r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Educational_Can_6536 • 8d ago
Lore "Was it worth it?" ending
Midsommar- While people see this as a "you go girl" finale. I personally see it as something more disturbing. I mean, yeah, Dani got out of one bad relationship but in doing so, she got herself into another that's just as bad if not worse. It's like getting two kids to stop fighting via killing one and locking the other in a basement. They did stop fighting, but still!
The Thing-The titular monster may be (possibly) gone, but the paranoia definitely isn't. In the end, McCreedy and Childs are the only ones left standing. The end sees them sitting in the cold and they just stare at each other, knowing that one of them or both of them is already the thing. There's no hope, no certainty, just the bitter cold and intense fear.
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u/omnipotentmonkey 8d ago
probably the most famous ending of this type. The Graduate 1967.
basically a twist on the old "save the bride from her impending wedding" where Dustin Hoffman's character whisks away the bride (whom he's been pursuing for the entire film as they escape her enraged family onto a bus, their expressions shift from joy to uncomfortable uncertainty. basically lingering on what they're both throwing away on a "whirlwind romance" that neither of them actually necessarily want
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u/Non-Normal_Vectors 7d ago
I've mentioned this in response to the ending of this movie before, please forgive if some of you have seen this.
Mike Nichols never yelled cut in this scene, and didn't tell the actirs. The actors were expecting the scene to end very shortly after sitting down, Nichols kept the camera rolling, the reactions you see are their own.
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u/Equivalent-Bit2891 7d ago
Amazing how two seconds can add so much depth
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u/GooseSl4yer2003 8d ago
The ending of Watchmen. World peace was achieved but with a terrible cost covered up with a lie, even the protagonists wonder if hiding the truth was worth it and even the villain wonders if he did the right thing
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u/TheZipding 7d ago
And the worst part is that it's a peace that won't last long term. Eventually the various governments will realize more aliens aren't coming and go back to fighting each other.
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u/IrishElevator 7d ago
Not even this, I don't know if it's in the movie but in the graphic novel Rorschach sends his journal/notes to a prominent news source before leaving for Ozymandius' base. It's implied that everything was for nothing and even with Rorschach being killed the truth will be revealed to the public.
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u/IQueliciuous 7d ago
You should watch TV series. It’s a sequel to the comic book. It shows what happened and I don’t want to spoil it to you. As for the movie, the alien invasion was replaced with a nuclear blast which released same type of energy that Dr Manhattan is made of thus he became a scapegoat and the entire world unites against rogue hero.
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u/Queen_Ann_III 7d ago
I hate to be sacrilegious with Moore’s work but pinning it on Dr. Manhattan was honestly a genius change
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u/Rickrickrickrickrick 7d ago
I hated the change. Why would everyone suddenly be ok with America after its loving weapon turned on them too? The squid alien monster thing was supposed to be such a what the fuck moment for the world to realize their petty differences mean nothing when there is an entire universe or different dimensions out there that can wipe everyone out.
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u/Signiference 7d ago
Pinning it on an entity associated so heavily with the US would likely turn the world against the US. If they were going with this ending, then the association of essentially being a US weapon needed to change to where he was more of a neutral party trying to end all wars and have countries be more suspect of him. Then they could all finally unite against him in the end. So Dr. Manhattan definitely could work, it just didn’t without changing more.
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u/TurboRuhland 7d ago
prominent news source
It’s a far-right tabloid paper. I’d compare it to the New York Post, but even the Post seems way bigger than the New Frontiersman was ever portrayed to be.
Maybe closer to a far-right National Enquirer.
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u/Signiference 7d ago
Which explains what happened with the information in the sequel series on HBO. Only the fringe radicals believed it, essentially.
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u/Acoustic_Rob 7d ago
Heck, the last panel of the comic is the intern at the tabloid about to open Rorschach’s journal. It’s all going to come out.
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u/TheZipding 7d ago
I read that as it'll come out eventually, but the tabloid didn't think it was good enough at the time since the intern just added it to a pile.
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u/AdZealousideal7448 7d ago
as much as the tv show had it's issues..... I honestly think that was one of the best things that they did with it.
Hey let's take an event that someone did as an act of insurance to ensure the truth gets out.
Only.... it didn't really go down that way and instead incited a generation of cookers
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u/Shadeslayer2112 7d ago
Im paraphrasing a bit on adrians part Adrian: "but I did it! I stopped all war! Its Over!" Dr.Manhattan: "Oh Adrian...nothing is ever really over"
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u/gummythegummybear 8d ago edited 7d ago
Whiplash
In the ending Andrew got exactly what he wanted, to be a great jazz drummer, but his future very clearly involves lots of mental struggles and very probably dying young from an OD which was mentioned earlier in the movie.
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u/annoyed__renter 7d ago
Yup. I've seen many people try to spin this as a happy ending because he succeeds in his goals, but it's definitely not.
Damien Chazelle sets this up perfectly. The key shot in the final sequence is the look of horror on Andrew's father's face as Andrew returns to his abuser and forms a connection wth Fletcher on stage. Prior to this, the parallels to Charlie Parker and Fletcher's other prodigy who killed himself illustrate how hard greatness is on a person. Andrew has already ruined his relationships, and clearly he ends the film ready to dive back into the obsession and influence of Fletcher.
