r/movies • u/Big_Emotion4963 • 7h ago
Discussion What is a movie with a "happy ending" that is actually incredibly depressing when you think about it for more than five minutes?
Hollywood loves to wrap things up with a nice bow, uplifting music, and smiling characters to make the audience feel good on their way out of the theater. But sometimes, if you look past the cinematic triumph of the final scene, the actual reality of what the characters are left with is an absolute nightmare.
The Truman Show is a perfect example. The movie ends on this massive, soaring high note as Truman takes a bow and steps through the door into the real world. But when you actually think about his future, it is terrifying. He is stepping into a world he knows absolutely nothing about, with zero real-life survival skills, where millions of strangers are unhealthily obsessed with him. It is a psychological tragedy disguised as a victory.
Shaun of the Dead does this too. The ending plays out like a fun, return-to-normal sitcom wrap-up where he gets his girlfriend back and plays video games. But in reality, the zombie apocalypse actually happened, most of their loved ones were brutally eaten alive, and they are keeping their zombified best friend chained up in a shed. The trauma they would be dealing with is unimaginable.
What is a movie ending that felt like a massive victory on the first watch, but completely falls apart into a tragedy once you actually analyze the characters' future?
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u/deadspacekillers 7h ago
The ending of Shaun of the Dead is hilarious for that exact reason. He's just pretending that everything is ok, adapting to his best friend being a zombie. I love it.
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u/Moorepork 7h ago
Given it's a horror comedy and the whole world has adapted, making those zombie game shows on TV, I think in-universe it makes sense.
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u/riegspsych325 ⊃∪⊃⪽ 7h ago
one is even handling grocery carts as a menial job
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u/Cultural-Advisor9916 5h ago
and to make it funnier, its the "you've got red on your shirt" kid from his work if i remember right
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u/ConstantRefills 7h ago
I head canon that Shaun’s keeping him in case a cure is ever developed.
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u/deadspacekillers 7h ago
To be honest, Ed's quality of life isn't that different than before he was a zombie
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u/chekovsredherring 7h ago
I think the zombie-slacker parallels are kind of the whole point of the movie. Kinda like how Seth Rogen says the whole conflict of Pineapple Express arises from the excessive stonedness
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u/ripyourlungsdave 7h ago edited 6h ago
Which would be a much darker ending if they didn't hint at there still being a little piece of Nick's character in there.
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u/CentralSaltServices 4h ago
Remember they did the same thing with his stepdad turning off the music in the car. Something remains
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u/Darmok47 7h ago
Greenland
Yeah the family survived, but the kid is a Type 1 diabetic and no factory on Earth is making insulin anymore.
I haven't seen the sequel though.
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u/clumsyc 7h ago
I went into the sequel expecting the diabetes thing to be a big focus for exactly that reason and it barely comes up, lol. The kid is just somehow okay.
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u/boomzgoesthedynamite 7h ago
They have some sort of pills for him. Makes absolutely no sense. I think about this- insulin has an expiration date of around 18 months after production. It can stay at room temp for 28 days. I think I get at most 2-3 years, if I can somehow keep it cold, until the expired insulin stops working altogether. I’m cooked.
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u/happymeal2 6h ago
This was an interesting thing that became an issue in a book series I read, the first in the series is called “one second after”. Not quite apocalypse but next worst thing at a nationwide level and insulin was an issue for a character.
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u/Alex-Murphy 6h ago
Well that sounds fucking terrifying. Imagine instantly being in a food and water crisis overnight, with no cool or heat, no access to fresh water or medicine. It's wild how important electronics are to our day to day
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u/ScoutAames 6h ago
I’m off topic, but this drives me nuts in the Walking Dead when Laurie has her baby and then dies. That baby needed to eat immediately. They find a couple cans of formula eventually, like a day later, but they’d need sterile water, and you go through formula SO FAST. Idk, as a powder formula using mom, it turned off my ability to suspend disbelief.
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u/Long_Appointment_341 6h ago
I think about this way more than I should in post apocalyptic movies. The Last of Us was a recent big one that I feel would have this problem.
Babies are incredibly resilient but I also don’t think they would survive as well as these movies make it seem they do
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u/Schonke 4h ago
Babies are incredibly resilient but I also don’t think they would survive as well as these movies make it seem they do
Yeah, there's a reason people had so many children pre-industrial revolution and the average lifespan was much lower than today, and it's because child mortality was very high.
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u/ImprovementPutrid441 6h ago
Greenland is bonkers to me. It feels even bleaker than Deep impact where you know there is limited space in the bunkers but people know they exist. The media figures out what ELE means and people are aware of the comet. In Greenland the first hint that anything is up is when the planes all take off for Greenland.
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u/Saint_The_Stig 4h ago
That and the post pandemic way the people respond. Deep Impact was full of people coming together for the common good. Greenland has some of that, but also showing a bunch of people ruining it for everyone.
