.
Same thing happened when watching No Country for Old men. Great movie, then Bam! he gets killed by a Mexican gang. Who make off with the money. Again I was punched in the gut.
***spoilers done***
I walked away with such a bad taste in my mouth that I will not ever watch those again. And if anybody asks me about them, they walk away with an ear full.
I love happy endings, and I'm not sure I could ever be able to pen a bad ending. I want to make people walk away with the same great feelings I get.
So what's everybody's views of happy endings or bad endings?
My favorite movies all have this element - Empire Strikes Back, Casablanca, Godfather, Matrix, Aliens, LOTR, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Diehard, Gladiator, Titanic, Tombstone, every Stanly Kubric movie, ... should I go on?
I will say this strategy doesn't work well for comedies. And I can't stand it when the ending is a total downer - I hated The Myst for that reason. Otherwise, give a little grief with my happily ever after.
[This message has been edited by Jonsul (edited September 27, 2008).]
I actually blame this on the marketing for the film. They made it look like a cute little fantasy adventure story and in no way implied the serious themes.
So, maybe a sad ending is acceptable if you see it coming? Or, I should say, if the story properly sets up that things probably won't end happily ever after.
Not that I'm not a total sucker for silly, happy endings too, just in the right places. And there are definitely sad endings to movies that have had me quite irritated.
[This message has been edited by BoredCrow (edited September 27, 2008).]
The Bridge to Terabithia was a book first, and the death is a really important part of the story. I cried like a baby, and my kids did too. Oh I feel bad about that, but then the movie was well-made and I think the feelings evoked were true and real and it's important to feel those sometimes. I knew the movie had a bittersweet ending ahead of time (but I'm funny like that - I prefer to know how things are going to end before I watch them so I can have my expectations set properly. So I read reviews and seek out spoilers so I can be ready.)
ANYWAY - main point is I prefer happy endings too. I think it's important that something happens during the story, that something big is at stake, that the MC has to sacrifice or dig deep within themselves to meet the challenges that face them in the story, but I don't think that always needs to be a tragic death or other dramatic and upsetting element.
Tragedies can be written every inch as good as comedies, dramas, action stories, or anything else. It just depends on how they're done so the reader feels satisfied in the end.
And just for the record; I like a "happily-ever-after" type story, myself .
And yes, I know that pulp fiction magazines often have disjointed storylines - the point is about endings.
Sad endings can be wonderful, but I can only handle so many. The Constant Gardener sank me into a place where I spent days brooding over the sorry state of the world. Similarly most of Hardy's novels make me angry with the things he does to his characters.
Bittersweet endings are the very best kind. LOTR has been mentioned; that's one of the best examples. All my finished pieces have sad endings - every time I try to write a happy ending, I end up going 'oh who am I kidding' and rewriting it. I guess I'm too cynical to believe in happy endings.
But you know what I really hate? Cop-outs. Lewis Carroll, step forward...
I think I have it. A great ending. Moving. But realistic. Happy endings can't be too unbelievable or you forefit your whole story -- the believablity kinda goes down the crapper when you slap a "and they lived happily ever after" on there. So, there's hope for the good, ironic justice for the evil, and the hero lives to fight another day. Does that qual as a happy ending?
[This message has been edited by Jonsul (edited September 27, 2008).]
And Jonsul; Don't feel too bad. I thought for quite some time that philocinemas was a woman! I'm sooooo glad that he set me straight .
[This message has been edited by Crystal Stevens (edited September 27, 2008).]
Conservative values leaning stories don't often have happy endings. Liberal-leaning ones do more often.
I like endings that are appropriate to the circumstances, although beautifully tragic endings emotionally move me more than comedic dramas. Perhaps excepting dystopian and military speculative fiction, the fantastical genres are prone toward comedic drama. In the literary genres I think there's a weighted balance between comedy and tragedy.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited September 28, 2008).]
I enjoy happy endings. However, I have to believe there is a real chance of peril with real costs, for me to be fully invested in a story. I have to believe the author is willing to kill off anybody to advance the story. I won't necessarily be pleased if he or she chooses to do this, but otherwise I just don't care as much. Granted, many stories don't present this level of peril and that's fine. Sci-fi and fantasy lend themselves to more dangerous situations, therefore I often expect there to be casualties - Ender's Shadow - Poke, as in Shadow Puppets.