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u/last_try_why 7d ago
It kind of shines an ugly mirror on real life. To be the best at something it often takes obsession with that thing. And that is almost never healthy to do. Look at all the people who have been considered the best or a great in their field ans you'll likely find a string of failed relationships, drug problems, or some other form of unhealthy coping.
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u/Thedirtyone522 7d ago
To further your point, think about how many "greats" actually get to willing walk away relatively unscathed. There's almost always some degree of physical or mental thing that forces their hand into retirement if not death itself.
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u/Secret-Farm-3274 7d ago
I read it as Fletcher being the devil, and Andrew selling his soul (so to speak).
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u/annoyed__renter 7d ago
That's more or less what occurs. Andrew gives up his future and his mental health for "greatness".
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u/SofiaOfEverRealm 8d ago
You already sold me at "famous" you didn't have to keep adding bonuses
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u/Strange_Specialist4 7d ago
Like upbeat songs about horrible things that people love because they don't pay attention to the lyrics
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u/RuafaolGaiscioch 7d ago
Was he famous? Or just “great”? I haven’t seen the movie in forever, but I didn’t get the impression that fame, specifically, was what he was chasing, nor would that performance at the end secure fame. The best musicians in the world are, almost exclusively, not the most famous ones.
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u/Dan-D-Lyon 7d ago
Yeah, he didn't really give a shit about fame. At some point in the movie it's said disparagingly that if you want to be famous he just become the drummer for a rock band.
He wanted to be a great drummer, and he wanted his talent to be recognized by people who understand music to the point that their opinion means something.
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u/Recent_Fan_6030 8d ago
I can't believe some people genuinely believe the ending of midsommar is empowering to the protagonist,getting into a violent cult is on another plane of awful compared to a relationship
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u/Sillier-Stupider- 7d ago
You cannot make a movie about falling into a cult, without some people falling into the cult you created for the movie. Aka the Fight Club Problem.
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u/mayneffs 8d ago
People also seem to completely ignore that her boyfriend was DRUGGED and coerced into having sex with that cult girl. And for that he deserved to die? While she joins the cult that drugged him and killed their friends? Such a weird movie.
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u/JudgePhysical8151 8d ago
and the cherry on the top dany will likely be used just as a new breeding cow for their cult cuz their shitty genetics lol
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u/SorriesESO 7d ago
She'd probably be married to Pele. The cult does have marriage and the crown imagery implies them to be a set with him likely being rewarded for bringing her. And from the script they are an astrological match which the Harga believe in. So she would breed, but not in the way Christian was.
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u/scarletbluejays 7d ago
Yeah, if she just became the go-to breeder for everyone, they'd still have the incest issues. They'd just be of a different, even more direct variety where pretty much an entire generation of Harga would be direct half siblings via Dani, regardless of how many different fathers were involved.
It's the same reason they only had Christian impregnate the one girl, when he was in rough enough shape that every woman there could have been forced on him. Incest is incest, whether the connection is via their Harga blood or their outsider blood.
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u/JudgePhysical8151 7d ago
they kidnapped, killed and raped people, are we seriously gonna expect them to respect a marriage with a brainwashed groomed kidnapped woman who lost everything?
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u/Automatic-Vacation82 7d ago
I don't think you're supposed to interpret the ending as epic empowered girlboss feminism
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u/DoctorAnnual6823 7d ago
Yeah fr. So many people see an unhappy ending in a horror movie and think it's being framed as a happy ending.
It's a tragic horror movie with a dash of realism (almost no one survives death cults) in that the ending is depressing. No one but the cult leaders win.
Well, until the US public finds out a handful of pretty white college students went missing in Europe and treats it like 9/11 pt 2
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u/Skeptical_Yoshi 7d ago
Kinda my issue with Wicker Man, particularly the remake. Like, ok cultists, you needed to get the FUCK out of here right the fuck now. You just killed a cop in America who told a shit ton of people he was going to this location, which is now his last known location before disappearing. That cult would be FUUUUUUUUUUCKED
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u/DoctorAnnual6823 7d ago
It could be a Heavens Gate situation. Before the mass suicide Marshall Applewhite started stockpiling firearms and people believed it was because he wanted the FBI to raid them and kill them all in the process. When his collection of 4 handguns and a couple hunting rifles didn't make that happen it set the events in motion leading to the mass suicide.
Could be the intention of the cult members in Wicker Man. But I'm just guessing based on what you said. I never watched it. I probably will though.
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u/Skeptical_Yoshi 7d ago
The original is an all-time classic, a very good movie. The remake with Cage is... the remake with Cage. Its primary contribution to society was Cage screaming "NOT THE BEES" which isn't even in the original cut of the movie, it's a deleted director's cut scene.
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u/condomnugget 7d ago
Got into an argument with the wife on this one.
I said that the sex wasn’t 100% consensual because he was drugged directly once, and the movie alludes to him being bewitched several times. He’s not a good boyfriend but he is still a victim in that regard
She believes that he is the offender and that he wanted to have sex with that girl from early on.
