and then a big foot squashes everyone
David Edelstein and readers come up with their list of worst "twist" endings ever.
Then there's the hilarious honorable mention:
Of course part of the fun of making such lists is to argue with them. I'm a big fan of Fight Club and The Usual Suspects, so I would push those off the list. I found Fight Club’s twist surprising and true to the feel of the film, which is tough to pull off.
It is a common myth that only the twist endings that you can see coming a mile off are crappy. Far from it, many times the worst are endings you don't see coming, because they make no fucking sense!
For this reason, The Contender deserves to be at the top of the list. It has a plot twist that, aside from just being totally implausible, pulls apart the dramatic rationale of the entire movie. It's a twist that rightfully makes it a story not worth telling.
"There once was a politician who was accused of making a porn video when she was young. She didn't deny it, because she thought it irrelevant to her qualifications. But she didn't do it anyway, so who cares?"
Identity was disqualified from the list for the ending's weird originality. Yeah, well some new territories aren't worth charting. You've never seen a movie with an ending like Identity because it's so ridiculous that not even the most jaded hack would have enough contempt for the audience to try it.
Praising the originality of Identity's ending is like giving props to someone who's built a resort on the slope of a volcano or to the inventor of Rap-Rock. Congratulations, you've done something originally stupid.
Secret Window has a much, much worse ending than The Game. If we are judging movies by the ratio of ending's crappiness to overall content, The Game certainly fares badly. The ledge that Micheal Douglas falls off of is a good metaphor for the let down of that ending. Secret Window was just not all that good to begin with. A bad ending can only make so much difference.
Come to think of it, anything written by Steven King is bound to have a crappy twist ending. He's the M. Night of pulp horror.
Twist and Shout - Readers nominate the most-idiotic-twist endings. By David Edelstein
1. The Life of David Gale
2. The Game
3. Planet of the Apes (Tim Burton version)
4. Basic
5. The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang)
6. Suspicion (Hitchcock)
7. No Way Out
8. The Village
9. Fight Club
10. The Forgotten
11. Secret Window
12. The Usual Suspects
13. Reindeer Games
14. Never Talk to Strangers
15. Man on Fire
16. I Bury the Living
17. The Contender
18. Swimming Pool
19. The Stepford Wives (remake)
20. The Upside of Anger
Then there's the hilarious honorable mention:
The Passion of the Christ
He's not really dead!
Of course part of the fun of making such lists is to argue with them. I'm a big fan of Fight Club and The Usual Suspects, so I would push those off the list. I found Fight Club’s twist surprising and true to the feel of the film, which is tough to pull off.
It is a common myth that only the twist endings that you can see coming a mile off are crappy. Far from it, many times the worst are endings you don't see coming, because they make no fucking sense!
For this reason, The Contender deserves to be at the top of the list. It has a plot twist that, aside from just being totally implausible, pulls apart the dramatic rationale of the entire movie. It's a twist that rightfully makes it a story not worth telling.
"There once was a politician who was accused of making a porn video when she was young. She didn't deny it, because she thought it irrelevant to her qualifications. But she didn't do it anyway, so who cares?"
Identity was disqualified from the list for the ending's weird originality. Yeah, well some new territories aren't worth charting. You've never seen a movie with an ending like Identity because it's so ridiculous that not even the most jaded hack would have enough contempt for the audience to try it.
Praising the originality of Identity's ending is like giving props to someone who's built a resort on the slope of a volcano or to the inventor of Rap-Rock. Congratulations, you've done something originally stupid.
Secret Window has a much, much worse ending than The Game. If we are judging movies by the ratio of ending's crappiness to overall content, The Game certainly fares badly. The ledge that Micheal Douglas falls off of is a good metaphor for the let down of that ending. Secret Window was just not all that good to begin with. A bad ending can only make so much difference.
Come to think of it, anything written by Steven King is bound to have a crappy twist ending. He's the M. Night of pulp horror.
posted by otis @ 12:57 AM
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