Very much a Cloverfield "new era" vibe.
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u/nicathor 7h ago
The ending of Independence Day is pretty triumphant (albeit justifiably) given the fact the entire planet lies in ruins and billions dead
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u/JimboAltAlt 7h ago
Mars Attacks! (which came out the same year) handles the post-war moment in a way that is funny and even kind of poignant compared to how Independence Day (which, to be clear, I love) handwaves the whole thing away. There’s like a lonely mariachi band providing accompaniment for the young hero character’s medal ceremony because everyone else is dead. Something about the way it’s staged is weirdly moving (in a darkly comic way.) Mars Attacks! isn’t really known for its lower-key jokes but that one really made an impression on me.
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u/jbwarner86 6h ago
And Natalie Portman's character is the President by default because she's the only person with any sort of political affiliation who survived the movie 😆
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u/henryhollaway 7h ago
The sequel book has land wars immediately break out when the surviving aliens aboard the crashed ships continue the fight.
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u/StanFitch 7h ago
And the DOW wasn’t even close to 50,000…
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u/IamAWorldChampionAMA 7h ago
Could you imagine if ID4 happened now? There would literally be people discussing if we should halt trading.
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u/FacticiousFict 7h ago
Also Independence Day: Resurgence is going to happen at some point in their future.
Fun fact, that movie came out 10 years ago. We were 10 years younger when it came out. Fun! /s
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u/dthains_art 7h ago
Wow I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since I didn’t watch that movie.
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u/alex-2099 7h ago
I argue that Truman Show’s ending actually is happy. Sylvia is racing towards him and he’s entering a world where he’s a celebrated beacon of kindness and optimism.
Him and Sylvia are almost certainly going to travel the world as distinguished guests of everywhere they go.
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u/sean_psc 7h ago
Yeah, while Truman faces challenges, what better ending is possible for him based on the world the movie established?
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u/jk-9k 2h ago
Yeah I think OP has missed than Truman show is basically a comic tragedy. It's not a happy story to begin with, and whilst the next chapter may be extremely difficult it's still comparatively happy.
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u/lndianJoe 7h ago
He is also the biggest superstar that ever been. You can bet that there is an army of lawyers ready to fight for him to get a fair share of the show profits.
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u/DoctorEnn 7h ago edited 6h ago
Let’s face it, he’s also got a pretty compelling lawsuit against the broadcast network which basically enslaved him all of his life to fall back on.
Also, he’s got exactly the same skills and resources you’d expect of a middle-class insurance salesman, he’s just more famous than most. Kinda feels like OP is reaching a little on this one.
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u/DontDeleteMee 6h ago
While I agree, I bet he was selling insurance on 'easy mode'.
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u/pittnole1 6h ago
Who wouldn't want insurance from him in the real world though.
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u/acart005 6h ago
Lots of ex-college football guys go into that and car sales and wind up successful because who says no to buying whatever from the home town hero?
Essentially if Truman wanted a job at in-universe Geico, the Gecko would personally make the call to tell him he's hired.
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u/human_picnic 6h ago
I mean, who knows what the laws are in that world, considering they had already sanctioned the program to begin with.
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u/vw_bugg 7h ago
I do find this movie has multipl layers as well. Truman already knew somthin was fishy before the movie even started. It wasnt until he confirmed/found out that his best friend, mom, and wife are not in fact trappd as he is but in on it somhow. It is only then he finlly goes through with somthin he was clearly planning from the begining. He was already working on his escape tunnel and playing "business as usual.
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u/Xeverne 7h ago
Kingsman, The Secret Service. Imagine all the people dead or crippled from the people closest to them harming them.
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u/vanalla 6h ago
So true. Yeah the good guys won and Egsy got to fuck the prom queen, but the human population would have gotten cut in half, easy. Say every person on the murder spree managed to kill an average of one other person. 8 billion people becomes 4 billion within seconds.
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u/Larcye 2h ago
I mean it's far worse. remember the church scene? The human population would be fucking massacred. If we still had a billion people left once the signal was turned off it would have been a miracle. That's not even dealing with the trauma of people killing each other and then realizing what they did. Imagine if you killed your entire family? Yeah a whole lot of suicides would be happening.
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u/MasterXaios 4h ago
Egsy got to fuck the prom queen
Years later, an old man Egsy would help Nicholas Cage deal with a hostage situation at Alcatraz.
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u/ABigPairOfCrocs 7h ago
Frozen
Elsa's mid summer ice storm definitely would've ruined whatever harvest Arendelle had coming up. Even though it wasn't exactly her fault, the people would get pretty restless if they're starving. Elsa's not well socially adjusted after being isolated her entire childhood and intense emotional situations are primarily what trigger her to lose control of the ice powers
It's a Disney movie so obviously things were gonna be fine in Frozen II, but things would end poorly in real life
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u/farnsw0rth 4h ago
I’m pretty sure Elsa ascends to godhood in frozen 2 lmao
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u/AnOnlineHandle 4h ago
Frozen 1: No Elsa you don't need to go live in a remote ice castle away from people, we should be together as family.
