Rover_Wow's House of Bad Movie Endings
Ever gone to a movie and saw that the film was OK but the ending sucked? Or maybe the film sucked as well as the ending? Well you can complain right here. Before we go any further, I'd like to say that this page is obviously chock-full of "spoilers" (more than an LA traffic jam). Now here are some bad ending properties:
1. The main character (or team) loses the big game.
2. The main character wakes up from a dream that takes up most of the film.
3. The baddie goes down really easily, especially after withstanding BIIIIG efforts against him or her (the following also count):

4. The resolution was too fast to be enjoyable.
5. There isn't any resolution at all. (This is usually an attempt to force a sequel by leaving some story threads hanging. Also, see number 6.)
6. The ending forces a sequel by leaving loose threads (especially if there is no sequel).

7. The happy ending that doesn't fit. 8. And, of course, there are ones that are just plain disappointing. (These are placed under Miscellaneous.)
If you know of any bad endings, submit them here. And now, here are the bad film finales:

Film: Tin Cup (golf comedy)
Bad Ending Type: Losing the Big Game
Rough Details: The title character (Kevin Costner) hits a ball into the 18th hole's water hazard in each of the first 3 rounds of the US Open and in the 4th round when he hits the ball it looks like he's broken his "jinx" as it hits the green -- but then rolls into the water. He hits a few more balls into the hazard before holing out. This causes him to drop from 1st to somewhere in the top 15. Even Mr. Cranky agrees that this is an inane ending. And to think that the caddy (Cheech Marin) was actually on to something when he told him to hit away from the water...
Of course, there are people who do appreciate this for having the guts to not go for the cliched sports flick finis. The same could be said for other "losing the big game" finis.

Films: Right Connections (TV children's drama) and Kingpin (Farrelly bowling comedy)
Bad Ending Type: Losing the Big Game
Rough Details: These 2 films have similar plots, and both have similar cop-out endings, which is why I'm including them together.
Kingpin: Amish man needs money to save his farm, so he enters washed up bowler Roy Munsen in a $1,000,000 winner take all tournament. Roy loses out to Ernie McCracken and thus doesn't get anything. A week later, that girl of his brings him $84,000 from betting against him. Guess what... it's for nothing: Roy has a check from Trojan condoms for $500,000 for being their "Rubber Man". So Roy does save the farm after all.
Right Connections: Some woman *also* needs money to save her home, so she enters her kids (with the help of washed up rapper Kenneth Bragg, played by MC Hammer) into a winner-takes-all rap tournament. They lose their competition *as well*, so they don't get anything *either*. Earlier, Ken has made a deal with someone who says that if Ken's team wins, he becomes a producer. Guess what... it *too* is for nothing: The guy calls off the deal claiming they "didn't shake hands". So Ken does save the house after all.

Film: Lost in Space (sci-fi action)
Bad Ending Type: Sequel Forcer
Rough Details:
1. The Robinsons use the hyperdrive to escape from the planet whose gravity core has collapsed. So they get lost in a different time and place.
2. Smith (Gary Oldman) still has that spider bite. As we see in the film, Smith will turn into a spider creature eventually. Though Spider Smith gets killed, there is the original Smith who still hasn't become the spider creature yet.
3. (although a minor plot point when compared to the first two, but this plot point is still pretty big) The elder Will creates a "time machine" that only allows one journey by one person. The journey made was Will's dad saving the Jupiter from meteorites crashing onto the planet they've landed. Just before the trip occurs, however, we (and dad and older Will) see the Jupiter get hit by a meteorite. And Will's killed, Older Will's erased from existence along with his time machine (or at least he should be)... and the story falls apart. (The last bit's from Andy McDermott's MSTing of the film. Check it out at http://www.geocities.com/tokyo/towers/1139/mst3k.html.)
I also have an opinion from WWS, saying:
"... In the first place, the ending is ridiculous anyway - they use some time travel device stupidly when they were about a million better places that they could pick to go if they wanted to change the past - then they simply ignore the entire paradox issue of changing your own past.
But worst of all (and this is where you get into leaving the bad guy alive) the main characters have all seen that in 20 years, Dr. Smith will turn into a giant freaky spider monster and kill all of them - and yet they just let him run around the ship like nothing's wrong. (and yet he already has the spider bite that will make him Mr. Freaky)(and they know it)
Set up for sequel? To finally get out of their jam, after they dive through a planet that just magically opens up for them and amazingly has no molten core in spite of being earthlike in all other respects, they hit the hyperdrive button, hoping that the damaged starcharts that they recovered from the Proteus will guide them. Obviously they won't, so the Robinsons are still "Lost in Space". Movie ends with the scene of the Jupiter II zipping into hyperdrive, with no clue at all about their real destination. A blatant set up for a sequel that I hope never gets made." (Gee, and I hope it will, if only for more rockin' special effects and for Blawp to actually be of any use to the Robinsons! - Rover_Wow)