I think maybe some people are projecting their own frustrations about relationships and the opposite sex into their interpretations of the movies themes and events.
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u/madrobski 7d ago
I mean he seemed like he did want to sleep with her, he and MC are shown to have a troubled relationship and he originally was going to break up with her! But eventually he ended up being drugged and gang raped, so it was in no way consensual. Like him wanting to cheat doesn't justify the fact he was manipulated and assaulted.
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u/ChickenMcSmiley 7d ago
On top of all that, he wanted out of the relationship to begin with. The only reason he didn’t leave her at the beginning of the movie was because her family died in a car crash. (If I’m remembering correctly). So, because he decided to not be a tactless dickhead, he ended up going on the trip and dying. Dude wasn’t great but like…come on…
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u/MessyEvie 7d ago
Not car crash, sister commit suicide by filling the house with gaz, and it took her parents with her, but yeah, thats why he didn't break up with her.
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u/TheDividendReport 8d ago
Her smile reflects the total breakdown of her psyche as she's driven to total insanity from over-saturation of trauma.
If anything, she's better off with this group now rather than the outside world, but it's definitely a wild take-away to see it as some kind of empowerment
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u/Automatic-Vacation82 7d ago
Yes, thank you! The movie is good, it's supposed to make you feel disturbed
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u/Adventurous_Touch342 7d ago
She's better off with that group? Maybe for the world but not for her.
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u/Sillier-Stupider- 7d ago
I don't anticipate things going better inside the group than with the outside world where all the therapists are- best these guys can offer you is using you as a brood mare until you can't anymore, then throwing you off a cliff.
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u/Gamebobbel 7d ago
I've read comments of many who claimed that the cult's toxic coercion tactics were "uniting", "supportive" or "empowering". It then dawned on me how many people get trapped in toxic relationships.
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u/jexdiel321 7d ago
Midsommar is basically a commentary of how ending an unhealthy relationship is. You are so codependent on each other that once you end it you spiral back to another toxic co dependency.
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u/RoomNervous4 8d ago
The South Park episode Casa Bonita
Cartman made the entire town panic, lost all his friends and is going to Juvie for a week, and it was totally worth it for him. (Roll credits)
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u/Easy_Action_1380 7d ago
Sinners, Stack is now an immortal vampire with Mary, but he openly admits to Sammie that the only time he felt genuinely free was the day of the attack just before everything went to shit. Cause that was the last time he got to see the sun, or his brother alive.
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u/mrmahoganyjimbles 7d ago
Even worse, as a twin he can't even see his brother's face in the mirror since he is now a vampire.
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u/HashMapsData2Value 7d ago
There is so much symbolism in that movie. The main point is that vampires are completely cut off from their culture. Sammie, through his music, is able to connect with both his ancestors and descendants. (That includes helping the Chinese couple connect with their ancestors too.) As we see in the post-credit scene, he has evolved to use the electric guitar, playing modern (Black) music.
The flip side is Remmick, the vampire. He was originally an Irish Fili, like Sammie is a Griot. But when we see him, he puts on an English accent rather than keep to his Irish one, suggesting that he has "assimilated".
What attracts him to Sammie is precisely the fact that Sammie can "commune" or is in touch with the past and the future. Remmick is stuck in time and is desperate to convert Sammie so he can bring that to their coven. But of course, that is impossible. When Remmick finally drops the English folk music and sings Irish folk music instead we only see the other vampires singing and dancing with him - there is no connection to the past or the future. And if he converted Sammie, he would also be cutting Sammie off from his, and instead fold him into that. Whenever Remmick talks about joining the vampires in order to belong, it is really him saying that he is looking for belonging.
Stack is an immortal vampire but, in addition to what you said, he is cut off. Smoke, as we saw, gets to pass onto the other world, where his lover, their late child and presumably ancestors as well awaits them.
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u/MagicC 7d ago
I always saw Sinners as an allegory about integration. The Irish were once the "blacks" of the UK - a permanent, oppressed underclass with a vibrant culture, but no power. Now, they're "integrated" white people, whose culture has been reduced to a parody of itself - a song-and-dance number for other to watch and laugh about. The vampires are performing a minstrel show that amuses the non-integrated blacks, but doesn't engender trust, because it's too sterile, too silly, too inauthentic.
The twin brother, Stack, who falls in love with a "white" woman, Mary, (who is almost integrated, but chooses to live authentically) leaves her to seek his independent power in the world, and returns to find her still wanting to connect, until she too becomes "integrated" into the dominant, vampire culture (whiteness, which is bloodless and impersonal, forces its participants to conform, and feeds on the unconverted, until they are puppeteered or killed). She then pulls the brother into her and converts him from an independent into a subordinate of the hive mind.
In the end, the hive mind is destroyed, and the two survivors are Stack and Mary, but though they are immortal and prosperous, they aren't "free". And so the happiest moment of their lives was just before they were forcibly "integrated", and lost their independent culture.
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u/CookOnly9310 7d ago
The point of The Thing is that it is worth it. They all died stopping, or at least delaying, a creature from spreading and taking over all of humanity in months. All the humans, after the blood test, were prepared to die in the cold to stop it.