Frozen 2: Uh actually Elsa you should go live in an even more remote ice... blob... away from people. We'll like never see each other now.
Such a whiplash of plots.
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u/Ok_Shirt983 3h ago
Frozen 2 is just homeopathic propaganda, the number of times it is mentioned in the film that water has a memory is insane.
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u/vaalski 3h ago
An extremely funny fact to me is that one of the people who worked on Frozen 2, Ross Blocher, also ran a very fun podcast called "Oh No Ross And Carrie" that was ENTIRELY devoted to debunking shit like homeopathy. He literally works with the Center For Inquiry, which offers a huge reward for demonstrations of supernatural events (which it never has to pay) and debunks all kinds of this bullshit.
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u/Piszkos_Pap 7h ago
In Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, the main character abandons his family in the end.
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u/Bootsy_Frost 7h ago
Yeah but they never supported his decision to go to clown college.
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u/Guilty-Cell-833 7h ago
He should leave the clowning business to all the other clowns in the clowning business.
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u/JayGold 6h ago
It was weird how it portrayed the aliens in a such a positive light, when they've been abducting people and holding them on their ship for decades, then brainwashing people to come to them.
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u/Booster_Tutor 7h ago
Yeah, even Spielberg admits that’s a mistake. He didn’t have a family or kids when he wrote it so he didn’t understand how crazy that is that he just takes off.
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u/chekovsredherring 6h ago
I think it works really pretty well as is, even if Spielberg wasn't consciously intending abandonment to be the read of the ending. It's pretty easy to psychologize his abandonment issues he harbored about his own father at this time
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u/thispartyrules 6h ago
ET was inspired by an imaginary friend he created to deal with his parents' divorce, which happened to be an alien.
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u/chekovsredherring 7h ago edited 6h ago
Spielberg's darkest, most interesting movie (to me). I love that it was the first movie he vied to get made after Jaws wrote his blank check
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u/PaulsRedditUsername 7h ago
Spielberg later said he would have written that part differently if he could do it again.
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u/Seagoon_Memoirs 7h ago
There is a social activist group started by his GF that was working to free Truman
At the end of the movie you can see her run to meet Truman. He is not alone and helpless. He has real support.
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u/LupinThe8th 5h ago
Bet they could raise millions for him, and that's if he doesn't sue the pants off Christoff and the corporation (I don't care what legalese they pulled to make that show legal, they actually tried to kill him by the end, dude's getting paid). A book or documentary from him would also make a fortune.
And yeah, he won't be living in a giant safety net anymore, but he was miserable there. His wife, mother, and best friend didn't actually care about him, he couldn't leave his town (imagine never leaving the town you grew up in) due to psychological issues that the producers intentionally gave him, and once he started to question what was going on, he couldn't trust anyone. It was an existential nightmare.
Outside, yes, he will face challenges. He'll also be with a woman who actually cares for him, with the freedom to make his own decisions for the first time in his life. It's not perfect, but that's life, it's a damn great improvement over the paranoia, gaslighting, emotional abuse, and eventually attempted murder he faced on the show.
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u/Emergency-Salamander 7h ago
Back to the Future. Marty goes back to the future with different memories than the rest of his family. I kind of get where Eric Stoltz was coming from.
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u/GotMoFans 7h ago
It’s not fully broached but based on the rules of the universe, Marty would probably convert to the Marty that experienced that timeline sooner rather than later; the same way he could have been erased from existence.
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u/MonkeyChoker80 7h ago
He definitely got converted (at least partially) overnight.
Think about how, in both 2 and 3, he has such a pathological need NOT to be known as a ‘chicken’.
That wasn’t there for 1’s Marty, the youngest son of the town losers, who was half wanting to show off and half wanted to be invisible.
No, that’s the son of a successful author (and someone who had been standing up for himself since he was a teenager), trying to prove he’s just as good as his dad is.
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u/chrisgin 6h ago
But he still has memory of Doc and the time travelling, but they wouldn’t really make much sense without the rest of his old memories. Is he just a weird mix of old and new Marty?!
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u/ringobob 5h ago
We watch New Marty go back in time at the end of the movie. He was still friends with Doc, still knew about time travel. Just a different life around it.
I think it makes the most sense if he just kinda fades into the New Marty like he was fading out of reality back in 1955. But New Marty isn't maybe as different as you might expect. And maybe that's because he was always the same Marty. New Marty had to cope with the influence of himself in another timeline. Maybe all of the ones primarily affected by the change had to cope with that other timeline version of themselves. And so they all kinda molded to fit into a coherent reality that was shaped by something that no longer happened.
So, yeah, he still knows Doc because that's become a point of gravity in Marty's and Doc's timelines.