Film: Frighteners (comedy horror)
Bad Ending Type: Going Down by Outside Force
Rough Details: In the film, David Bannister (Michael J Fox) finds out some guy named Joseph Blatter is killing people -- as a demon. Basically in the climactic fight scene in the hospital where Blatter killed 12 people, we see David getting killed and ending up in heaven with the Blatter guy still on the "stairway". Then the outside force (called "the express to hell" by some guys in heaven) kills off Blatter and his girl who came with him. Also David gets rejuvenated back to life.

Film: Darkman 3 (horror action)
Bad Ending Type: Sequel Forcer
Rough Details: The premise of this film series is about a guy named Darkman (Liam Neeson) trying to find a liquid substitute for skin grafting. He has no face because of a lab accident. In the first two films, the substitute lasted for 99 minutes. In this film, it looked like that Darkman would get his face back, because his latest development lasted for more than 300 minutes. However in the climactic battle scene, the disk containing the data on this development got destroyed, and in an accident, a girl gets burnt. Darkman has only one flask of his development and he has to use it on her, rather than on himself. This, of course, forces a sequel, but there isn't any. Some Useneters have argued that the film series was meant to end openly, but personally, I don't give a damn.

Film: North Dallas 40 (football drama)
Bad Ending Type: Losing the Big Game
Rough Details: Basically something about a "reliable" field goal kicker missing a TD conversion at the end that would have tied the game. It's been a few years since I last saw this flick and I'm still pissed. OK, there'll be people who say that I don't get the point of it, but it's still a bit anticlimactic, isn't it?

Film: Annie O (TV romantic basketball drama)
Bad Ending Type: Easy Go-Down
Rough Details: In the final scenes of the film, Annie (Coco Yares) competes in a "shoot-out" with the school's male basketball star. The shoot-out proceeds with both making all their shots. What should be the climax is Annie challenging the male to shoot a very complex bank shot. But both of them hit this shot. The next shot the guy takes is a simple short distance shot. But, and this is right after hitting a shot off a couple of walls, he misses the simple shot from right in front of the basket, and Annie wins the shoot-out by hitting that simple shot. Can we say, cop-out?

Film: Troop Beverly Hills (children's comedy)
Bad Ending Type: Miscellaneous
Rough Details: The troop of the title takes its posh style to a Girl Scout jamboree, and wins it (and thus gets to be on the Girl Scout calendar), beating Culver City's troop. However most (though not all - plot point here is, all of them must arrive) of the members of Culver City's troop arrive first, and the organizers, thinking they had won the event, are about to hand them the trophy, then realizing that one member, their adult leader (and the film's "baddie") had not arrived. They tell the troop that there is no winner until one troop has all of its members cross the line. A fight over the right to have the trophy ensues between the troop's girl leader (the baddie's daughter, who talks like a boy) and the organizers, who are then distracted by Beverly Hills' arrival (dragging the baddie behind them), thus allowing Culver City to take the trophy away from its rightful owner (a la Happy Gilmore, except that the troop doesn't chase them). And then the girl leader (mommy played by Shelley Long) said it was alrightthat they had no trophy... what the heck was she thinking?

Film: Fight Club (action comedy-drama)
Submitted By: Jordan
Bad Ending Type: Miscellaneous (Worst of '99)
Rough Details: Ruined the picture for me. The whole David Koreshian / Heaven's Gate thing was a writer crying out for help to end his movie...