If the point of the story is that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or one, then you are more likely to get an ending where the few or one pay a price to save the many.
If the point of the story is that the needs of the one or the few outweigh the needs of the many (or that by serving the needs of the one or the few, you actually make things better for the many as well--which is an idealistic perspective on this), then you are more likely to get an ending where the one or the few triumph against something like the "oppressive or demanding masses or group/collective/corporation/establishment."
There has been a discussion of Ayn Rand's work in another topic. I submit that her work could be argued to fit the second choice (needs of one or few outweigh needs of the "oppressive many").
I think you may confuse many people with your interpretations of liberal and conservative, since I associate your definitions of each with the CLASSICAL use of those labels. Modern liberalism, albeit the political kind, is identified with (like philo said) a high-minded idealism, where as classical liberalism was about the sovereignty of the individual.
I feel that an ending needn't be "happy" to be a good one, as many have already espoused, but rather it needs to provide a satisfying end point to the story being told. If the story being told is about the struggle to identify self, than the MC needs to identify what he/she/it is about before the end, even if they end up perishing in the final chapters.
The most-bestest endings I have read or seen are the ones that leave every part of you wishing there were more to the story, to have it go on, but at the same time being satisfied. I know, kind of contradictory, but that is how it is for me sometimes.
For example, a fiscal conservative is not necessarily the same as a political conservative. (You could argue that "fiscal conservative" is a "politically correct" term for "miser.")
I fear "liberal" and "conservative" have come to mean only one thing (each) in our current culture, and that's too bad, because the political meaning (connotation) has diverged to some extent from the original meaning (denotation) of those words.
Edited to add: and we're not going to talk about politics or political liberals or conservatives here, right? Right.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited September 28, 2008).]
What set me on this course is marketplace research. Who's publishing what. I was surprised to find that the marketplace is not as equitable as I suspected in its preferential directions. There's deep currents running under the surface.
I like tragic drama as equally as comedic drama; however, as much as I'm an outlier in anything--thus extrinsic--I'm equally so in creative writing and overall reading. I enjoy variation. And I won't be pinned down politically.
I've seen that one more feature that's handicapped my entré into the marketplace is I've sent liberal-value oriented manuscripts to conservative-value marketplaces, and vice versa. Again, by liberal value, I mean perceptions of the individual as sovereign, and conservative value perceiving the collective as sovereign.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited September 28, 2008).]
"Our" culture being American culture. One of the small pleasures of returning from the USA to England is once more being able to use the word "liberal" without unwittingly getting into a political argument. Here, we use "liberal with a small el" to mean "respectful and accepting of behaviour or opinions different from one's own." (OED)
Liberal with a capital el refers to our third political party, and is neither synonymous with the more left-leaning of our two major parties, nor a slur. (If you want to slur Liberals, you call them "wishy-washy Liberals" which I think approximates to the American connotation.)
The English language doesn't morph the same way in different countries, the more that we may misunderstand one another.
On happy endings: I've read several novels recently which were gripping up until the last chapter or two. Then--I guess in order to avoid a happy trite ending--the author takes the novel somewhere happy-but-not-quite. I'm left wanting a fictitious ending to a work of fiction, not last-minute realism--as if a novel with FTL space craft, ansibles, zap guns, women as equals with men, and evil robot monkeys could have a realistic ending!
Liberally with a small el,
Pat
All political views aside, I like my guns, I like my church, I can raise a barn and three kids without going and getting a "real job", not to mention I know I could survive without electricity, Walmart, or my cell phone. I also love realistic endings over great and, at times, a little too happy triumphs UNLESS children or animals are involved. When you have a cute wittle vampire rabbit or a buncha wizard kids, give them the happy ending with confetti and baloons and the whole nine.
I see conservativism as referencing knowledge of history, to determine how government, religion, freedom, money, or the ending of a story should be viewed.
I suppose this could be equated to the good for the individual versus the good of the group, but I was only commenting on how I perceived the definitions in a different light but reached the same ultimate conclusion after considering extrinsic's comment. I still believe that there is a place for both lines of thought in literature and everywhere else.
Reagansgame - wouldn't that be a "cute wittle vampire wabbit."
However, I partly agree with the first post. I hate it when an end is pointlessly tragic. No Country For Old Men, assuming there's no meaning for the MC's death (beyond cheap existentialist bs), sounds like an ending that would frustrate me.
