300 réponses à ce sujet

[Fattness132]

For a movie, the bleakest ending that i actually liked would have to be "The Mist". The ending was so incredibly depressing, but i still enjoyed it because it fit the tone the whole movie had been giving off. Things like there was no hope and that it is pointless to continue.

[flub3]

The end of the Dark Tower series. Bleak, somewhat ambiguous, yet strangely fitting.

[EdensRainbow]

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. Breaks my heart every time and I love it still.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman. That was a hard book to get through...

[drak4806.2]

Maro wrote...

I feel badly for the Starks.  Winter is coming.

For the first three books I would say yes but now after the 5th I just stopped caring about the series and its characters.

[drak4806.2]

Fattness132 wrote...

For a movie, the bleakest ending that i actually liked would have to be "The Mist". The ending was so incredibly depressing, but i still enjoyed it because it fit the tone the whole movie had been giving off. Things like there was no hope and that it is pointless to continue.

Yeah I really liked the ending of The Mist.

[Icesong]

drak4806.2 wrote...

Maro wrote...

I feel badly for the Starks.  Winter is coming.

For the first three books I would say yes but now after the 5th I just stopped caring about the series and its characters.

I stopped caring during the wait for the 5th. Figured he'd end up dying before the 7th came out.

[stcalvin13]

Ambiguous:
Inception
Blade Runner

Both of these worked because the story was about doubt. Is Cobb dreaming? Taking a leap of faith is the point--if the movie answers the question it lets us off too easy. Is Deckard a human? He's been hunting down replicants that didn't know what they were replicants. It's just fitting that he doubt should be cast on him.

This is really the only way that an ambiguous ending works--doubt has to be part of the work from the beginning, so that an ambiguous ending connects the audience with the work rather than alienating them.

As for bleak endings, well, every good tragedy ever?
I'll name some of my favorites:
Brick--classic film noir plot. The ending just felt right.  (And you knew it was coming if you know film noir)
Detour--one of the darkest endings ever. Perfectly fits the oppressive atmosphere.
Memento--Your almost not sad--just impressed by how well it all came together.
The Departed--The ending felt like the natural result of so much cat and mouse.
A Gentle Creature (Fyodor Dostoevsky)--Most soul crushing final paragraph ever. Stunningly good in how sad it is.
Notes from the Underground (Fyodor Dostoevsky)--You knew the narrator couldn't live happily ever after.
McBeth, Hamlet, King Lear--You understand how why these guys do what they do. And you know that it can't end well.

I think the lesson to draw from this is that a tragic ending needs to fit the tone of the work and needs to be the natural outworking of the plot. I think it also helps if you see it coming, because part of what makes tragedies work is that you see it, root against it, but can't stop it. But at the very least it needs to feel like 1) the only way this sort of story could end or 2) like the real tragedy is that this ending could have been avoided (Romeo and Juliet is a great example of this latter type; If only the messenger had gotten there, if only she'd woken up earlier!)

Modifié par stcalvin13, 18 mars 2012 - 07:20 .

[Aweus]

Plenty of nice movies with nice endings in here. But perhaps some of you forget that Mass Effect is a game. And a game which excels at making choices. ME3 should not have one ending only, no matter how good it would be. We need multiple choices based on logical consequences of our actions. Some of those choices would be stupid, some great... all depending from YOUR preference. You cant please everyone with a story outcome. I thought that Bioware understands this. Giving us multiple different endings would be a best choice. If someone wants entire galaxy to burn, fine, let him have it. If someone wants to turn Reapers in Space Ponies than fine, let him have it as well.

[stcalvin13]

EdensRainbow wrote...

Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog. Breaks my heart every time and I love it still.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman. That was a hard book to get through...

Good call.  I hated that soooo much at the time.  But it really was the only way that could end.

[stcalvin13]

Aweus wrote...

Plenty of nice movies with nice endings in here. But perhaps some of you forget that Mass Effect is a game. And a game which excels at making choices. ME3 should not have one ending only, no matter how good it would be. We need multiple choices based on logical consequences of our actions. Some of those choices would be stupid, some great... all depending from YOUR preference. You cant please everyone with a story outcome. I thought that Bioware understands this. Giving us multiple different endings would be a best choice. If someone wants entire galaxy to burn, fine, let him have it. If someone wants to turn Reapers in Space Ponies than fine, let him have it as well.

