Top Five
Top Five is a show where the hosts categorize, rank, compare, and stratify everything… from cars to gadgets to people and movies. From stuff that is hot, and things that are not nearly as interesting – it’s Top Five.
This week, we love movies, but sometimes really good movies have really bad endings. We share our list with you this week.
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Stephen Schleicher began his career writing for the Digital Media Online community of sites, including Digital Producer and Creative Mac covering all aspects of the digital content creation industry. He then moved on to consumer technology, and began the Coolness Roundup podcast. A writing fool, Stephen has freelanced for Sci-Fi Channel's Technology Blog, and Gizmodo. Still longing for the good ol' days, Stephen launched Major Spoilers in July 2006, because he is a glutton for punishment. You can follow him on Twitter @MajorSpoilers and tell him your darkest secrets...
4 Comments
man, Matthew, i love ya, but the ending to The Mist honestly saved the movie for me for the exact reasons why you hate it. Punisher goes off and thinks he’s doing the right thing, they run out of gas, he has no choice but to kill everyone and wait for impending death, and it turns out that he quite literally jumped the gun. it’s awful and depressing, and a very, very terrible and poorly calculated, but ultimately, incredibly human decision. also it provides a hilarious new layer to Tom Jane’s cameo in Arrested Development.
my personal worst ending to an already whatever movie is The Fifth Element. an admittedly visually engaging, albeit awful movie with varying degrees of broad, grating characters ends with the flaming basketball of ultimate evil being defeated by love. the fifth element they were looking for was inside them all along. what a piece of garbage, hallmark channel, after-school special ending.
This is Episode 172. It bears some similarity to Episode 79, Shows or Movies with Terrible Endings (http://majorspoilers.com/2014/10/23/top-five-shows-movies-terrible-endings/) which featured Zach as well as the base host trio. There is some overlap, with both Stephen and Rodrigo having two items from their lists in common, and Matthew having one. Interestingly, one of Zach’s entries from #79 appears on Stephen’s list here.
Just want to say I made people look at me odd due to my outburst of laughter at Stephen’s Grease commentary.
You know, when I listen to Top 5, I often jot down my own list to see if I match up with you guys or if you guys point out one that makes me want to change mine. Grease was on my original jot-down list.
For what it’s worth, here’s my top 5 horrible endings:
5. Grease. So, my 15 year old son and I watched this over the summer, he’s on this musical kick and exploring all musicals (and thankfully, he is loving Mel Brooks’ films the most right now, so I’m not too tortured). But, even he looked at me when that car took off and said “Uh, mom?” I just said, “Nobody knows.”
4. Total Recall. Granted, when I first saw this movie in 1990ish, I was far too young to understand what I was watching and the ending made me say “So, what happened? Is this real or is he in the recall world?” Fast forward 20something years and I watch it again and I still have no idea what that ending is supposed to mean.
3. Signs. I had this on my list as soon as I saw the title of Top 5. Talk about a movie where they said, “Oh no, we’re out of time, we need to wrap this up.” This movie is the definition of a let-down. It was as if they realized they had built it up in such a way that the aliens would win so they had to quick-like-a-bunny find a way to let humans win. Lame.
2. Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. The movie makes no sense as to why in the world the birds are doing what they do.
But then, they just fly away and it’s all over? What the heck?? Can’t stand watching that movie but that ending is especially horrible.
1. I Am Legend. Total let-down of a movie for me. You build this character up and we watch as the anti-dote and then he is seeing that they are messing with his stuff, so maybe there’s hope for these beings and then you get this climactic end-scene and it’s time to escape and, and, and, oh geez, he dies? Really? Seemed like a tremendous waste and let-down. They could have easily written it so that he lives. But, as Matthew is known to say, the ending of this must be chalked up to “Art” I guess.
In the case of Total Recall… it is a Philip K. Dick story, and that’s kind of his thing… what is real? what is false? But yes, I agree that I walked out wondering the same thing.