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.
Of course, most of the time, it was “just a phase". And looking back, those phases are regrettable, to say the least. Here are some prime examples of that.
SirGergoyFriendman asked:
What was your biggest/most regrettable "It's not a phase, mom. It's my life." that, in fact, turned out to be just a phase and not your life?
The enthusiasm of a young person can lead to some unexpected changes that parents are just not ready for.
Hi, Wheeljack!
I was VERY into The Transformers when I was a wee lad in the 1980s. One day, I decided to change my name to the name of my favorite Autobot. My name was lame, and I wanted an awesome Transformer name. And I was VERY insistent that my parents only call me by my new name. Calling me by my 'old' name would cause a big fat tantrum on my part.
So for the better part of a week, my poor parents had to call me Wheeljack.
Very 2008.
Ariana Grande Shrug GIFGiphyMy cat-ear phase. I wore cat ears every single day. Everywhere. I had like 20 pairs of them. Now everyone thinks I'm a furry.
I find that very cute and wouldn't have thought you'd be furry. Even if you'd had cat mittens. I think my suspicions would have started if you moved a bit like a cat, displayed catlike grooming habits or got a cat mask.
Not gonna lie, that car sounds cool.
I went to a car show once as a teen, and the only newer car there was some chick's PT cruiser. It was hot glittery pink, and at the time I was obsessed. I insisted that one day I would have a hot pink car, with pink seats, pink dash, pink carpets, etc. I was pretty heavily goth at the time, so my parents just rolled their eyes.
These phases can often lead to some very strange fashion choices.
That’s commitment.
When I was a teenager (early 00s), I was waiting for my mother to pick me up and was wearing one of those sh!tty sports wristwatches. It was itching me so I took it off for a second, but then she arrived and because I was struggling to get it back on my wrist, I looped it around the equally sh!tty chain I had around my neck in a rush to get out the door.
My mom asked me about it in the car, and I told her this was my new style and I planned to wear it like that every day. She rolled her eyes.
I wore that watch on a chain around my neck every single day for 3 years or so. There are even professional family photos where I'm wearing it because I refused to take it off.
One day, the chain broke and I lost the watch. I was in high school at that point anyway and it was a major lady repellent, so... phase over.
Not everyone can be Eminem.
slim shady eminem GIFGiphyBaggy pants, being a rapper someday and being a professional skater.
When I was about 14 and Eminem was starting to blow up I bought myself a keyboard with a synthesizer. It cost like $200 which was all the money I had saved up. It finally came (this was way before amazon prime and such) and I tried rapping.
My sister told me "you're effing horrible" and I gave up right then and there.
This should be a sin.
I used to button the top buttons of polo shirts.
I must say, this is probably the worst one I've read.
Looking back at our regrettable choices, all we can do is cringe.
An optimistic look at bad tattoos.
check me out season 3 GIF by PortlandiaGiphyBeing a tattooer. Regrettable because of those poor people who have my awful doodles on their bodies.
Take heart! My favorite tattoo is the one I drunkenly got my buddy to do in his living room one year during March Madness! It's dumb and frankly mediocre? But such a good story and has such good associations I smile every time I see it.
RIP Fredro’s.
My friend and I decided we were going to open a bar in Jamaica with exotic snakes in glass cages in the walls at each booth. We convinced ourselves it would be amazing for at least two years in college. It was going to be called Fredro's.
My entire family made fun of me for it. Once we got out of college, we realized it was not feasible and joined the office grind. We're also two white guys with no ties to Jamaica.
Talk about cringey.
I wore a top hat with an anime pin on it for around a year. Met one of my current best friends while wearing it, idk how he could bear to speak to me after that.
My weirdest phase was probably when I insisted on wearing knee-high rainbow socks to school every day. But honestly, I don't regret it. I rocked those socks, and I wish I still have a pair.
To all the people out there cringing over their past selves, remember that you were just a kid, and to be easy on yourselves. After all, we've all been there
Yet, too often, manufacturers who oversell their products fail to deliver what is promised and are inevitably left with angry customers who want their money back.