Film: Raise the Titanic (actioner)
Submitted by: Joe Saldibar
Bad Ending Type: Miscellaneous f
Rough Details: Well, this is the kicker which kind of completes the movie: The whole idea of the movie is that they have to raise the boat to get the rare mineral they need to power their SDI-like system. In Cussler's novel, and the movie, they finally open the vault in the cargo hold, and find-- nothing! Turns out the the Byzantium never made it onto the Titanic. Later (again, both movie and book) they find the real thing hidden away in an English cemetery near Southampton, where Titanic set sail.
Now here's where the film decides to twist the knife in your gut. When they find the vault empty, the Admiral (Jason Robards) announces that the whole thing was a waste of time anyway. "I don't think we could have held on to [the Byzantium]", he says. He tells the guys that the military would have taken it and made a giant "Byzantium bomb" out of it. Later, in the churchyard, instead of digging up the mineral and saving the world, Pitt (Richard Jordan), and Seagram (David Selby) decide to leave it where it lies. So:
A) The military decides to forgo an invincible missle defense system in order to build a bomb out of the world's rarest mineral? How many bombs could you make? A dozen? Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to make 100 regular ones? Besides, as a radioactive material, Byzantium could only be a fission bomb, which pales in comparision to the H-Bomb (a fusion reaction). B) After spending bazillions on raising the boat, it was all for nothing. In Cussler's book, it only seems like nothing- it all works out in the end and the missle system works... but here, it really was all nothing! No one learned a lesson, or found true love, or acheived some long-elusive personal goal (all things that might make up for it). Nope! Just a waste of time... of course, just like the movie!
(The submitter also reviewed the film, withholding the cop-out finale, at the It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad Movie page. Click here for the review. I wrote the the reviewer asking him to contribute this after I read the review... he was a bit reluctant to let this gem go: he said "to reveal it kind of takes the fun out of it." - Rover_Wow)

Film: Species movies (sci-fi horror flick)
Bad Ending Type: the 1st film, Sequel Forcer, the 2nd, both Sequel Forcer and Easy Go-Down
Rough Details: The first Species was total crap. What was even crappier about it is the way it ends. From what I've been told, after the alien baddie gets killed, it's put in a dumpster. Then a rat chews on the corpse for food. So the first flick ends with the alien still "alive" in the rodent. Thus, we expect a sequel, and it'll be loaded with rat aliens, right?
Wrong! The sequel doesn't even touch this ending with a barge pole, and instead ends up talking about alien DNA from Mars. Again, from what I've been told, the film ends with the so-called indestructible alien going down after sickle cell blood gets introduced into it, and there are 3 possible sequel threads (though, unlike the first film, I don't know what they are... might as well not know anyway).

Film: Various
Bad Ending Type: Various
Submitter: Various
As a result of a USENET post, I got a list of films with bad endings:
"Orient Start" didn't like Sommersby, Species (which I mention above), Star Trek 8 and Jacob's Ladder (one of those "waking from a dream" finis). Speaking of Jacob's Ladder, "Dawn Taylor" felt infuriated by it and so did "Jason Breen" although Jason didn't feel overly troubled by it. Dawn also hated The Devil's Advocate (another "waking from a dream" finis). Even though "geoswan" thought this was the devil rewinding the events, Dawn still found it lame. Dawn has a surprise entry too (below).
"Zadok Allen" didn't like the codas for The Ninth Gate, The Last Broadcast and Eye of the Beholder (also see below for his thoughts on the worst of 2000). "darkhero1" doubted that Eye of the Beholder had any ending at all, while "Lorne" agreed that the film's finis (on the DVD there are two) suck.
"r wiley" was against getting rid of Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Although "Yarn Spinner" claimed it was in the book, wiley claimed back that it's still lame, like killing off girlfriends of the Cartwright boys on "Bonanza" or new crewmen on "Star Trek".
"Maggie Eron" hated the finis of Broadcast News, while "Mr. Tom" didn't like The Last Seduction's end. Jason Jimenez just didn't get any satisfaction from The Bone Collector's finis."okerry"hated Dune.
"Red Rock West" said both finis of Sliver (on the DVD) were no good, and so did "Poster", who also didn't like Eye of The Beholder, as well as "Jason Breen" (from above).
"2 Funkee" believed that Losing Isiah had a sell out ending.
"maaart@my-deja.com"'s picks were Face Off and Entrapment while some guys he knows hated The Matrix's finale. On the other hand, he liked Fight Club (mentioned above).
"Bad_Sneakers" believed that Fallen and Dogma (I didn't have any strong feelings for this one.) were messy at the end.
"Brown Margaret" thought that the quality of The Vanishing's finis (excuse my own pun) just vanished in the US remake (it just HAD to have a "saving the girl" finis... can we say, "Happy End That Doesn't Fit"?).
Arthur Lipscomb said simply Starship Troopers and Scream 3.
"SysOp8976" yawned at The Thomas Crown Affair and U571's finis, as well as War Games.
"Jason Breen" (from above) nominated On Deadly Ground, and also has 2 surprise entries (below).
The replies also produced some surprising entries: "David" dissed Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, while Dawn Taylor (from above) guessed who Keyser Soze was from The Usual Suspects pretty fast. "Stewart" believed that the finis of the Oscar winning Shakespeare in Love was a cop out. "Jason Breen"'s surprise entries: The Bodyguard and The Taleneted Mr. Ripley.
Some more bad endings after I checked again a few days later:
Agustin Yap dissed up Multiplicity's finis (the clones opening up a pizza shop down south... I kind of liked that one.), while Michael Desmond agreed that if Diana wasn't shot down at On Her Majesty's Secret Service's finis, there'd have been a messy divorce... "You can't have a married 007." "What to Do" didn't like Bulworth's coda (after getting elected, Warren Beatty's shot down -- HUH?! I ain't kidding. See the film for yourself). "Mayniak" not only despised the finis of The Game, but also agreed with Jason Jimenez that Bone Collector's finis was lame.

