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March 28, 2024, 07:17:08 PM

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3rd Act Flops

Started by clingfilm portent, April 27, 2016, 10:20:06 PM

Previous topic - Next topic
I just watched Blow Out, the otherwise entertaining Travolta vehicle from 1981. A strong first half and a complete fart of a third-act, just utterly stupid.

What other films are there that you think shit the bed so badly towards the end that it completely undoes what went before?


Hollow

Beyond the Black Rainbow, just turns into a mindless slasher to finish.


Shoulders?-Stomach!

Close to every Hollywood film I've seen since 2013.

Not terrific input from me there, but honest. So much fixation on a memorable twist/shock none of which has been sufficiently established or is consistent if you roll back the actions of the characters.

Quote from: Hollow on April 27, 2016, 10:24:25 PM
Beyond the Black Rainbow, just turns into a mindless slasher to finish.

Yeah thats really all I've ever heard about that film. Good visuals don't count for a lot when the film itself is piss.

Another one: Ex Machina. Not the worst ending ever but the premise and the whole build-up deserved a much better closing than... that. One of those films that just ends.

Kelvin

Batman v Superman. As I said in the thread, I think the first two thirds are flawed, but very good. Almost everything serious that goes wrong, goes wrong in the last third; the sudden jumps in logic, the abandonment of character development, themes and ideas, the underwhelming fight between Batman and Superman, and the mindless noise once Doomsday appears. Its like a decent film got welded to the tail end of a transformer's movie. 

That's almost exactly what I thought about Man of Steel. Would have been half-decent, but by the time Zod started attacking the Earth I just felt myself wishing I was in a coma. Like an unexpectedly tasty McDonald's washed down with a big keg of sick.


Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

On the subject of Alex Garland sci-fi films and mindless slasher endings - Sunshine.

Peru

Garland immediately came to mind when I saw the thread title. 28 Days Later, The Beach, Sunshine, Ex Machina. Even Dredd is a little underwhelming, and I enjoyed the rest of it very much.

Skyfall. The first two thirds are top notch (Ace baddy, great new Moneypenny and Q, looks fab, exciting)  then the Home Alone stuff in Scotland is really, really bad and let's it all down.

I'd also say The Dark Knight Rises for revealing that
Spoiler alert
Bane, who had brought real tension and danger to the thing, was just someone else's lackey and not the evil mastermind who had been driving the story. Like someone sticking a pin in a balloon you were playing with.
[close]

Puce Moment

Some good ones here already, and I agree wholeheartedly with Blow Out which I consider to be De Palma's best film, despite the shitty ending.

I would probably go for Stir Crazy. For me one of the most, if not the most, hilarious film for a good 50-60mins before devolving into a prison escape movie with not even one joke.

Good choice. See No Evil, Hear No Evil does a similar thing does it not? I feel like a lot of comedy crime capers go down that path, as if we're terribly emotionally invested in seeing our heroes 'win'.

Pepotamo1985

Quote from: thecuriousorange on April 27, 2016, 11:16:04 PM
I'd also say The Dark Knight Rises

I think it's all shit, but that's a particularly shitty part (that I somehow forgot when I wrote a post burying it a while back). Especially pathetic given the actual Bane backstory could easily have been used, or the Occupy politics stuff expanded.

Puce Moment

Quote from: clingfilm portent on April 28, 2016, 12:03:51 AMGood choice. See No Evil, Hear No Evil does a similar thing does it not? I feel like a lot of comedy crime capers go down that path, as if we're terribly emotionally invested in seeing our heroes 'win'.

Yeah, pretty much. Such a weird 80s thing - even the third act of Weird Science seems to become about something else entirely.

mothman


BlodwynPig

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on April 27, 2016, 10:24:42 PM
Close to every Hollywood film I've seen since 2013.

Not terrific input from me there, but honest. So much fixation on a memorable twist/shock none of which has been sufficiently established or is consistent if you roll back the actions of the characters.
From 1999 onwards

Crabwalk

The end of Boogie Nights.

samadriel

Killer Condom. I'd have remembered it much more fondly if the end had been better; I recently rewatched it and found the rest quite entertaining.

