People Reveal The Darker Truths Of Popular Movies With Happy Endings
Movies often serve as the cultural bookmarks of our lives. Many of us can remember seeing certain films for the first time and then watching them 1,000 times more because they make us feel alive. One of the best things about great films is a great ending, especially a happy ending; the couple gets married and lives happily ever after, the aliens are defeated, the bad guy is dead. When we see the credits begin to roll we cheer and then go to bed. We never really consider, "What next?"
Redditor _gingeralee asked us What are some dark implications made by movies with seemingly happy endings? And upon reflection and reading below... I can never re-watch any film I've ever loved again. _
WELL SANTA HAS ALWAYS HAD ISSUES!
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (the 1964 version)
They pick up all the toys from the island of misfit toys. If you watch past the ending, during the credits the elves are giving the toys umbrellas and tossing them over the side of the sleigh, presumably down to the homes below.
Now, aside from the fact this is enough to give OSHA a heart attack, lets assume via the same magic bringing these toys to life they are able to safely make it into the homes.If you continue watching, one of the elves picks up the bird. He looks between the bird and the umbrella, and tosses the bird over the edge without an umbrella.
Now, for anyone who actually remembers earlier in the movie, while the toys are listing how they are misfits, the bird says he cannot fly, he swims. I was ~10 years old when I noticed that and pointed it out to my mom.
Also, re-watching that movie at any point as an adult, Santa is a d**k.
I'D BE RUNNING FOR MY PILLS FOR SURE.
Toy Story: Sid now lives with the knowledge that he has been torturing living things and they might kill him. I imagine that would call for therapy and medication.
I WOUD'VE CALLED IT "DOWN."
In the movie Up, the kid's dad abandoned him again and his only friend is knocking on death's door.
WE LOVE YOU WALL-E!
They had to change the ending of Wall-E because test audiences (rightfully) felt that the humans were going to die from lacking survival skills. They added in a montage of them successfully colonizing the planet.
HER HEART WILL GO ON AND ON.
When I was little I had a book called Alumette or The little Match girl. The book is about an orphan who sells matches during the time when the lighters were becoming available. She is poor and hungry and it is Christmas time, she strikes her last match and makes a wish for food, presents, and warmth. In the book her wish is granted. Santa Claus brings down a cornucopia of blankets, food, and presents. Disney made an animated short of this and apparently she dies in the end. When I was younger and believed in Santa Claus I simply thought the girls wish came true and it was a happy ending. Watching the animated short as an adult made me realize that she died, and the story is absolutely heartbreaking.
POOR CHICKEN LITTLE!
In the end of Chicken Little Foxy Loxy suffers permanent brain damage and all the other characters celebrate it
LIAM CAN'T SAVE THE WORLD!
I always thought the end if the film Taken should have been a shot of the other girls parents, happily holding signs and balloons waiting for their daughter. No one seems to really care all that much and we never even hear from or see anyone try to get in contact with the dead girls parents.
OH DONKEY NO!
A donkey makes love to a dragon. Shrek.
WHO YOU GONNA CALL?
In Ghostbusters, not all the ghosts are necessarily evil. (Look at the scene where the Titanic docks in New York, for example.) People seem to be perfectly happy to forget that they were once people, treating them instead like an infestation of cockroaches.
Congratulations. There's a very real chance your grandad's spirit is being kept in a little metal prison for eternity. And you can look forward to a chance of the exact same treatment in seventy years!
WHO ARE YOU AGAIN?
50 first dates. I know that they apparently had a happy ending at the end of the film, but Henry is in for one of the roughest marriages imaginable, same with Lucy. I can't imagine the heartbreak of seeing the love of your life waking up every morning and asking who you are, having to document everything to convince her that you do love each other and have for a long time. The fear that she would feel if they ever decided to have kids, meeting kids/grandkids she never remembers having (let alone meeting). The shock of looking in the mirror and finding out that you've aged 30 years, seeing the pain on your (apparent) partners face as he's seen you have this realization hundreds of times before.
While a sweet movie about love persevering, their life is going to be a painful one.
HORROR MOVIES LEAVE A LASTING IMPRESSION.