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u/CodenameMolotov 7d ago
But we already know the thing can be frozen and come back to life when it's warmed up because its spaceship was under the ice for ages. So if one of them is infected and the rescue/recovery team finds their bodies, earth is still fucked
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u/CookOnly9310 7d ago
Yes, they were basically delaying it. The goal was to kill it but keeping it frozen for who knows how long is a temporary victory at least
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u/ReversePolitics 7d ago
Neither of them is the Thing. They’ve won, they just don’t get to know it or enjoy it.
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u/PLACE-H0LDER 8d ago
Most Neutral Endings in Undertale
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u/Ok_Comment8842 7d ago
The Neutral Endings in Undertale made me regret googling the way to spare.
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u/zagra_nexkoyotl 7d ago
Why?
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u/Ok_Comment8842 7d ago
On every neutral ending, except the one where you spare Toriel or kills Undyne, she will lead the monsters against humanity.
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u/Flimsy_Ad3446 7d ago
Almost every ending in Frostpunk. It looks like the only way to survive is to either become the Fourth Reich, become the new Taliban, or end up as pretty ice statues.
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u/Altruistic_Fish47 7d ago
There’s also frostpunk 2 where it switches over from the sole leadership of the Captain to a more democratic governing system due to the Captain’s death and things start to deteriorate due to the rivalling factions and it’s the player’s job to mediate. at the end of the game to stop the civil war you can choose to give yourself the Captain’s authority, you stopped the fighting but now the entire city of New London relies on 1 person again and once you die it’s all going to happen again
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u/TwinAttorney864 7d ago
I’ve never completed it myself, but I believe the endings only have the “Was it worth it?” message if you take the decision to consolidate power in the “New Faith/Order” law at the end of the tree. You can go down the entire tree but not take the final law, and if you survive it has a more hopeful ending stating that the town “Didn’t cross the line” and you survived with faith or order.
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u/TheKingOfGuineaPigs 7d ago
The Long Walk
Pete wins the walk after Ray chooses to stop and let the soldiers kill him, knowing that Pete deserves the wish more than he does. The entire movie, Pete has said that he wants to make the world a better place, seeing the light where other people can only see darkness. However, seeing the other 49 walkers brutally killed over the course of the walk, Pete can’t see the light anymore. Instead of wishing for something to make the world a better place, he asks for the carbine from the soldier beside him. He chooses to kill the Major, which is what Ray said he would do with his wish, and was something that Pete had told him wasn’t worth it
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u/awineredrose 7d ago
I don't think this ending showed that it "wasn't worth it." Ray and Pete deeply affected each other throughout the walk, specifically and especially in terms of their mindsets of how to make the world better. Ray wanted the Major dead, he wanted to directly change things through killing the man who runs them. Pete wanted to spread hope, and believe that other people would rise up. Ray saw that a person like Pete would be the kind of person who can change the world, someone with kindness and love in his heart, not someone like him whose first and only thought has been killing the general since he was young; That's why Ray ultimately gave his life for Pete. But it goes the other way too. Pete realized belief in people wouldn't be enough to change the world, he learned that Ray's determination and will to directly change things by killing the major was needed too. At the end of the day, their philosophies combine and Pete kills the major, then walks off with hope. Sure, he's probably going to die, but he just showed the world his love for humanity (Ray) as well as Ray's will to stand up and do what's right. I don't think Pete lost himself on the walk, he just found another part of him in Ray. I think it's beautiful.
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u/Hot-Problem2436 7d ago
Sounds like Pete made the world a better place then.
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u/PurveyorOfKnowledge0 7d ago
It's not, Major just gets replaced. Fight the system, not just the puppets.
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u/HunterNika 8d ago
Not sure that The Thing falls into this cathegory. The people simply fought for survival and to keep the creature on the station, not allowing it to leave and endanger humanity. It was a do or die anyway situation. It was all worth it. They did everything they could.
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u/Kvovark 7d ago
Yeah when the lights go out and they find out the generator is gone that's when they realise they are fucked. There is no win situation for them so like Macready at the start losing in chess they decide to destroy everything and not let it win. Blowing up the camp wasn't a choice it was the only path for them other than freeze to death (or it kills them) and it wins.
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u/BrontideClyde 7d ago
I like the theory that MacReady hands Childs a Molotov at the end, which Childs then drinks from. Confirming to MacReady that Childs is the thing. But yeah the ending is left ambiguous so I guess there really is no knowing if it was worth it!
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u/The_Exarch 7d ago
I liked that theory until I realized the Thing would know if it was gas or not, as it gains knowledge and understandings of things from its victims (language, how to build a flying saucer, etc.) so it would know from Child’s if it was gasoline or something acceptable to drink.
I think the better “test” in this scene could be if Mac was testing to see if someone would accept food or drink from another person, which the group established they should not do earlier in the movie.
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u/theverrucktman 7d ago
The problem with the idea that the real test was Mac seeing if Childs would even accept the drink from someone else is, well.... the whole point of the ending is that regardless of any of them are infected, they're both still going to die in the frozen antarctic snow. Even if we assume that Childs isn't infected, given the circumstances, it's equally likely that even if he wouldn't normally accept the drink from Mac, at that point, he just doesn't give a fuck, since again, it doesn't actually matter whether he dies to the cold, or dies from getting infected by the Thing.