Yep.
And the endings need to fit the game.  A bleak ending doesn't really.  And an ambiguous edning really doesn't.

[Lilla Snorkan]

I am legend (the book, NOT Will Smith) had a great ending imo.
American Psycho
1984
Old Boy
No country for old men
Shutter Island
The Thing
Silent Hill
The Trial

Propably a ton more but i just can't remember em all

[DemGeth]

Oh a ton!

But I'll just go with the movie of the last decade

Pans Labyrinth

[Zu Long]

Final Fantasy Tactics- Ending was vague, but there was enough there to suggest Ramza came out the other side and lived. Since the whole thing was a story within a story anyway, it took a lot of the sting out of the uncertainty.

[Zofiya]

Ariq wrote...

Flowers for Algernon

This is my favourite bleak ending of all time. Sometimes I pick it up just to read the last page. "Please put some flowers on Algernon's grave in the backyard." Always makes me cry.

Another literary example is The Red Convertible, by Louise Erdrich. It's a short story about
two brothers, Henry and Lyman, narrated by Lyman after Henry kills
himself. It is notable in comparison to ME3 for also lacking catharsis or closure -- the action of the story ends immediately after Henry's sudden death.

The difference is that the entire story is designed to deprive the reader of catharsis, because Lyman himself cannot let go of Henry, and by ending the story abruptly after the climax, the reader is left feeling as frustrated as Lyman. It is a brilliant psychological trick, made possible by the structure of the story.

It is not, however, something I would read for fun or relaxation.

[Drak41n]

I think bleak and ambiguous works a lot better in movies than games. BUT, bioshock 2 had great bleak endings. Of course, you could actually AVOID them. They even killed off the protagonist.

[lltoon]

Halo 3

[Area42T]

The Mist

[Hashbeth]

Memento
Children of Men
Being There
Dr. Strangelove

the list...she goes on

[hismastersvoice]

The Deadman and Ghost Dog
Driver
Blade Runner
Eye of Cat
Lord of Light

and so on, and so forth...

[cynicalandbored]

Ghost World.

[crapmonster13]

For sci-fi novels
Samuel Delany's Empire Star & Einstein Intersection come to mind in addition to OP's mention of Dhalgren.

For films,
Pretty much most of the works of Ingmar Bergman, Hal Hartley, Lars Von Trier, Godard, Oshima, Antonioni, Lee Chang Dong, Shohei Imamura, Kim Ki Duk, Edward Yang, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang, Jim Jarmusch, do I really need to go on.....?

Sci-fi films specifically,
2001, Blade Runner, Brazil, THX 1138, 12 Monkeys, etc....

[Wabajakka]

Fight Club, Halo 3, Halo Reach, Blade Runner, Inception, 2001: Space Odyssey to name a few. So many examples on how to do it right...

[fish of doom]

the freespace series of videogames. both games end in a pyrrhic victory, with equal measures of hope and incertitude regarding the future.

neil gaiman's sandman comic books. an extremely well executed "sad" ending, involving a well implemented plot device that was explicitly known to be going to happen, along with both the resolution of the prior conflicts and a further plot device that prevents the series ending on a negative note even though it is still tragic.

the elric of melniboné saga. the book series itself is extremely bleak and pessimistic, with themes of cosmicism and the struggle against fate, and the tragic ending is nothing but an extension of those themes, while still not destroying every positive aspect, since the series and its struggles are simply part of the larger cosmology of the "eternal champion", as are many of michael Moorcock's other book series.

[MOELANDER]

I really liked the Fallout 1 ending, where your Vault Dweller gets exiled. It's a bleak ending if you don't count Fallout 2 where you play one of your descendants, but it also gives you amazing closure, because it tells you how you have affected the postnuclear wastelands.

Also: 
Blade Runner

Modifié par MOELANDER, 18 mars 2012 - 10:01 .

[Shelondias]

Xenosaga III ended on a reasonably high note but it was clear things weren't really over.
Angel's ending too, holy hell was that a badass way to end a series- everything was up in the air. Well until the comics anyway.

Modifié par Zondergrod, 18 mars 2012 - 10:04 .