Movies Happy or Sad Endings? (Possible Spoilers)

Almost all of Shakespeare's plays can be classified into two categories: Comedies and tragedies. His comedies aren't necessarily yuk-fests, but the term is used to describe any play of his where the good guys live happily ever after and the bad guys get what's coming to them but in the end, no one gets hurt. His tragedies, on the other hand, almost universally end with a pile of corpses on the floor (Most of which include the main character as well).

Today's society, of course, has much more variable kinds of stories. The thing they all have in common, however, is that they all end. Stories today can have good happy endings, tragic endings, or even some sort of mixed ending where both good and bad happens (The Seven Samurai or even The Passion of the Christ could fall into that category).

So how do you prefer your movies/books/games/whatever to end? Do you like seeing good prevail and the characters persevere? Or do you get more power and feeling out of seeing characters, even innocent ones, meet tragic ends? Or do you even prefer mixed endings, where some characters come out on top and others don't? Just something to think about.

 

It really depends on the nature of the story.

Generally, I like a series that gives a sense of closure for the characters, whether in the form of death, or just the resolution of issues. I don't normally like to see the antagonists killed at the end, though - if they're tragic villains, I'd much rather have an open-ended series where they have the possibility for growth, healing, or redemption. I admit, I'm a bit of a sap that way. XD

I suppose I prefer mixed endings. It's more realistic that way. If everyone dies, I tend to get left feeling ripped-off; if everything is happy and perfect, it often feels false. When things work out better for some than for others, it gives me more to think about - and I do like to really think about the events of a story, as well as the characters.

But as I said - it depends on the story. A comedy ought to end on a light note; a tragedy ought to be tragic. Though... it does usually piss me off when a favorite character dies, so in that respect I'm not terribly fond of tragedies.

 

The two extremes, those being happy and sad endings, always seem like cop-outs to me, like the author just wants to end things as simply as possible. It is kind of fun sometimes to do a body count at the end of a tragedy, though. "Happy" endings are mostly there for what I consider the immature audience (sorry if I offend anyone). Realistically, the "mature" audience recognizes that nothing ever works out perfectly. Of course, most people also don't watch movies to see things realistically.
I love a good mixed ending. You don't have to have "happy" to be "good". Look at the greats of samurai films, predominantly my two favourites, The Seven Samurai and The Last Samurai. At the end of the former, many of the heroes have died, and everyone has suffered immensely, but justice has been done. You may be upset by the fact that your favourite character may have died, but you also have to recognize that it was for the best. In The Last Samurai, all the really cool samurai are dead, but you have to look at the ending as a personal victory for Allgren, since the only thing he really lost in the course of the story was his life of advertising guns and drinking too much. Also, even though the samurai died, they died as warriors, which is sort of what they wanted, dying honourably in what they saw as the surface of their lord. So both endings are tragic successes of sorts.
Of course there's nothing worse than an ending that solves nothing. I hate when the end of the movie leaves you nowhere. I'd rather have a stupid sappy ending than one that's hardly an ending at all.

 

Happy endings definitely. I can't STAND sad endings!!! :sad: