Unresolved Endings
December 8th, 2007I had a conversation with a friend yesterday about unresolved endings in movies. Having grown up in Canada, I’m quite accustomed to the Western convention of giving stories a clear beginning, middle, and end. However, I’m also half-Persian, and the vast majority of Persian movies I’ve seen have the bizarre tendency of ending right at places where you’d expect some kind of dénouement to occur. This has historically bothered me, but given some time to think about it, there are times when an unresolved ending actually works. If you’re doing a slice of life-type story, which a lot of Persian movies are, it gives you the feeling that life goes on outside of the vignette you get to see in the film. It’s a message that can make a very powerful point, if done well. [1]
This got me thinking about how one would write an interactive narrative of a similar theme; I’m very intrigued by the slice of life genre and see much of it creeping into my own work. Of course, you’d probably have to completely drop all pretenses of it being a game altogether, [2] otherwise, you’d wind up with a dissatisfied audience who expects a rewarding ending for all the hoops they had to jump through. Still, it’d be fun to try. If I ever think up an idea that would work in this format, that is.
There. Now that you’ve put up with my rambling for the day, here’s a cute five-minute interactive art piece you should play. [3] It may not have an unresolved ending, but I really liked the message behind it nevertheless.
- Cliffhanger endings, on the other hand, are a different beast. They usually exist solely for the purpose of getting the audience back for the sequel, and that smells of shady marketting tactics rather than art to me. ↩
- Yes, even my own work would be too gamelike for it, as evidenced by the number of “I can’t get the Queen of Everything to like me! I lose!” comments I’ve gotten. ↩
- Hey, that rhymed! ↩
December 9th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Debating your footnote 1: It depends on when and how the cliffhanger are added to the script. There are many book and movie trilogies that would be nowhere near as good without a good cliffhanger to leave you wanting to finish the story. Back to the Future wouldn’t be the same without the cliffhanger in Part 2. (Sorry, I will admit to being a huge Back to the Future fan and its an easy example to use.) I enjoy a good cliffhanger, and it doesn’t bother me if I don’t follow a sequel to a bad movie just because it had a cliffhanger. Plus, Hollywood isn’t usually that cruel about it… cliffhangers are usually reserved only for the films that actually will have a sequel (ie are already budgeted if not already being filmed). I don’t remember ever being pissed that a promised movie sequel never happened. The same can’t be said for all television writers, though… But that’s a more fickle part of the industry.
On the other hand, what you said applies to the needless “cop out” that has been perfected and honed by the horror writers of the world. Not the story-sensible cliffhanger but that final “I’ll be back moment”, usually in the last shot just before the credits roll and sometimes just after the credits roll. You know that “You know how we spent half the movie killing and then proving that we indeed killed that character? Here’s his arm moving mysteriously…” thing. That I could certainly do without. I don’t mind the “here’s why he didn’t really die” thing at the beginning of a franchise film… You can expect that if you are paying to see a movie with a number in the title. I just don’t like the “gee shucks, how could we actually kill kill our money-making hero/villain in *this* movie” thing. The worst one in my recent memory was X-Men 3’s that didn’t make any sense at all, not that any of the rest of that pile of dog excrement made all that much sense either…
So, cliffhanger: not really that bad; cop out: awful. But, I like good cliffhangers and I even get a kick out of bad ones. But, I didn’t mind the ending of Pirates of the Caribbean Part 2, so maybe I’m just sick… (On the other hand, apparently I was one of the few people walking into PotC Part 2 that knew that Part 3 was being shot as I watched Part 2… Forewarned can be forearmed. (Just like a Hindu deity, you should always strive to be four-armed? … Er, sorry about the bad pun. It’s late.))
December 10th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
I like a good cliffhanger as well as a good denouement. There are few times when having neither works for me, though, or the denouement just wasn’t enough (ie, CMI. The game was great, but that ending is so quick it’s over before you exhale.)
What frustrates me is when adapting material for a movie they either add an ending, or remove an ending, from the book. For example, I liked how Fellowship of the Ring ended. They took the first chapter or so of The Two Towers and put it at the end of Fellowship, and it worked. It’s a semi-cliffhanger. You know it continues, but you’re not anticipating an immediate resolution to a problem presented in the last moment of the film (like how the Adam West Batman TV would end each episode). However, Two Towers should have ended with a real cliffhanger of sorts, instead of basically ended it exactly how Fellowship ended (Sam & Frodo strolling along on their way to Mordor.) The book ends with Frodo being taken by orcs after Sam thought he was dead. I know the way they made the films there wasn’t time to get to that point in the film version of Two Towers, but the film had this meloncholy ending just as Fellowship did. Anyway, I’m getting long winded here, so I won’t go on about the never ending denouements of Return of the King…
But I’ll just end with saying there are ways to have a cliffhanger and a denouement. The Empire Strikes Back is a good example, I think. It’s all about ending on the beat of the cliffhanger (like Pirates 2) or giving the audience time to breathe prior to the credits rolling.
December 10th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
I guess I’m biased toward standalone stories, then. I don’t know. Sequels, in any way/shape/form, can get rather tiring; I don’t really have much of an attention span for long epic stories, so I tend to be happier when I get a story that’s concise and stands on its own. That said, when I like a piece of work, I do like to see “spiritual” sequels to it; that is, completely different stories, but with similar thematic elements/artistic styles.
Funny that you mention Back to the Future, Max, which itself was originally supposed to be a standalone story, with the “cliffhanger ending” in the first film intended as a joke. I’m not sure whether I would have preferred it that way. The trilogy seemed to drag on a bit; the first movie was awesome, the second was so-so, and the third was a bit meh.
December 13th, 2007 at 2:11 am
As far as games are concerned, I think I’d quite enjoy a non-definitive ending if there were a branching storyline. I’d like to be a game player who is on her/his own path that at least mimics “real” life. I’ve never been one of those gamers who likes to get 10,000 points, become a wizard, and win! I much prefer an interesting story. I know a lot of people don’t prefer your branchiness, though.
You mention you are part Persian. Some of my favoirite ancient stories are of Persian origin, and they often have vague endings, but do make a useful moral point. Leaves the reader something to take with them.
And, as for the Queen of Everything–she obviously has deep unresolved childhood issues. We’re probably better off if she doesn’t like us, at least until she gets some therapy!
December 13th, 2007 at 2:15 am
LOL at the Queen of Everything comment. It’s true, she really is rather neurotic.
December 14th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
On the other hand, Western movies tend to follow a single event, not a slice of life of the characters. Case in point: The Day the Earth Stood Still, When Harry met Sally, Saving Private Ryan. Perhaps movies follow a formula according to the region they’re produced in, if you’ll forgive the mild generalisation. Western movies present the setting, characters, and story quickly, then cut to the action in whatever form, and finally resolve it and close. I’ve never seen one of these referenced Persian movies, so I have an uneducated opinion, but a sound bite that focuses on, well, what a sound bite is supposed to focus on is more watchable, or worth watching, than something which presents an everyday focus and ends without doing anything, and thus more palatable to a Western audience. Action fans, sci-fi fans, whatever form they come in; they’re interested in seeing the meat and potatoes of the presentation, and don’t really care about what would hypothetically happen before or after, so a movie that enforces the notion of life going on outside the vignette would be boring to your average movie-goer. That said, Western filmmakers haven’t dabbled much outside the Western movie formula, so who knows if that sort of movie (Persian example) would be accepted or not outside its native audience.