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u/oliversurpless 7h ago
That’s a neat explanation for what was essentially an added character trait for the sake of plot years removed from the original, when the 2nd movie became Marty’s movie.
Whereas the first was George’s.
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u/AndreLeGeant88 6h ago
This makes a lot of sense. George was probably always saying how his kids need to stand up for themselves, not let a bully walk over them
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u/AndreasDasos 7h ago
If one tries to rationalise the very contradictory rules of time travel in that universe it gets a bit frustrating. Best just to go with it as fun and not establish a ‘canon’. Some others are more consistent but BTTF isn’t really sci fi: it’s about cultural history, family, character development, fun and comedy.
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u/mirrorspirit 7h ago
Similarly with Hot Tub Time Machine. Adam goes back to the future to a loving wife he has very few memories of spending time with. (I haven't seen the sequel so I don't know if they course corrected that.)
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u/BurtTheKuato 7h ago
Even as a kid this disturbed me. That is not his family. They are not the people he grew up with and he isn’t the Marty they know either. They are going to wonder why their son suddenly turned into this white trash punk.
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u/SlaverSlave 7h ago
Apollo Creed was killed in the ring. Nothing that happened after that really matters lol, I’m glad Rocky won but it changed nothing.
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u/Dispositionpsn 7h ago
He avenged Apollo and stopped communism duh 🤣. I'm kidding. You're right though, he should have totally murdered Dolph in the ring 😂
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u/philament 7h ago
Brazil. Even if you see the version with the happy ending
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u/im_on_the_case 7h ago
Terry Gilliam loves nothing more than punishing viewers with a traumatic ending. Time Bandits may have ruined my childhood innocence.
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u/quantizeddreams 7h ago
Brazil definitely didn’t have a happy ending. That guy was lobotomized or broken by his friend.
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u/kevnmartin 7h ago
You've Got Mail. She loses her mother's cozy, beloved neighborhood book store to go be a corporate cog in her boyfriend's machine. How romantic.
/s
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u/scottishcastle 6h ago
I love the movie and all, but she forgave him way too fast after a loss like that. I think the implication is that she actually becomes a children's book author, but still.
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u/WasabiGullible2161 4h ago
I watch the movie monthly, it's my go to comfort watch. - the ending is actually a happy ending because in the beginning of the movie she is questioning her entire existence which was owning her mother's book store. "What is it that I actually do?" This was her mom's dream and passion... But it wasn't her's. So instead she felt like was obligated to carry her mom's legacy via book store. And in a way, this kept her mom alive. If you have a dead parent then you know this becomes a huge burden very fast. While it's sad the book store closed, of course, it ultimately freed her and allowed her to move on. So Joe Fox technically freed her from a grief stricken obligation and finally let her live a life where she wrote the pages of her own future.
And for Joe Fox - once Kathleen calls him out he is never seen wearing a suit again in the movie. He changes too! He works on himself before they meet at the end. Through each other they face certain realities about themselves and in the end they transform in the real versions of themselves.
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u/chrispybacon92 7h ago
They should have partnered and made her shop be the “children’s section” of fox books
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u/ParkingBook3566 6h ago
It's not really a happy ending for him either. I'm pretty sure that Amazon eventually ran Fox Books out of business. If not out of business, then they probably had to downsize quite a bit.
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u/scottishcastle 5h ago
100%. In real life, the Upper West Side happily saw a number of independent bookstores open the past 15 years, including children's bookstores. The Shop Around the Corner would likely be thriving in 2026.
And if you consider Fox Books modeled on Barnes & Noble, in real life the huge multistory store that the movie store was based on (at 66th and Broadway) really did eventually close, in early 2011. And yes, it is geographically very close (not literally around the corner but super close) from where Kathleen store was in the movie (at 69th & Columbus).
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u/purpleKlimt 4h ago
Don’t let Hollywood see this or we’ll be getting a role reversal remake in 2028.
A down-on-his-luck heir to a bookstore magnate has to close yet another chapter of their franchise as the smug owner of the local historical smut bookstore watches on. But unbeknownst to them both, they’re in the same bodice ripper Discord server…
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u/DonnieDarko1024 7h ago
50 First Dates
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u/Sweeper1985 7h ago
Imagine the day when she woke up in labour. Dear God.
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u/DumpedDalish 7h ago
Yeah. The ending is a horror movie if you think about it.
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u/AnotherRTFan 5h ago
Also imagine from the daughter’s perspective- mom does not remember me at all. Traumatizing shit
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u/scottishcastle 5h ago
Exactly. People understandably focus on whether or not it's ethical for Lucy to go through pregnancy parenthood, so much so that most people tend to forget about the little girl. Imagine growing up knowing that your mother is going to forget you in 24 hours every single day of your life. Forget building memories together, sharing things, building a relationship. Being forgotten about every morning is going to warp her developing psyche. It's a nightmare ending for pretty much everyone involved.