Phil_A

10 Cloverfield Lane. Great up until she
Spoiler alert
gets out of the bunker
[close]
, then a dreadful and pointless final fifteen minutes that totally wastes what went before.

Pit-Pat

Quote from: Crabwalk on April 28, 2016, 08:16:52 AM
The end of Boogie Nights.

I wish Boogie Nights had ended in Alfred Molina's house as the camera focused in on Wahlberg's eyes. I thought that scene was one of the most amazing things I've seen in a film.

greenman

Quote from: Peru on April 27, 2016, 11:00:23 PM
Garland immediately came to mind when I saw the thread title. 28 Days Later, The Beach, Sunshine, Ex Machina. Even Dredd is a little underwhelming, and I enjoyed the rest of it very much.

Can't say I agree with Sunshine and Ex Machina, there is some misdirection in those films that seems to annoy people but really the groundwork for the 3rd act has clearly be layed in both cases.

Pepotamo1985

What, the subliminal flashes of the captain in Sunshine? It seemed very awkwardly tacked on to me.

greenman

Quote from: Pepotamo1985 on April 28, 2016, 09:21:04 AM
What, the subliminal flashes of the captain in Sunshine? It seemed very awkwardly tacked on to me.

I mean the general sense of growing mental illness under pressure/isolation and obsession with the sun from the crew. I was expecting it to be Searle that went nuts but honestly Pinbacker was a lot more realistic as we didn't need to see such a sudden shift in character.

Small Man Big Horse

Frozen - A huge amount of fun with some great songs throughout the first two acts, but then it forgets it's a musical and becomes fairly by the numbers and disappointing.

Just thought of another one: They Live. I love this film regardless and always will for its central conceit, snappy dialogue and Roddy Piper's unforgettably bad acting - I just wish it hadn't devolve so swiftly into a run'n'gun all-out action film in the last half-hour. The last few brief scenes, of the
Spoiler alert
unmasked aliens
[close]
being spotted do always make me smile though.

Hollow

I think Sunshine is a good film throughout, the last third doesn't work as well as the rest, but it's not 'bad' bad.

popcorn

I find the third act of a lot of Hollywood things a bit dull, because my favourite bit of stories is usually the learning. Like, learning where we are, what's going on, and what the stakes are. The third act is always a big confrontation, which is always a foregone conclusion.

Take Alien. I think the most interesting bit of the film so far is in the first half, when they're exploring the planet, learning about the alien, and realising they're fucked. When it switches to actually fighting it, particularly in the final act, it's a bit less interesting because there's nothing new to learn. It's still a masterpiece and there's nothing I'd change about it, but there you go.

e: I suppose, on reflection, what I really love is good exposition. Terminator is one of my favourite films because of the way it carefully explains what's going on to you.

Kelvin

The Dark Knight Rises was mentioned upthread, but now I think of it, all three Nolan Batman films dip in the final act. The only thing that prevents The Dark Knight from being a perfect blockbuster in my eyes is the stupid ending with the two boats.   

Wet Blanket

Kill List. I know some people love it but I found the final third completely arbitrary. A deus ex machina.

Peggy Sue Got Married - I think the third act of this film pinpoints the moment Francis Ford Coppola lost it. As time-travel comedies go, the first two thirds are pretty good, it's more elegiac than Back to the Future, and the John Barry score is wonderful, but the ending concentrates too much on some silliness on how to get Kathleen Turner back to the present. And the final line is something like "I'll make a strudel." Maybe the worst closing line in all cinema.

Hollow

Threads, totally loses it after the fast forward to the future, although it seems like they were hampered by the ambition of what they were trying to do on such a low budget.

Steven

Quote from: Phil_A on April 28, 2016, 08:20:09 AM
10 Cloverfield Lane. Great up until she
Spoiler alert
gets out of the bunker
[close]
, then a dreadful and pointless final fifteen minutes that totally wastes what went before.

It basically turns into
Spoiler alert
The Mist
[close]
.