Books/Movies that Need a Different Ending

[emmline]

The Bible - New Testament - Jesus should have been allowed to hang around long enough to put his foot in it.

Get with the program, DJM! Have you not read the stories? I don't mean all those rumours spread by Paul. Yer man lit out to Persia. Kept on teaching, got married, raised a family. His tomb is still there. And the Muslims still have a lot of his (later) teachings. For some reasons the Christian church ignores them...

Sounds sensible to me. If he'd stayed around in Judea, the Jewish Authorities would have put another contract on him.


Pretty Woman. She should have given him herpes. Or vice versa.

I thought he went to the south of France and started the Merovingians.

[Innocent Bystander]

I thought he went to the south of France and started the Merovingians.

That's what they would like you to think...

[feadogin]

Everything Iain Banks has written.

I read 2 of his books and I have to agree there. They were really frustrating because the books themselves were really good and then there were these weird endings. That said, I liked Consider Phlebas anyway.

[monkey587]

Everything Iain Banks has written.

I read 2 of his books and I have to agree there. They were really frustrating because the books themselves were really good and then there were these weird endings. That said, I liked Consider Phlebas anyway.

I love his early stuff, but I find it really hard to read his books now.

[chrisoff]

Everything Iain Banks has written.

I read 2 of his books and I have to agree there. They were really frustrating because the books themselves were really good and then there were these weird endings. That said, I liked Consider Phlebas anyway.

Exactly! All his books seem to have really rushed, "out there" endings. I don't get it. They also seem to end too abruptly, like if in a movie they do the big reveal then it just cuts to the credits. Every. Single. Time. They lack epilogues.

It's a real shame because like you I really enjoy the books up to that point.

[emmline]

Long time ago I read a book by Thomas Kenneally called Confederates which was an epic, if somewhat trashy,
novel set during the Civil War. It kind of kept me going until the very end, at which point, after all the characters had
been through, the author sums it up with (to paraphrase): "Yeah, and then they all died. Ha. Had you caring about these characters for a while there, didn't I. Sucker."

I am wary of fiction.

[dubhlinn]

Tess of the D'Ubervilles.

She did not deserve that.

Slan,
D.

[emmline]

Tess of the D'Ubervilles.

She did not deserve that.

Slan,
D.

So true.

[peeplj]

Long time ago I read a book by Thomas Kenneally called Confederates which was an epic, if somewhat trashy,
novel set during the Civil War. It kind of kept me going until the very end, at which point, after all the characters had
been through, the author sums it up with (to paraphrase): "Yeah, and then they all died. Ha. Had you caring about these characters for a while there, didn't I. Sucker."

Sounds like it was fairly accurate, at least. "...and then they all died" is, unfortunately, a pretty decent, if somewhat tragic summary of the American Civil War in five words.

I am wary of fiction.

Yeah, me too. Not only of the books whose ending fails so completely of its promise, but also of the books which seem like they are "about to get good" (to fall into local idiom), and you read and read and a couple of hundred pages in, it's still "about to get good any minute now," and finally you finish the dang thing, and realize that (a) it never got good, and (b) you just wasted several hours of your life that you can't get back.

--James

[Infernaltootler]

Atonement by Ian McEwan, recently made into a film.

I nearly chucked the book across the room at the end after really enjoying 95% of it. I was furious to be so duped with such a cacky ending.

[CHasR]

Cinderella.
That bi*#$ gets everything she wants!!!

[brewerpaul]

I can't get into those British social mores novels, but this one might do it for me...

http://www.amazon.com/Pride-Prejudice-Z ... 949&sr=1-1

Don't know if it qualifies as a different ending though since lots of the change are within the novel .

[McRick]

The version of the Count of Monte Cristo from 2002 with James Caviezel and Guy Pearce had some satisfying vengeance and a good happily-ever-after ending.

The ending of the movie Cold Mountain was very unsatisfying. We follow this guy's journey home for two hours and then he dies just before arriving? Where was the joyful reunion with his beloved?! I felt punked.

The ending of the most recent James Bond felt incomplete. The entire plot was based on Bond's revenge for something that happened to someone but we're never told what happened, nor what exactly the victim meant to Bond, other than that it was a woman that he cared about (wife? girlfriend? fellow spy?), and apparently she died (how?) due to some bad guy (who?). The point of the whole movie (Bond's mission) was to find this bad guy by defeating some lesser bad guy. In the last five minutes, after the mission is over and the lesser bad guy duly defeated, the setting switches to some entirely different place (where?) with different characters, a man and a woman (exactly who are they?). At any rate, apparently one of them is the bad guy who in some way is at least somewhat responsible for the unnamed death of the unnamed woman. Bond sends away the woman with the bad guy, presumably saving her life. The camera goes with her and we never find out what Bond says or does to the bad guy!! We learn that he doesn't kill him, and the movie ends with Bond dropping a necklace and walking away.

Presumably the necklace belonged to his woman friend, but who was she?! And what happened to her?! And who was the bad guy?! And what kick-ass thing did Bond do or say to him?!

[chrisoff]

The ending of the most recent James Bond felt incomplete. The entire plot was based on Bond's revenge for something that happened to someone but we're never told what happened, nor what exactly the victim meant to Bond, other than that it was a woman that he cared about (wife? girlfriend? fellow spy?), and apparently she died (how?) due to some bad guy (who?). The point of the whole movie (Bond's mission) was to find this bad guy by defeating some lesser bad guy. In the last five minutes, after the mission is over and the lesser bad guy duly defeated, the setting switches to some entirely different place (where?) with different characters, a man and a woman (exactly who are they?). At any rate, apparently one of them is the bad guy who in some way is at least somewhat responsible for the unnamed death of the unnamed woman. Bond sends away the woman with the bad guy, presumably saving her life. The camera goes with her and we never find out what Bond says or does to the bad guy!! We learn that he doesn't kill him, and the movie ends with Bond dropping a necklace and walking away.

Presumably the necklace belonged to his woman friend, but who was she?! And what happened to her?! And who was the bad guy?! And what kick-ass thing did Bond do or say to him?!

I strongly urge you to go and watch Casino Royale, the first Daniel Craig Bond movie. That should answer all your questions.

[missy]

As for book endings - just about any Stephen King book after "The Stand". It's like he writes and writes and realizes "Hey, I'm at page 600, let's end it". The first one I noticed this way was "Pet Cemetary" and they just got worse from there on, to the point I've not read any of his more recent things.....
....And any of his put to film have been horrible except "Carrie".