Film: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Indiana Jones film)
Bad Ending Type: Divine Intervention
Submitter: Mark Borok
Rough Details: "Yes, it's a great film and the ending is spectacular, but the hero has nothing at all to do with it. Some divine intervention takes care of the bad guys. It took me a few viewings before I realized that Indy doesn't accomplish much, except survive."

And now the worst of 2000, chosen by you!

Film: The remake of "Night and the City" (film noir)
Submitter: "Steve"
Bad Ending Type: Happy End That Doesn't Fit
Rough Details: "Instead of dying at the end, [Robert DeNiro's character] survives and he and wife talk about running off together. Gritty film noir becomes summer fun movie. What a killer!" ("Jeremy H" says: "Hrrm... sounds like LA Confidential...")

Film: Alien Resurrection (sci-fi horror)
Submitter: Ionesco
Bad Ending Type: Easy Go-Down
Rough Details: "A film that starts out quite promising, but then derails horribly with the Alien Queen giving birth (in ridiculously human manner) to the awful Alien/Human Hybrid. It is of course enormously strong (enough to kill the Queen with one swipe), but weak enough to get sucked out of a window when the cabin depressurizes." (I know this film wasn't a 2000 release, but since Ionesco submitted it... I'll include it anyway - Rover_Wow)

Film: Various horror flicks
Submitter: Zadok Allen
Bad Ending Type: Miscellaneous
Rough Details: There's a lot, so here goes!
"Eye of the Beholder - In any other movie, this ending would have been one of those where I would have scratched my head saying "what were they thinking about with that ending?" In this movie, I already had so many of those moments before the ending that I didn't care anymore.
The Ninth Gate - After a rather enjoyable Hammer-esque occult thriller, we end up with no conclusion at all. Some movies work well with endings that are open to interpretation, but throwing in an ambiguous art-school ending of a movie with an otherwise straightforward narrative isn't fair to the audience.
The Exorcist - There were worse endings this year, but the revamped ending wins this year's "Greedo Shoots First" award for scenes that are best left alone.
Urban Legends 2 - Director John Ottman tries to turn a post-Scream slasher flick into a Hitchcock film and ends up with sub-Scooby Doo. What puts it over the edge is that he had the gall to use the theme from Hitchcock's tv show over the ending credits.
Lost Souls - The clock strikes 6:66 and Winona blows away the Antichrist with her handgun before he can do any real damage. Dang, and here I always figured the Antichrist was going to be a royal bitch to dispatch. (3 words: Textbook Easy Go-Down. - Rover_Wow)
Bless the Child - And on the flip side of Armageddon... the last scene where the knife-welding assassin is turned away by one glance from the new Christ Child was just downright laughable."

Film: Unbreakable (supernatural thrilleresque drama)
Submitter: Robert Matthews
Bad Ending Type: Miscellaneous
Rough Details: "Yes, I know a lot of people think it's a work of genius, but I despised it, and the final revelation put the cap on it--the most pitiable bringdown of a twist ending I can even conceive of. You could *feel* it in the audience; a collective "What?!" And then to add insult to injury, the titles on the screen telling us what happened afterwards, displaying a desperate lack of imagination on the part of the writer. A poor movie with a poorer ending--surely the worst I've ever seen."