Whether the merchandise was defective or ridiculously overpriced, strangers online shared some of their worst purchases when Redditor BooksMcGee asked:
"What is the worst product you ever paid money for?"
Short Life Span
"This NERF gun that's supposed to shoot tennis balls for your dog. I bought it cause I thought you could load 3 at a time and shoot them far, but it's just one and it's super loud and the gun broke after like 4 shots (reading reviews later, this was a common issue)."
Lame Pets
"There were these toys called squiggles when I was a kid and the commercials made it seem like the toy was alive. It looked like you would get this crazy little fuzzy worms as pets that would follow you around an so sick tricks and listen to your every command. It was really just a piece of fluffy string tied to another piece of string with googly eyes on it. People may say that it was supposed to be a magic trick but they should also explain that to a 5 year old who really wanted a pet."
Card Value
"Not their fault, but I paid $70 for a Yugioh card hours before it was limited to one copy. Probably dropped to $20 by the end of the day."
These purchases were bad for your bum.
"A bicycle that literally fell apart before I made it out of the parking lot."
Not Worth Sitting On
"Joybird brand couch. Was so terrible, we returned it. Still hard to believe, we returned a freaking couch."
Going Nowhere Fast
"A 2000 VW Beetle (used)."
"Biggest piece of sh*t that literally had to have just about everything replaced before 100k miles and would still break down every time you left the driveway to the point where the tow-truck driver knew us on a first-name basis."
Expensive Lemon
"An Oldsmobile Achieva from one of those buy here pay here places. I should have known better, but I was young and thought I was getting a good deal. I had the thing for about 5 months, I drove it for maybe 3 weeks. The rest of the time it was either in the shop, or in my driveway waiting until pay day so I could afford to fix whatever broke on it this week. Eventually told the dealer just take it, I'm not paying for it any more. He said nope, and I will make sure your credit is ruined. I said well you sold me a lemon, do you really want to go this route? He came and took it. Never reported anything to credit. I heard he got sued by several other people who sold sh**ty cars too and eventually went out of business."
"Always amazes me when I see them driving around still, I can only assume there's enthusiasts who just love repairing horribly designed cars."
– zerbey
These Redditors were not convinced what they ingested was edible.
Bad Cereal
"A box of plain Cheerios. Thought they were honey nut, poured a bowl, was very disappointed."
"If I wanted to taste cardboard, I'd just eat the box."
– gor8884
Space Pizza
"A burnt frozen pizza at the air and space museum cafe in DC. I Don't wish that experience on anyone. There are some amazing restaurants in DC, don't settle."
– Alseids
The following electronics just gave off a bad charge.
"Asus Transformer Pad TF700"
"This was one of those early 'high end' Android tablets that was grossly underpowered, and it showed. Thing was slow as sh!t in no time flat. Rookie mistake investing into shiny new tech while they were still working all the bugs out. Think I paid somewhere in the neighborhood of $350-400 for it..."
– Luke5119
Bad Apple
"macbook pro 2018 13" touchbar. 2 years old and dead (battery). they're asking $300-$400 to change the battery. malfunctioning keyboard with double presses and missing presses. that's a lot of money for bad design."
Chilly Reception
"Past winter my old room heater broke down and I had to buy a new one. Went to a store nearby and somehow got convinced to buy a very costly heating device.. It's also my fault, since there were some sligthly cheaper options around, but nope. I wanted the expensive one thinking it will make my small room a volcano with little to no effort/cost (that's also what the seller told me). Long story short the device wasn't doing ANYTHING. No significant temperature changes, too much space, a weird noise, and was doubling my previous device in utility cost. I still gloom over those 80 euros.."
Some of my disappointing purchases was clothing, but only because I purchased them online. Unless they are a brand I'm familiar with, I'm usually fine with buying new jeans off of their websites.
But when it comes to graphic tees only available on specialty shops, an M-size shirt is not necessarily the same size as those found in other reputable stores.
I bought a medium sized T-shirt from a boutique store online because I loved the look of the design. But when it arrived, the supposed medium fit me like an XL.
At least I gained a fierce cleaning rag from this impulsive purchase.