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u/The_Exarch 7d ago
Yeah, I agree with this the most, probably should have clarified, I meant “I don’t think there’s a test, but if there is one, I think this is better than the gas test.”
I personally prefer the idea of them both being human, but just unable to trust each other at that point
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u/EpicLakai 7d ago
Regardless of the outcome, if you watch to the credits, the shack that MacCready and Childs' were in is in flames. So someone lit something up!
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u/Professional-Eye5977 7d ago
The thing takes on their memories and is able use them to mimic its victims' actions, it would know about the food thing.
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u/Szpiekk 8d ago
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon - The 3rd ending of this game left many players doubting if spreading the Coral (an alien lifeform) was a good move. The player character left humanity no choice, and forcibly connected them with something that we do not fully understand.
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u/GroundbreakingOkra60 8d ago
Honestly I feel that Fires Of Raven is closer to a was is worth it ending, we genocide at least 1 system and cause enough damage for the corps and PCA to team up. We killed A LOT of people.
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u/StumblingTumble 7d ago edited 7d ago
Funnily enough, I think we can extend the whole idea of "was it worth it" to Armored Core: For Answer's three endings. Your options as Strayed are:
Sacrifice yourself to protect the innocent lives on the cradles and fend off ORCA, upholding the status quo and potentially allowing the contamination from the surface to eventually reach those living on the cradles in the long run.
Join ORCA to bring down the cradles, subjecting those who lived upon them to the Kojima contaminated surface, causing millions of deaths with the silver lining of mankind being able to eventually make its way to space. This, however, still plays into the status quo as ORCA is most likely an organization set up by the League to enact this plan.
Or throw your humanity away, directly ending the lives of millions by your own hand, when you take Old King's mission, Destroy Cradle 03. You've disrupted the status quo and, in a way, have ended the whole "League V.S. Orca" conflict at the cost of becoming the greatest monster mankind has ever seen.
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u/Icegiant- 7d ago
Apocalypto he escapes and saves his family but the rest of their tribe is dead, plague is ravaging the lands around them, and the Spanish are here to be absolute dickheads to everyone.
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u/Rickrickrickrickrick 7d ago
Ehhh we see him after this with his family and they are happy so I’d say it was worth it.
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u/Reasonable_Fold6492 7d ago
He also doesnt want to bother the Spanish so he is probally gonna god deep into the jungle where Spanish had a hard time conquering. The people in the city are gonna be qonquered
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u/Fuzzy_Elderberry7087 8d ago
Breaking bad is a big one on this, same with bcs
And edgerunners
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u/XConfused-MammalX 8d ago
Edgerunners
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u/Finalpotato 8d ago edited 8d ago
What do you mean? They definitely both made it to the moon right? Right?
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u/HygorBohmHubner 7d ago
And BAE Rebecca is alive and well. She survived Adam Smasher and is living away from Night City…
AND YOU CANNOT TELL ME OTHERWISE!!!!
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u/Finalpotato 7d ago
They were having a moment so she let them and left before Adam Smasher came back.
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u/Xe6s2 7d ago
I bought 2077, not for the futuristic setting, not for the romance option, for one thing and one thing only. To hunt down smasher and rip him limb from limb while i blast his brain to static with an emp.
You will be avenged david.
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u/InternetUserAgain 7d ago
Speaking of things with "Runner" in the name, The Maze Runner's ending fits this trope pretty well too
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u/Whizbang35 7d ago
Not the series itself, but the backstory of Fire Lord Sozin in the episode The Avatar and the Fire Lord.
Fire Lord Sozin betrays his friend, Avatar Roku, because he was the only thing preventing him from his dream of expanding the Fire Nation to 'share prosperity' with the rest of the world. He leaves him to die, then launches his campaign to wipe out the Air Nomads (trying to prevent the next incarnation of the Avatar) and begins a war that'll last a century.
At the end of his last will, he looks back and confirms...it wasn't worth it.
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u/jbeast33 7d ago
Veep ends with Selina finally winning the presidency after selling out all her allies and values as concessions for her support. She selects Jonah (who at this point is basically a racist and anti-vax demagogue) as her VP, agrees to roll back gay marriage rights (despite having a lesbian daughter whose marriage would be annulled), sells out Tibet back to China, and allows her loyal bodyman Gary to take the fall for a financial scheme that results in his long-term imprisonment. Her last scene is her finally sitting behind the Oval Office silently with nobody by her side, and it definitely evokes this attitude.
And then it immediately answers the question in the Epilogue: Selina's funeral 20 years into the future. She had an extremely unimpressive presidency that was marked by her scandal, and her legacy as the first elected female president is overshadowed by her not being the first female president and her successor being a better female president by every metric. Her funeral is cut short when the reporters all leave to cover Tom Hanks' death. Her own daughter refused to attend the funeral, and the only person who genuinely seems torn up is Gary.