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u/Trezzie 3h ago
The thing that seems to help is: there's some subconcious memory. She's at least comfortable enough to accept this every day she wakes up. At any point (aside from pregnancy) she gets to go "I don't want this" and she never does.
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u/Arch__Stanton 6h ago
There’s a Nicole Kidman horror movie with this plot: Before I go to Sleep
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u/ImpressivePotato2449 7h ago
Just gotta make sure the VCR continues to be in working order or by now her accident and life with him is explained in a tiktok
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u/joshi38 4h ago
Damn, imagine having to explain tiktok to someone who lost their memory in 2004. You'd first have to explain smart phones...
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u/DumpedDalish 7h ago
This is the one. The ending is so horrifying if you pause to look at what this poor woman is put through every single day. Imagine her waking up pregnant. Then in labor. Then postpartum and dealing with a newborn whose existence she has never imagined. Then they DO THIS TO HER AGAIN. And then she's waking up every day parenting kids she literally doesn't know. (And trapped with them on a boat in the middle of nowhere!)
There's also the aspect that the kids have to deal with a mother who every single day does not know or recognize them.
The movie makes it seem like she acclimates immediately and her reaction is joy and wonder, but come on. Ugh.
I hate the ending of this movie. It's one of those things where once you see it, you can't unsee it.
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u/ran1976 7h ago
imagine when if her father and brother die or for some reason are not there to reassure her she's safe and the kid is actually hers.
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u/Trezzie 3h ago
I think the "I keep dreaming of you" part shows that she's got at least some part of her that remembers. And that's enough to take the bite off of it to decide she's fine with it. If it was her choice to do this to her, because she accepts it, it's much less a horror.
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u/growsonwalls 7h ago
My Fair Lady. Hard to imagine Higgins and Eliza being happy together.
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u/MmeLaRue 5h ago
In the original play Pygmalion, Eliza ends up marrying Freddy, goes to a business school and opens her own flower shop. Not a bad outcome for a poor gel from Lisson Grove.
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u/CairnMom 6h ago
The Wizard of Oz. Nothing is solved, the neighbor is still coming to take Toto away to have him put down.
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u/brettbretters 6h ago
My first thought too. “I’ll never go anywhere ever again.” Uhhhh is that really the lesson? Yikes.
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u/Genghis_John 7h ago
Fight Club. Homey is definitely going to jail immediately.
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u/MyGrandmasCock 7h ago
Not to talk out of church but in the book, he goes to a mental hospital. But not for long.
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u/Sweeper1985 7h ago
Such a good ending. He believes he's in heaven. Every week he gets to go talk to God, who sits behind a desk with a lot of diplomas, and asks him about how he's been feeling. He sometimes gets calls from people back on Earth, like Marla. And every now and then, a janitor or an orderly, covered with bruises, will say to him that they're so looking forward to having him back, Mr Durden.
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u/ChanceVance 7h ago
where millions of strangers are unhealthily obsessed with him. It is a psychological tragedy disguised as a victory.
To that point at least, the two security guards already asking what else is on 5 seconds after he leaves indicates he'll be forgotten about quickly.
People become obsessed with a lot of reality show contestants but once the show is over, so's the journey for a lot of people and they never think about them again.
He'll need some adjustment but the general public itself will at most go "Hey, it's that Truman guy" and in universe, he'd probably have a Netflix special done on him but nobody's going to be bothering him otherwise.
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u/TheMasterL0ller 7h ago
Might be a bit controversial, but Max in Mad Max: Fury Road. The overall ending is great and triumphant - but our soft spoken hard nosed max leaves to go back out into the world or crazy shit.
I suppose it could be classified as bittersweet, but I also always envisioned it as “max has no happy endings, he’s just a helpful guide for others “
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u/Aggravating_Poet_675 7h ago
To be fair, I never saw Thunderdome, but dont all Mad Max movies kind of end with driving away presumably to get mixed up with another group in another battle for resources?
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u/mercurywaxing 7h ago
Miller has said that in universe all the films are based on the oral history accounts of the people Max helps and survivors. Maxdoes, indeed, leave. The happy-ish endings are given to the people who helped him in each film and continue to tell the stories.
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u/Aggravating_Poet_675 7h ago
Kinda makes i4 happier. Like regardless of what happens to Max, he was able to help these groups enough that they survived the post apocalyptic wastes long enough to pass on their oral histories.
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u/Bonch_and_Clyde 7h ago
Yeah, it's part of the mythological tone of the story. Out there somewhere is the Road Warrior, Max.
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u/TheMasterL0ller 7h ago
The earlier ones are…pretty vague. Furry Road is a little more intent on its implication
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u/JeremiahWuzABullfrog 7h ago
It's definitely happy in the sense that he's managed to recover a small part of his humanity, after spending so much time only trying to survive.