Film: Traffic (drug-war drama)
Submitter: "fred", who agreed with Robert Matthews
Bad Ending Type: Miscellaneous
Rough Details: "With the film ending with [Oscar winner Benicio] Deltoro at a baseball game, probably in Mexico. What a let down and what a "let's find some way to end this movie" kind of ending. Overall, this movie was bad." ("Jeremy H" says: "Dude, that was midnight baseball... Del Toro exchanged info with the American cops to get the lights so the kids could play. I thought this was an effective way to show that small, personal steps are necessary instead of sweeping reform in order to fight a war where our own family members are the enemy. Did you miss the earlier scene?")

Film: Cobra Woman (fantasy)
Submitter:"joe"
Bad Ending Type: It Wasn't Me
Rough Details: The evil queen of some island and her dumped-at-birth good-natured twin sis (both played by Maria Montez) confront each other in the evil queen's boudoir. The evil sister takes a spear from the wall and, to throw the spear, steps back ... and falls backward over the parapet and goes down. leaving the good sis to rule with love and compassion. All without good sis doing a frickin' thing... How cheap can you get?
Film: Lair of the White Worm (horror)
Submitter: Davey Whipwreck
Bad Ending Type: Miscellaneous
Rough Details: For a full synopsis, click here, but suffice to say it involves a legend about the "worm" of the title -- which turns out to be a snake, hallucinations, guys getting bitten (including someone bitten by her own mom), someone who does snake-charming with a bagpipe, and sacrifices. Believe it or not, this film has - GASP - Hugh Grant in it! Anyway, when all is said and done, many of the characters who have been bitten have been given anti-venom. Turns out that we're told the "anti-venom" doesn't work and is actually anti-arthritis medicine. Plus we see that the guy with the bagpipe has an untreated bite, too. So this is more of an "annoying cliffhanger" type finis that just "plain disappointing".
Film: Mulholland Drive (TV-pilot-turned-theatrical-film)
Submitter: Vern
Bad Ending Type: Miscellaneous
Rough Details: Basically, it involves a box filled with "little old people about four inches tall, they come out and talk in little chipmunk voices." His opinion on that: "There is no excuse for this lameass The Gnomemobile ending. I'm sorry, it woulda been a good tv series for a while. It has some great fucking scenes in it. But David Lynch really blew it when he decided to go and finish the story."
Of course, being the critically acclaimed film it is, other people lashed out at Vern. One person said: "Mulholland Drive actually does make sense if you analyze it...it just doesn't tie up everything at the end and present it like a neat little package to the viewer.... if you still remember what happened in the movie, it will make sense -- but not in a concrete, direct way...it's still open for interpretation."
Film: Bedazzled (comedy)
Bad Ending Type: Miscellaneous
Rough Details: Say what you want (again), but I never did like the idea of Brendan Fraser ending up with a woman introduced not 3 minutes ago (and I still don't). I'm sorry, it just doesn't work for me.
Film: Hypersonic (airplane race action film)
Bad Ending Type: Miscellaneous
Rough Details: A cop-out with a moral? Hey, why not? That's what I got from this film. So Antonio Sabato Jr., instead of racing to the line (or to be more precise, the LA Coliseum) and picking up $25m, instead decides to eject from his plane to save the 2nd place guy (the only other guy remaining) after he crashed into, uh, a balloon? Didn't exactly work for me, even with the whole "there are things more important than winning (or money)" moral crap.
Even one IMDB user agrees with me: "The hero of the movie thinks 'oh no i couldn't possibly win this because my only competition's engine blew up! NOOO! I have GOT to eject a perfectly good plane, forfeit 25 MILLION bucks, and save one of the 5 pilots who went down! WOO!'.... What were these writers thinking?! *sigh* This movie is my new official 'Bad' benchmark."
Film: Life Size (Disney TV family comedy)
Bad Ending Type: Miscellaneous
Rough Details: I was tempted to put this under "losing the big game", but this isn't as much as "losing the big game" as "killing the whole 'moral setup'" (besides, it's only a subplot to the main plot). So: daddy finally shows up to see Lindsey Lohan playing QB (yep, she's a football player) in what he terms "the Super Bowl of 7th graders" (she's playing for all the marbles). She's playing at home. It's the final secs of the game, and they're down by 2. One player on her team has never been able to catch a pass from her. Now guess what happens. If you guessed that the boy finally catches a pass and runs it in for the game winning TD.... you'd be both right and wrong: He does catch the pass, but he gets tackled at the 1. So much for her father's support...
And if you want to argue that it's called "realism": the main plot is about one of Lohan's dolls turning into Tyra Banks, by way of a spell. How unrealistic is that?
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