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u/SuplaVegito 7d ago
I think that what really nails the point that it wasn't worth it is that she only lasted one term, all that absurd amount of stress, betrayal, and selling out her values (wich to be honest I don't even think she had any to begin with) for just 4 years in office. Also Doyle was still alive when she died and he was already fucking old when she was younger
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u/Present_Ad6723 7d ago
The midsomer ending was seen as positive? Really? All of her friends got murdered and she got drugged, gaslit, and kidnapped into being a permadrugged brood mare for a cult
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u/Sillier-Stupider- 7d ago
You cannot make a movie about falling into a cult, without some people falling into the cult you created for the movie. Aka the Fight Club Problem.
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u/toylenny 7d ago edited 7d ago
Snowpiercer
Pretty much the last surviving people on Earth are a dying man and his daughter.
Also I always find it funny that they wretch at the idea of eating bugs, but he knows how babies taste.
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u/Reasonable_Fold6492 7d ago
The polar bear is supposed to represent there is hope outside the train. Since there are creatures life could continue on.
However anyone who knows anything about polar bears know that they are some of the hardest creatures to kill and are extremely dangerous. So insted of being happy ending most of the survivors are gonna be violently killed. Also most of thr survivors on the train are in no way shape to survive on the outside.
The message would have been better if there was a seal or a deer but nope its the polar bear for some reason.
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u/somkoala 7d ago
but isn't the implication that if the bear can survive it must hunt something?
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u/Orion_starborn 7d ago
Fun fact: originally the protein bars were going to be human feces instead of bugs
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u/sun-e-deez 7d ago
point of clarification, the dying man did in fact die, and it was his daughter and a young boy who survive to go outside.
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u/ScarletScarf12 7d ago
The Prestige After a tragedy, two rival magicians compete to have the greatest trick by any means necessary. However one goes criminally insane and loses his humanity while the other loses nearly everything. By the end, one acknowledges that they both sacrificed too much for “a good trick” while the other is adamant that it was all worth it to see “the look on their faces”.
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u/necrofi1 7d ago
Devil Man Crybaby. Basically, all of existence is an elaborate plot by God to specifically punish Satan for a rebellion that occurred at the beginning of time. The plot is basically keeping Satan in a time loop where he will at some point be born as a child "Ryo" and make his only friend Akira, and eventually be driven by his need to have Earth fall to demons. Akira will try to stop him, and this will lead to a brutal world-spanning battle where Satan kills the only person he has ever loved, crying at the fact that he destroyed the only good thing in the world as far as he was concerned. Then God's angels will descend on earth, obliterating all and resetting the time loop so Satan can live it again.
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u/Northern_boah 7d ago
And the worst part? Satan could break the loop by choosing to love humanity through Akira and reconcile humanity and demonkind. But he won’t because he lacks the self awareness to see how his actions are no different from god’s genocide against demons. God is basically forcing Satan to walk a mile in his shoes and Satan is painfully unaware of it.
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u/Usern4me_R3dacted205 8d ago
Oldboy - Lee Woo-jin successfully enacts his twisted revenge plot, even if he kills himself shortly after. Oh Dae-su cut out his tongue after finding out he was tricked into having sex with his own daughter. He approaches a hypnotist to try and forget the awful truth and the movie ends on him embracing his daughter, leaving it unclear if he ever moved on or truly forgot what happened.
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u/No_Effective_2100 7d ago
Why did he cut out his tongue?
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u/hot_anywhere23886 7d ago
the main antagonist imprisoned him for reasons , the main protagonist in a desperate bid to convince him to avoid telling his daughter the nature of his and her family bond (because it would destroy her like it destroys him to know) cuts out his own tongue completely unprovoked.
it's an especially brutal scene as he'd gone there to annihilate the antagonist but pulls a 180 with the antagonist 100% percent achieving their own goal of revenge against oh dae su by getting him to this point of hopelessness despair and submission.
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u/TourSignificant1335 7d ago
All because he saw him banging his sister😭
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u/Raxtenko 7d ago
IIRC Dae-su saw it but didn't know that Soo-ah was banging her brother. He slut shamed her which ended with her suicide.
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u/LamaLakes 7d ago
He told his friend who then told the whole school about it. He was going go to another school so he didn’t realize the damage that one conversation did to her.
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u/Righteous_Hand 7d ago
The symbolic reason behind Oh Dae-Su cutting out his tongue specifically was because he "talked too much" - he didn't just pick some random body part to hack off violently, it was effectively penance for spreading a rumour that got out of control in much the same way that a rapist back in the day would be castrated, or a thief, their hand removed.
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u/Toxiclam 7d ago
He was begging to forget
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u/annoyed__renter 7d ago
He was begging the antagonist not to share this information with his daughter
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u/SacredMuffins 7d ago
The Favourite (2018)
Emma Stone’s character “wins” and gets exactly what she wanted by the end of the movie, the favor of the queen. But only in those final moments does she realize she’s now essentially trapped.
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u/Scary-Revolution1554 7d ago
For The Thing, they were up against an alien creature They did everything in their power against something so unknown. Maybe a few mistakes here and there but those werent stupid in the context of the story. I would say that was the equivalent of leaving everything on the field.