Considering all stories end in death over a long enough timeline, him not staying in relative safety at the Citadel isn't a defeat
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u/InsaneComicBooker 7h ago
There is a popular theory that we only seen Mad Max the man in the first movie and every sequel is some a reteling of some other, unrelated tale from the wastelands, and Mad Max, the popular postapocalyptic folk hero figure, has either been added to it or some unrelated character was morphed into him as the story has been retold multiple times.
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u/TheMasterL0ller 7h ago
I actually really like this theory, since anyone in the wasteland could just be “I’m max” and do something slightly out of the ordinary
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u/EmotionalEmetic 7h ago
Also Max has multiple life threatening injuries and no supplies and he just dramatically slips away from a very good gig to die in the wasteland.
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u/Initial_E 7h ago
Max is more resourceful than you give him credit for. He will be fine.
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u/holman 7h ago
Mrs. Doubtfire. I mean, it’s good for Robin’s character, but over the years you really feel for Brosnan’s character, who was just trying to be a good boyfriend and step-in father.
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u/MaikeruGo 7h ago
I've often thought of William's character from One Hour Photo the darker, flip side of someone trying to covertly insert themselves into someone else's life.
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u/Gloomy-Recipe9213 6h ago
One Hour Photo is what Mrs Doubtfire looks like from Sally Field’s perspective.
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u/babypunching101 7h ago
I've held the believe that this is far from a happy ending. Daniel never truly learns his lesson and is back in as a huge influence on his children and ex-wife who he will continue to undermine. I wrote an argumentative essay on it in college and got a B+ so I'm kinda an expert.
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u/ughlump 7h ago
Do one on who’s the boss next.
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u/babypunching101 7h ago
I don't wanna force my professor into an identity crisis
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u/lukphicl 6h ago
NGL I feel the same way about Cary Elwes' character in Liar Liar
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u/Azrael11 5h ago
Okay, tbf, they've been dating for seven months from what she told Fletcher. That's usually not "marry me and move across the country with your son" territory.
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u/Citizenchimp 7h ago
Grease - Because everybody is happy and singing as Danny and Sandy fly off into the sky in their car, but when the song is over they’ll realize that cars can’t fly and it’s actually really dangerous. They’re in grave danger.
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u/tangcameo 7h ago
The Fisher King
I still wonder if Perry knows who Jack is and if not he will eventually figure out who he is.
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u/DumpedDalish 7h ago
Oh, I think Parry knows. There's so much sweetness and acceptance in those final scenes (especially in the "Can I miss her now, Jack?" scene), I think it's a given that once Parry has begun to recover his sanity, that he and Jack would have been able to talk about who Jack was.
I don't think the end of The Fisher King is depressing at all -- Parry is recovering, and he and Lydia are happy and together, Jack is back with Anne, and he and Parry are still besties for life.
For me, the ending is sweet and hopeful.
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u/Councillor_Troy 7h ago
Crazy Rich Asians.
No way is Nick Young ever getting out from under the thumb of that tiger mother matriarch. Hope Rachel Chu signed a good pre-nup because that marriage is going to be the stuff of r/justnoMIL.
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u/loveyouloveyoumorexx 7h ago
Spoilers ahead but in the book series, ( Rachel Chu’s biological dad ends up being this beyond loaded businessman. So she definitely doesn’t need a prenup after all.
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u/jawndell 6h ago
One thing I never got about Crazy Rich Asians, the main character is an economics professor at NYU (probably NYU Stern). That’s a big fucking deal even within the Asian community. It’s not like she’s a cashier or struggling artist. She has a very respectable career and is well educated. I’m sure that’s a flex and they’ll have other families trying to cozy up with her to get a rec to get into NYU Stern.
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u/FullBlownNightmare 6h ago
At least in the movie, it's largely because she's an American professor. They would have the same reaction if she was a lawyer or doctor or any other "respectable" profession, because she doesn't come from the proper "breeding" (generational wealth type of families or families with deep roots in the area. it's like the british with aristocracy, kind of)
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u/PrincetonToss 4h ago
Nick is from what amounts to Singapore aristocracy. His family was rich before the British arrived and kept that wealth, turning into power and influence. He was expected to marry another member of said caste, or, at the least, a very rich person from China, Taiwan, or the Chinese population in Southeast Asia. British aristocracy might also be okay.
Rachel's family would have to be very rich indeed to overcome her ABC [American-born Chinese] origin, which is almost as bad as being white. But for the daughter of a single mother from the mainland? Rachel could be worth billions and it wouldn't be enough for Nick's family.
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u/Publius_Rizz 7h ago
The Family Man with Nicholas Cage. In the end, he connects with his old girlfriend again, but the years he experienced in his “glimpse” are still gone and they never had the kids together that he learned to love during his “glimpse.” It’s questionable at this older age whether they can still have kids together, but even if they do, it wouldn’t be the same kids. They’ll never actually be able to have the family that he “glimpsed.”