Most horror movies: congratulations, you survived the onslaught, found your true strength, and vanquished the unkillable demonic slasher! Happy ending! Most of your friends are dead! You watched them die horribly! Lots of property has been destroyed, maybe even in your own house! It sure will be hard to get over your PTSD when you're constantly finding fragments of your boyfriend's skull embedded in the bedroom wall! On the bright side, somebody else will probably clean up the carnage because you'll be in prison! "It wasn't me, it was the unkillable demonic slasher! Remember thw guy who died here many years ago? Well he came back with supernatural powers and _he _killed everybody, not me. See? It all makes sense."
Also, unkillable demonic slashers exist.
ONWARD... IF YOU MAKE IT.
"Snowpiercer." At the end the kiddos come out of the train, and they're about to embark on their outside adventure. To show hope, they show a polar bear in the distance (to show there is life on the outside). First thing I thought was 'oh dang those kids gonna get ate'.
A MODERN DAY HOLOCAUST.
District 9 - sweet, that nice alien managed to escape! Now his entire race - race with technology much, much more advanced than ours - knows that we keep their people in concentration camps. Oh, and that our scientists are going full Mengele on them. Boy, they sure will be happy to give us a friendly visit!
STAY OUT OF MY BODY!
Source Code.
In that movie, the protagonist is repeatedly sent into the body of another man (a school teacher) to relive the last 8 minutes of his life in order investigate who blew up the train he is on.
In the end, he discovers the bomber and stops the train from blowing up. Everyone is saved, he asks out the girl, and (his own body being ruined) continues to live in the school teacher's body. Happy ending!
What.... happened to the school teacher? Another mind took over his body. Imagine this from the perspective of everyone the school teacher knew. He got on a train to go to work and then promptly disappeared. He never contacted his friends or family ever again. His own mother would not know what happened to him, and should they ever meet he will not even recognize her. His personality and mannerisms would all be wrong.
The happy ending of this movie is one huge mess of a missing person/body-snatcher case, and this is just not addressed at all. This is so creepy/off-putting and makes so little sense that I get the overwhelming impression that this was some last minute studio meddling, and not the actual intended ending of the film.
WHAT ABOUT MIKE?
Sing.
The mouse, Mike, is caught by the Russian mob bears, but saved by his lady mouse. They drive off, but one bear is seen hanging on the back of the car, grinning evilly. They are never seen in the rest of the movie, and especially in the photo of the reopened theater with everyone from the key roles standing outside.
Mike and his lady friend got eaten by Russian mobster bears. No one ever mentions it.
YOU'LL NEVER BE THE SAME.
At the end of _'The Last Unicorn,' _Amalthea notes that she is the only one of her kind to know what regret feels like, thus setting her apart from the other unicorns. Amalthea, who went through hell to rescue her sisters, will never be the creature she once was ever again.
Still one of the saddest "happy" endings I can remember.
BOWIE!!!
Labyrnth- Sarah and Toby get away, but all that does is let Jareth go to some other girl's house and steal the baby there. And he's been doing it for hundreds, if not thousands of years, judging by the number of goblins in the labyrinth.
SO NOW WHAT?
Roy Neary spends the entirety of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" obsessing over extra terrestrials and UFOs. His obsession reaches such a fever pitch that his wife takes their kids and leaves him. Then, rather than get his act together and be a father to his children, Roy leaves the planet with a group of aliens. Being chosen by aliens to represent humanity throughout the galaxy is the ultimate version of going to get cigarettes and never coming back.
Aside from Roy leaving his family high and dry, the end of the movie also shows a group of abductees being carelessly dropped back on Earth. Some of the people who were abducted went missing 30 years earlier. What are they going to do now that they're back? Their families are probably dead, they don't have any place to live, and they no longer have skills that can help them with work.
CHILDHOODS DESTROYED.
Anytime people experience a whole life which gets wiped away, and leaves them in their original state, e.g. at the end of Narnia the kids lived full lives into their mid-thirties at least, and then stumble back into the real world as children. Same thing in Jumanji and Robin Williams' character, also in the show Star vs the Forces of Evil to Marco. Imagine growing up into a full adult with full adult experience and thoughts and then going back to being a kid. You wouldn't be able to relate with anyone your age, you wouldn't be given the respect your used to from being an adult, and you wouldn't be able to enjoy your childhood because you've grown up as a different person that now doesn't exist except in your mind. That gives me goosebumps
I NEED TO HUG MY TOASTER!
The Brave Little Toaster.
The movie portrays cartoon appliances with adult problems like mental disorders, incarceration, abandonment, and suicide.