I read and watch things (some of which I would and some of which I wouldnt consider horror, but most of which I guess most would call horror) that has downbeat or even unpleasant endings that I enjoy very much. But thats because I enjoy the whole story, and what the whole story is.
Now, I'm not to wild about deceptive stories. If a story is set up to give the expectation of a positive ending and then doesnt, basically just to be "original" or "edgy" that could be rather annoying.
I have, myself, so far only written one single story with an unambigiously definitively "bad" ending.
An ending needs to be memorable to me. That could be happy, sad, or angry. A movie like {i]Misery[/i] is an excellent example. Not a sad ending but diffently not a happy one. In a way, it wasn't an ending in itself. James Caan was still haunted by the memory of his tormentor.
Another is Burn After Reading. The story was pointless and had an ending where no one was happy at the end. I thought it was oneof the best movies that I've seen this year. A true comedy of errors.
About half of my stories don't end well for the people in them. I have received plenty of critques that reflect with many readers desires for a happy ending. Being charged with writing a predictable ending is something I try to avoid with all of my being. I prefer authors that have that knack of blindsiding me at the end of the story. But it makes me wonder...
Are there editors that don't like that type of work? Will, Mrs Wentworth, for example, reject a story because a submission made her angry because a character she liked got the wrong end of the stick? If that's the case I would like a list of such publications so I can be careful of what to send them.
[This message has been edited by snapper (edited September 28, 2008).]
Endings were the main character repeats the same tragic mistake over and over, swears he'll get it 'right next' time after each failure, and still ends up dying or causing someone else to die due that the same mistake just leave me angry.
Endings were a person tries really hard for a good thing, fails each time, and ends up failing (by giving up or dying) with no hope of future change from his actions just leave me depressed.
However, endings were the main character dies but their actions and/or death will clearly make a lasting change in the future leave me sad but hopeful. I'll take that.
From what I've observed, it seems like stories with a clear sense of "good versus evil" are more likely to have a happy or hopeful ending. If everyone (including the hero) is messed up and morally murky, then the story is more likely to leave the character and world in a messed-up state, which doesn't satisfy me as a reader. I want something positive or hopeful out of the whole reading experience.
Just my 2 cents.
Regarding "No Country For Old Men", my problem wasn't with the fact that he MC didn't survive, it was the way the packing of the story shifted; that, having followed him so closely, he was disposed of completely off-screen. The POV of the movie just changed utterly around that point, and while there was much to admire about the movie, I thought it was a failure not because of WHAT it did to the characetrs, but because of HOW it did it.
It's MUCH harder for big-budget movies to get away with downbeat endings these days (would Casablanca, or Gone WIth The Wind, look the same if they were done now? I fear not). It can be done, but you really need an auteur to stand up to to a studio in order for it to happen (as, for example, Kevin Nolan did with The Dark Knight - not for the ending particularly, but for other utterly non-standard aspects of that film, in particular having the main action sequence in the middle rather than as the climax, allowing the climax to be an emotional one not a physical one).
Ultimately - the ending has to be suitable to the story that has preceded it. Does "Romeo and Juliet" work if the lovers survive? Does "Princess Bride" work if Wesley isn't revived? They're both stories of true love, but their tone determines the appropriate ending. You CAN get away with a dramatic tone change if you've foreshadowed it subtly and are very very good, but if you don't get it right, your reader won;t feel shocked (which is fine), they'll feel betrayed (which is not).
quote:
Being charged with writing a predictable ending is something I try to avoid with all of my being. I prefer authors that have that knack of blindsiding me at the end of the story.
I don't mind predictable endings in the slightest. Partially because most fitting endings to most stories are going to be somewhat predictable, and partially because for me usually what happens along the way is more important than the ending.
However, (and I'm not acusing anyone in particular of this I'm just saying) I do dislike endings that end up not really fitting the story, mostly just for the sake of not being "predictable." The end of a story should flow naturally from the begining and the middle, generally speaking, and because of this they will, usually be somewhat predictable...and I happen to like it that way.
The exception of course is stories that are meant to have surprise or twist endings (Twilight Zone) and/or which have rather non standard narratives to begin with (Like the movie The Machinist for instance even though i wasnt really happy with that ending for other reasons.)