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u/VanDammes4headCyst 5h ago
That's what creeps me out about the thought exercises posed by questions revolving around "going back in time and being younger, but keeping all of your memories and knowledge." On one hand, it would be very tempting to take up the offer, until you realize that there's no realistic way for you to recreate your children in the new timeline, even if you got with the same mother/father, it just wouldn't work. You'd never be able to contrive the exact sequence of events in order to successfully conceive your now-lost children. You'd have essentially killed them in your mind.
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u/The--Mash 2h ago
That's the key plot point of About Time, a time travel rom-com with it's own issues. It's a generational time travel/reset ability that you essentially have to stop using once you have kids, because otherwise you risk wiping out those kids
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u/AfraidoftheLark 7h ago edited 7h ago
He is stepping into a world he knows absolutely nothing about, with zero real-life survival skills, where millions of strangers are unhealthily obsessed with him. It is a psychological tragedy disguised as a victory.It is a psychological tragedy disguised as a victory.
But The Truman Show is working in a very specific emotional/thematic register. This is a bit like looking at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey and thinking, "What if America, fearing staring contests with giant aliens, attempts to attack the Star Child?"
In many cases, it's best to work within the bounds of a film. As opposed to looking for secret routes like it's Mario Kart. The Truman Show is on a certain track for a reason. It ends on an expectant, liberating note by design.
Peter Weir didn't go into granular detail about the logistics because that would invalidate his theme. Truman's future, after all, is no longer our business. That doesn't necessarily mean Truman is doomed. You're taking a pessimistic view of his chances, but the very uncertainty of his future is a sign of his own agency. His life is now entirely his own.
By ending at the doorway, the film is emphasizing that this vague sense of liberation, whatever risks it might entail, is more valuable than an inauthentic life.
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u/PsychoWyrm 6h ago edited 19m ago
I also think cultural context of the film's time matters. The idea that Truman would be
houndedabsolutely swarmed by parasocial nutcases is likely steeped in modern views on social media, which did not exist at the time set in the film or during its release.He would have had an easier time getting away from it all, if he so chose.
EDIT: Reworded to be more clear I didn't intend to insinuate there would be no obsessed fans at all. Just that I thought the amount/frequency wouldn't necessarily be worse than real life examples.
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u/malacoda99 7h ago
By ending at the doorway, the film is emphasizing that this vague sense of liberation, whatever risks it might entail, is more valuable than an inauthentic life.
Words to live by.
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u/ChickenInASuit 7h ago edited 6h ago
Some of you folks either don’t understand the question OP is asking, or you have frankly bizarre ideas of what a “happy” ending is.
They’re asking for movies that present an ending to you as a happy one. We’re not talking about ambiguous endings, or ones that have twists to show you that it’s not actually happy, but endings that we’re supposed to see as being genuinely happy, triumphant ones. The two examples OP gave are great showcases of this, as is 50 First Dates as so many other people have commented.
Midsommar, Blade Runner, Pulp Fiction, Let the Right One In, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Graduate do not have happy endings, and the movies don’t even attempt to make you think otherwise. They are bittersweet, ambiguous, or straight up dark and sad.
I’m particularly side-eyeing anyone saying The Graduate, literally one of the most famous subversions of happy ending tropes in the history of film.
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u/HI-McDunnough 6h ago
The Graduate would have been a VERY different movie if it ended like 4 seconds earlier.
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u/Quazifuji 4h ago
Yeah, if the Graduate ended while they're still smiling it would be a good answer to the question, but the part where they stop smiling is the whole point.
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u/HeyXKid 7h ago
Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
Richard Dreyfuss is going to space with the aliens and abandoning his family. The abducted boy and his mother have both been traumatized. The Flight 19 pilots have been presumed dead for decades and are now a distant memory to everyone they've every loved who's still alive. And the government jammed with the aliens for a few minutes but essentially learned nothing.
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u/nwoolls 7h ago
Snowpiercer
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u/IglooBackpack 7h ago
Those two are definitely getting eaten by a polar bear.
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u/hotz0mbie 7h ago
They don’t really have any skills to survive in the wild. They’d be dead from something pretty quick
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u/mostlygray 4h ago
I don't think that the filmmaker had any expectations that you think that they will live. The main point of the ending is that there are still creatures out there and the earth will go on without humanity.
And yes, they will be eaten about 5 minutes after the credits roll.
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u/R12B12 6h ago
That one was so weird. Neither of those kids has any survival skills. Even if they do figure out a way to survive, how depressing that they’re the last living humans on earth. Or maybe we’re supposed to be happy that humanity goes extinct with these two and that the rest of the animal kingdom will reclaim the earth?
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u/popoflabbins 6h ago
I kind of felt that way. The final shots are optimistic because nature can heal without the interference of man.
