Castle Paradox

[Gizmog1]

To try and spark some more literary discussion, and dispel the rumor that we're all a bunch of Story Time Stupids, why don't we discuss some of the things other writers have done that really irritate you.

One thing that always pisses me off is when some kind of a survival story ends in a way that basically is "...and then they get out of it.". Before I go any further, I'm probably going to spoil Flight of the Phoenix, and The Poseidon Adventure. They've both just been remade, and they both also were based on novels, which I haven't read. So assume I mean the oldest film version, unless I specify otherwise.

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Both of the movies are basically just a 2 and a half hour cocktease. In TPA, they wander around the ship, and in FOTP they work and work to build a plane. But, the problem comes in that both movies the scene with the most energy and power is followed by a super lackluster ending.

In the last twenty minutes of the Poseidon Adventure, for instance, they swim through a flooded compartment to come up in the flaming engine room. One person drowns swimming through, and as they climb the catwalks to try to get to the propellor shaft and a relatively thin point in the hull, the boilers explode, throwing one passenger to her death, and opening steam vents that block their passage to safety. The preacher who has been leading them thus far leaps over to a steam cuttoff valve, and hanging above the fire and steam, he turns the valve off, yelling at God for interfering with their escape rather than even staying out of their way.

After turning off the steam blocking the rest of the party, he tells the others to go on, puts somebody else in charge, and exhausted, falls to his death. The others go ahead into the propellor shaft, and begin knocking on the bottom of the ship's hull, to try to attract the attention of a rescue crew. Somebody finally responds, and a welding torch cuts open a hole.

And here is where they let us down. The two rescuers inform the protagonists that they're the only survivors, hoist them out of the ship, and load them onto a helicopter. The helicopter takes off, and flies out of frame in a short shot (It doesn't even fly into the sunset!, for crying out loud!) and then the credits roll.

These people we just spent 2 and a half hours rooting for, and learning about their lives, and hearing about their mistakes, just take off, without even a brief bit of onscreen text explaining what happened to them afterwards, or even just if there were any other survivors. We knew coming in that some of them were going to escape, and when the leadup to the ending is so moving, it's sort of a cheat to just have an "Oh, they're safe now. Thanks for your concern, but we've got it under control." type deal.

Had I done it, I probably would've had an epilogue to the effect of "On March 10th, 1972, The S.S. Poseidon sunk in deep waters 48 hours out of Greece. Of the 1,052 passengers, and 119 crew, there were only 6 survivors.". Even something as small as that would've brought the movie to a better conclusion.

To an extent, the same is true of Flight of the Phoenix. After toiling for weeks, exhausting their water and food supplies, and losing 4 or 5 men salvaging the usable parts of their wrecked plane to create a new one, and fighting amongst themselves, they get the engine started, the wings loaded, and the plane in the air. They turn around, and fly over the crash site, whilst heading to the nearest airfield.

There's an overhead shot of an airfield, and then, a long shot of some rocks. Out of the rocks, the men walk, running to a little oasis near the strip, while some of the workers there watch, and question what the hell's going on. The survivors chit-chat for a second, and then BAM! The movie's over.

This is just sort of disappointing. For one thing, it would've been pretty nice to see the plane land. I can understand why they didn't show the plane landing, as the pilot was killed during filming, apparently taking the aircraft with him before the entire ending could be shot. However, even without that, the way the movie ends (The pilot of the plane asking the "designer" a friendly sort of question) is probably the least satisfying thing they could've shot.

Actually, if they'd rearranged what they had, having the survivors get off the plane, and start ranting and raving in the water, and ended it with the two workers looking over, and asking what the hell these guys were doing, that would've been fairly pleasing.

The ending as shot has basically no emotional resonance. You could make a movie like it by having a bunch of people sitting at a bus station, waiting for their precious bus to be repaired. Marge wants to make it to Houston by lunchtime, but it's getting near 11, and if they don't leave now, they'll never make it. The clock is ticking but, SHAZAM! The bus drives up, the door opens, they file on, and the bus drives off again into the sunset.


But, I won't just whine at you. Let me tell you about a movie that gets it right. The High and the Mighty, with John Wayne (It just came out on DVD, it's worth a rental at least) is a wonderful movie, and the ending is perfectly done, and is an example of what someone writing something in the "disaster/survival" genre should shoot for.

[Onlyoneinall]

I've noticed movies where people die off like bugs end with the main character(s) surviving with no real conclusion to the end. I do indeed find it quite irritating, as the movie always ends when you don't expect it to, in a bad way. It should end when the audience would get the general feeling it's ending, but big chunky movies always is left with little bits at the end.

The Fugitive comes to mind (spoilers). After catching his evil doctor friend, Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones get in their car, and the credits roll as they drive off. Talk about anti-climatic. At least show us the court case of him getting out, sound the orchestra as he wearily heads back home and end it.

Hostel... how about Hostel? (spoilers) It ends with Paxton staring out the window as the train heads off. A bit anti-climatic, it might have been better to end it with him at his intended destination in deep thought and emptiness as the scene fades away... instead, the train goes off and it's time for us to go home.

I think Saw had a good sudden ending (spoilers). The killer gets up, brings us all the surprise twist, and he heads off into the light with Adam locked up, screaming in the darkness. Now that's a good situation for a sudden end. It left me a bit disturbed for a while.
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[Gizmog1]

I enjoyed Saw's ending for just that reason, but I really hated the whole kind of recap montage right before that, the whole "IN CASE YOU MISSED THE PLOT, HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED!" thing.

Sometimes an Anticlimax can be the right sort of an ending to a movie, they just kind of tend to overuse it. Night of the Living Dead, for instance, was pretty anticlimatic, but I don't think there's a better ending.

[Valigarmander]

Pretty much every horror film has a crappy ending. Night of the Living Dead was an exception. I loved that film. But pretty much every other film of the genre sucked. I hated watching five Nightmare on Elm Street movies with every one ending with Freddy coming back in the end. Bah!