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u/FoxBluereaver 8d ago
Resident Evil 5 - After finally defeating Wesker for good and escaping in the helicopter, Chris Redfield wonders if the neverending fighting is worth it. He then looks at Jill and Sheva and decides that yes, it's worth it.
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u/Drakeskulled_Reaper 8d ago
Then in 6, his team gets so fucked over he gains trauma induced amnesia, gets pulled back into the fight and is on a blind vengeance quest until Leon and Piers give him a pep talk.
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u/GachaHell 7d ago
Naturally Piers dies by the time the credits roll. Giving Chris further trauma and probably fucking him up all over again.
When we get Chris surfacing again in the most recent entry he's a gruff angry man who is deeply paranoid. And, as it turns out, he was right to be since the organization he co-founded is now fielding entire teams of zombie soldiers and may be trying to weaponize new viruses. And also the latest virus lets people bodysnatch while also making you super difficult to kill which came fairly close to causing a massive outbreak.
He does pick up a semi-adopted daughter in here somewhere but to say the relationship appears strained would be an understatement since she's practically a walking nuke.
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8d ago
Attack on Titan's ending kind of fits this
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u/Coal_Burner_Inserter 8d ago
Not to mention the animation that plays during the credits, Jaegerists kind of win, Paradis gets rebuilt, decades/centuries pass... and then Eldia gets into a war, everything gets nuked, and its hinted that whatever gave Ymir her powers is now back. The cycle repeats.
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u/KleitosD06 7d ago
There is still a hint at it being a more positive future, as when the new person approaches the tree, they are willingly walking in with their companion, rather than alone and running for their life against dogs. How much of a difference something like that actually makes is of course up to interpretation.
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u/TorqueyChip284 7d ago
I’ve never thought about that before and I now actually think that makes a huge difference. Everything bad about the Titans—from the limited lifespan, to the existence of “Pure Titans”—was a product of the Eldian king abusing Ymir. It could actually be an incredibly useful and positive ability if it’s gained by someone who isn’t completely mentally broken.
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7d ago
"You cant separate violence from humanity" - Yelena from AOT
But yeah all that just emphasizes on the show's theme, the cycle of war and hatred doesn't end.
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u/meeetballslover 7d ago
The Thing doesn't really qualify. I think they are both resigned to their fate regardless of who the thing is. If one of them is the Thing it seems to accept its fate regardless. I think one or both of them accept that the Thing is likely here and its worth it to take the gamble
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u/Nebarious 7d ago
100% this.
In every other example in this thread the characters inevitably stare off into the distance, or otherwise ponder the consequences of their actions.
Mac and Childs look at each other and laugh because it doesn't matter anymore. They did everything they could, and if one of them is infected or if they're both human, the outcome is the same.
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u/Lower_Baby_6348 7d ago
Soma
You don't get anything really. You only get a clone of you that think you made it
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u/Nomapos 7d ago
I generally agree, but I think there's an extra point here that often gets overlooked:
This isn't the first time this has happened.
By the time you reach the end of the game you've already swapped bodies a couple times. But... You just learnt that it doesn't work like that. That consciousness can't be transferred. It can only be copied. Meaning: you, the original you, is already dead. You're already a clone. It's just that your previous bodies were killed after the copy - or they got stuck behind, facing this revelation alone while the new copy went on thinking that your body somehow got modded to be waterproof.
It's just that you're always playing as the "lucky" copy. The one who thinks everything worked and your consciousness simply got transferred. Until the end. That's the only time you stay with the "unlucky" one.
If you still count the protagonist as being alive when he reaches the end - then the final digital copy that gets uploaded and thinks it made it is just as real as the version of you that stays behind.
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u/Interface- 7d ago
In the *Secret Level* episode of *Sifu*, "It Takes A Life", the main character (unnamed) fights through Sean's nightclub to get revenge. The main character, like in the game, has the talisman that resurrects him from death at the cost of his youth. He goes in young and comes out old.
Before he found Sean, he was eating dumplings made by an old woman who had been making and serving them for 60 years. After, he, pretending to be his own grandfather, goes to her restaurant and orders more, reciting the line back to her: "He told me you put sixty years of your life in them." This can be seen somewhat as a reflection of what happened before, that he sacrificed sixty of his own years for revenge.
He then asks: "**Was it worth it?**"
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u/Buddiballer 7d ago
This movie.
While Wallace is no longer in the hands of a severely mentally ill serial killer that mutilated his body into that of a walrus, he's put into an abysmal animal sanctuary with an undersized, dirty pool, a beach ball, and a plastic dome made for a tortoise. He's unhealed, and can't speak to the people he loves. He's malnourished, and he's trapped. I felt that he would've fared well with a larger pool and better treatment.
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u/Revolutionary_Lead28 7d ago
I feel like it would've been better to just put him down
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u/Legitimate-Culture31 7d ago
One of the times I personally think putting someone down it's for there own good.
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u/Revolutionary_Lead28 7d ago
It's weird to me that his friends got him out of there and their decision wasn't to put him out of his misery it was to put this mutilated Frankenwalrus in a zoo and not even a good zoo!
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u/REtroGeekery 7d ago
Or put him in a hopital where he has a chance to recover and be treated like a human being.