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u/WGiK 7h ago
Memoirs of a Geisha. I talked about the ending with my friend not to long ago. She literally tells you geishas don't get to experience real love. He never leaves his wife. She is just his side piece.
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u/Str8_up_Pwnage 7h ago
Hereditary. On first watching you are just happy for Paimon getting a body he likes but then when you really think about it the way it played out wasn’t really nice for the family.
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u/Shlomer_Simpstein 6h ago
Yeah I didn't think of that. I was just overjoyed for our lord and savior Paimon.
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u/FBI_KipHackman 6h ago
Plus nobody ever thinks about the poor person that has to clean the mess in the backseat of the car
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u/three-sense 7h ago
Waterworld. They find Dry Land. So a few hundred people (at best) can now convene and discuss the irreparable damage the earth while using sticks and stones. But at least it’s not boats.
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u/futureformerteacher 7h ago
Anyone who has lived on a boat for weeks or months at a time would be gladly willing to kill for some time on dry land.
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u/Syncopian 7h ago
Source Code.
And for the record, I fucking love this movie. But Jake Gyllenhaal's character Colter Stevens literally replaces a guy's entire being in the end. What does he do next? He has an entirely new family, new job - does he just pretend to be this Sean guy forever? Poor Sean, too; everyone on the train in that reality gets saved except him.
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u/Koto65 7h ago
Anyone who commits like 40 felonies to solve a personal conflict with a loved one. I'm glad your kid knows tou love him, but your ass is going back to jail.
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u/bravetailor 7h ago edited 7h ago
The Breakfast Club. Someone else posted the take here a while ago, but I tend to agree that it appeared likely the kids never talked to each other again after that detention period was over. The movie makes it out like they're all happier and wiser after, but if they didn't talk to each other ever again, I don't really think the experience changed them that much.
Also what they did to Allison.
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u/alex-2099 6h ago
But the movie doesn’t really present any reason to think that these kids don’t go on to be better than when they came in.
They make independent choices towards the end of detention that show they’ve changed. That’s it. They don’t have to be friends after this. We see that they’re already better and more empathetic.
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u/ambifiedpersonified 5h ago
When I was still working in an office when I got up in the morning I would ask myself "Is it an Ally Sheedy at the beginning of The Breakfast Club or Ally Sheedy at the end of The Breakfast Club kind of day?" when I was getting dressed, doing my hair, and makeup. Lol
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u/Hefty_Direction5189 5h ago
Ratatouille. Rats only live like 2 years, that restaurant will have a good run, but not a long run, and then the whole thing falls apart.
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u/TheMemeVault 7h ago
People misinterpret Whiplash's ending as being an uplifting triumph for Neiman. In reality, it's a downer ending disguised as a happy one. Fletcher had effectively broken him, and there's even a shot of his father looking aghast at what his son had been shaped into.
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u/PaulsRedditUsername 6h ago
It's a conflicted ending. Fletcher's whole premise is putting the students through torture because that's what it takes to be the best in the world. Only one in a million make it. By the end, the kid is one of those few who have (barely) survived the torture and now he's one of the best.
So is it a victory for him, or was it not worth it? Is he damaged beyond repair now?
I like it because it leaves you thinking.
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u/LemDoggo 6h ago
I agree, I think it’s supposed to be both. That’s what makes it even worse! (Worse as in emotionally, not that the ending was bad haha)
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u/Comfortableliar24 6h ago
It's worse than that. The director said that, had the story continued, Neimann would have followed the path of the musicians he idolized, right down to dying of an overdose in his thirties.
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u/mercfan3 7h ago
Wicked.
The movie/musical ends with Elphaba having her happily ever after and running away with Fiero while Glinda sees the error of her ways, challenges the system and fixes Oz so that it’s actually good.
The viewer might see it as bitter sweet because Elphaba and Glinda split up - but ultimately it feels hopeful.
However, the lesson of the story is that ultimately Glinda was right. That being popular, good looking, and charming will get you power and move you farther in life..and your accomplishments, talent, and morality don’t matter. And that shit hits harder because it feels a lot like real life too.
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u/TheBacklogGamer 4h ago
This does not meet the OP's description. Wicked isn't a "happy ending." It's tragic and bittersweet and it's entirely framed that way. Just because she doesn't really die and gets to go away with her lover doesn't make it a "happy ending."
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u/ReverendEntity 6h ago
And if you read the book...the ending is far, far darker.
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u/FriarFanatic7 7h ago
Materialists. Sure, she “chooses love” but they are now pretty broke living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I guess there’s a chance she takes a promotion, but leaving her job as a matchmaker feels like the necessary choice for character growth/closure. The film cops out and leaves it open ended. I don’t know, I felt stressed for that couple.
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u/Ok_Commercial_5024 7h ago
The 40 Year Old Virgin. Steve Carrell’s character liquidates all of his assets to put all of money into opening an obviously-doomed independent brick and mortar electronics store in 2005.