending! I love it! Everything is there, the symbolism, the romance, the tragedy -- it's beautiful :). Just like the ending to that season where Buffy stakes Angel.

I don't hate happy endings, but a sad ending is so much better. I just want something realistic i guess. A lot of times endings go a few steps too far and leave nothing to the imagination. An ending shouldn't totally resolve everything. It should leave the viewer anticipating what's gonna happen next after the credits start rolling.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999

My book club drew The French Lieutenant's Woman by Fowles to read this month. I found it very annoying that the author gave the reader a choice of endings! I usually like a happy ending. However, I think the ending he put last is the best one in this case. Beth, you would definitely choose the last ending as the woman does not want to give up her newly found independence and chooses to live without him! Hooray for the woman!

-- Anonymous, September 03, 1999

The endings that bother me are the action movies where, after the bad guys are erased (thrown out of a building, sucked into a jet engine, whatever), the heroes forget about all of the dead people and share a good joke as the credits start to roll. Take the ending to Enemy of the State, where everything would have been fine if Gene Hackman had just walked away, but instead tacked on an entirely unnecessary "Greetings from the Caribbean" ending.

The biggest exception to this is "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". Now that was a killer ending...

-- Anonymous, September 04, 1999

The movie with the ending that made me *cringe* was Jerry McGuire. All through this movie, it's clear that the couple are very fond of each other, feel compassion for each other, want to help and support each other - but the woman LOVES him, romantically, and what he feels for her is more akin to friend/big brother. You spend a whole movie having that painfully pounded in, then she finally decides that whether she loves him or not it hurts too much knowing it isn't returned, and she lets him go.... sad maybe, but you feel good for her not settling for less than she wants, or letting him settle for less than HE wants in a partner. And then he has a business success, notices his good buddy isn't around to cheer him on and goes home and says he wants to stay married to her. One look at each other, one word from him, and she's forgetting everything she's struggled to come to terms with and taking him back. No indicator on either side that they've changed their views about how it should be - no passion expressed at all on his part. Just kaphlooey, the point of the entire movie was rendered irrelevent.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 1999

And I don't hate happy endings per se;

Princess Bride, ahhhhh... Now there's a movie that gets me sappy and silly.

I just hate artificial happy endings.

See the original Dutch flick "The Vanishing", one of the more terrifying endings I've seen in a movie, just utterly haunting.

See the Hollywood remake , film of the same name. Blah, bland, and yeppers, happy ending, good must out, blah, not ever Great.

A.

-- Anonymous, September 11, 1999