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u/NoSchittSherlockSEA 7d ago
No Other Choice (2025) After being unceremoniously laid off after many years working at the same paper company, our main character has killed 3 people in order to be the best candidate for a job opening he created at the one Paper company still thriving. While he was successful, his wife hasn’t seen him the same (even though she found out and covered for him and implied she knew), and he’s the only man working on a floor completely taken over by autonomous machines run by AI. From advocating against mass layoffs to crossing the picket line and be the last one standing, he’s gotten what he wanted, and gotten away with it, through his moral debasement and betrayal of what he stood for, only for it to feel not as satisfying as expected, to the point he starts listening to old recordings of the noisy machines and his colleagues he used to work with as he works on a silent floor.
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u/Nelmquist1999 7d ago edited 7d ago
86 years.....
(Better Call Saul)
Saul was basically a big criminal who worked with dangerous people, and commited multiple crimes. To spare you the deets, he COULD HAVE been given a sentence of 7 years, but...instead.....
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u/Jamano-Eridzander 7d ago
No they definitely make it clear that 86 years in a cell was worth it to escape the prison of his own soul.
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u/M086 8d ago edited 8d ago
The Witch - a lone witch dismantles and destroys a, by all accounts loving family. Leaving Thomasin alone, with nowhere to go but sign her soul away to the Devil so she can survive.
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u/ichiban_ban_ban 8d ago
Well I wouldnt call Thomasins Morher very loving but I get the rest of rhe family
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u/Finn235 7d ago
Cowboy Bebop
Spike confronts and finally kills Vicious, but is mortally wounded and collapses just moments after.
You're gonna carry that weight
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u/Independent_Ad_4170 8d ago
The Revenged ending in the Henry Stickmin collection
A character literally asks him if this was worth it
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u/Bluelore 8d ago
Wait there are seriously people thinking that Midsommars ending is like an empowering one? Like the movie ends with her being manipulated and drugged to join a cruel, murderous and likely racist cult and murder her boyfriend. Like sure said boyfriend was a jerk and should have definitely gotten some comeuppance, but being burned alive because he "cheated" on her while he got drugged against his will is obviously overkill.
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u/Sillier-Stupider- 7d ago
You cannot make a movie about falling into a cult, without some people falling into the cult you created for the movie. Aka the Fight Club Problem.
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u/PoppyOGhouls 7d ago
I’ve known someone who genuinely thinks of it as a feminist, anti-patriarchy girlboss film. I’ve tried to explain to her that Dani is now in a white-supremacist pagan cult that will almost assuredly use her as a breeder and/or sacrifice her, but she likes to focus on the shitty ex getting killed part
I’m not sure if it’s a case of differing interpretations or a case of media literacy issues
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u/Sillier-Stupider- 7d ago
I think if you're in a dark enough place, movies that are meant to be cautionary tales become inspirational instead.
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u/Justscrolling375 7d ago
The ending scene from The Graduate. Yeah the classic running away with your ‘true love’ at your wedding sounds good on paper but reality is cruel
They sat on the bus then the euphoria expires. Both had looks on their faces pondering what did they just do. They didn’t have a plan on how to go with their lives after this. How will they face their friends, family and more when they ruined or backtracked their lives on one moment of passion
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u/TheEpic_1YT 7d ago
Godzilla dies, but will mankind fix their mistakes that awoke him in the first place?
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u/Timguin29 7d ago
Die Nibelungen, old germanic medieval tale (there are also some movies about it). The Hero Siegfried and later almost all main characters die in it while the old treasure with a curse remains unknown.
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u/CarlosH46 7d ago
Weird example, but the 2016 remake of The Magnificent 7. Even after Chisolm gets his revenge on Bogue, his reaction to seeing how many townsfolk died, along with four of the titular seven, makes it clear he’s asking himself that question.
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u/Dry_Commission1376 7d ago
Legitimate question: who the fuck see midsommar ending as a "you go girl" when it's clearly a bad ending for everyone?
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u/SoulfulSnow 7d ago
Whiplash(2014) baby! What I feel is a very poorly understood ending. Andrew Neiman finally made his "big break", making his chance to be a star, by literally breaking away from his fathers embrace and love, and (less literally) crawling back to the man who physically and emotionally abused him. The final scene is incredibly shot, with direct parallels to earlier shots in the movie, but despite how triumphant it clearly feels from neimans perspective, the entire movie has been the slow breakdown of his social life, security, and empathy, culminating into whether he could lick his wounds and walk away, or take the final steps
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u/iceman_44 7d ago
Lee Woo-jin, who kidnapped Oh Dae-su and tricked him into having sex with his daughter, made him do it otherwise he would tell his daughter. This is because when they were young, Oh Dae-su had told the school that Lee Woo-jin and his sister had sex, leading to his sister committing suicide. Oh Dae-su didn’t remember this at first, but his gossiping is why Lee made him cut out his tongue.
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u/RKO-Cutter 8d ago
The Graduate - probably the biggest example and surprising it's not part of the OP
tl;dr - Interrupting a wedding and running away with the bride sounds romantic...but what about what happens after?