Terrible Endings To Otherwise Incredible Movies

Movies aren't easy to make. They take financing, patience, the assembling of a cast and crew — they're impossibly immense logistical nightmares, even the smallest productions. They're complicated, intense achievements that you could compare to a difficult gymnastic routine: even the gold medalists can stumble a bit on the landing. Fortunately, endings only occupy a fraction of a movie's overall runtime, so many films achieve greatness even if their endings leave something to be desired. 

A bad ending can be the result of obvious studio interference, or it can come naturally to a film that just doesn't quite know how to end gracefully. Endings can muddle the entire theme or message of a movie, unraveling what could otherwise be a powerful social statement with an afterthought. An important character's death might seem like it gives a movie meaning, but oftentimes just seem cruel and tacked on if not handled elegantly. Be warned, naturally, of SPOILERS for any of these classics you haven't seen. Here are some terrible endings to otherwise incredible films.

Unlike, say, 1989's "Batman," Richard Donner's "Superman" hardly ever gets mentioned in the discussion of great superhero movies despite generally being remembered well by critics. It even has arguably one of the greatest casts in a comic book movie, as Christopher Reeve's likable Caped Crusader gets to play off of Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor and Marlon Brando as his father Jor-El. But the sheer absurdity of the ending has probably kept "Superman" a little less relevant in our cultural memory.

After failing to prevent missiles from hitting the San Andreas fault — which leads to Lois Lane's death — a distraught Superman flies around the Earth so fast that it stops in its orbit and begins to spin backwards. And this somehow reverses time, allowing Superman to save Lois's life and keep the entire West Coast from falling into the sea. Now obviously, a movie about a super-powered alien being from Krypton doesn't have to be the most plausible thing in the world, but this twist is altogether too much to bear. Since the plot hinges on the San Andreas fault, it's a bit much to ask the audience to ignore how much damage stopping the Earth's rotation would cause, let alone that time just doesn't work that way.

Romantic movies, usually ones based on Nicholas Sparks novels and the like, often have one of their lovers die tragically at the end to give the whole story more meaning. It's a cheap trick, but it works well enough. "City of Angels," a surprisingly moving movie in spite of its unbearable earnestness, is a remake of a classic Wim Wenders movie that succeeded on the strength of the chemistry between stars Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan. Cage plays an angel who decides to become mortal after falling in love, so the stakes are already life or death in a certain sense.

The movie then, in a completely unnecessary twist of the knife, has Ryan's character senselessly die in a bicycle vs. logging truck collision. It's cruel, abrupt, and doesn't add anything to the film. Cage's character has already given up immortality to be with her, and learned the value of a mortal life in the process, and then is forced to live it alone. The film that "City of Angels" is based on, Wim Wenders' classic "Wings of Desire," explores the same themes with more depth — and without the ham-fisted twist at the end.

For most of its runtime, Danny Boyle's "Sunshine" seems poised to join the likes of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Solaris" as a meditative, profound space movie. On a mission to reignite the dying sun, the crew of the unfortunately named Icarus II suffer various mishaps, some of them fatal, and watch the sun grow impossibly larger in the viewscreen as the tension builds. Astonishing visuals and an operatic sensibility contribute to an ethereal mood. But two thirds of the way through, "Sunshine" turns into a slasher movie out of nowhere.

When the ship comes across the derelict Icarus I, the failed mission that proceeded them, the captain has lost his mind and spent seven years going mad. Not only is he improbably still alive, his "sun madness" has also given him absurd supernatural strength that he uses to kill nearly all of the remaining characters in a finale that's rushed and relies on cheap action thrills. Humanity is on the verge of freezing to death; space is perilous enough to navigate without adding a weird sun-baked supervillain into the mix in the third act. "Sunshine" is still pretty good, but it could have been something truly great.

"Suspicion" is a case of how studio interference can drastically alter a film, but also a case of how even a nonsensical ending doesn't necessarily ruin it. Alfred Hitchcock's 1941 thriller is about a handsome playboy, played by the debonair Cary Grant, who turns out to be a deadbeat and a gambler. His new wife (Joan Fontaine in an Oscar-winning performance) begins to suspect that he's plotting to kill her for the insurance money. The tension builds and builds as more of his behavior carries dark undertones: he asks a friend about untraceable poisons, he speeds recklessly and nearly throws her from the car.

In the end, he breaks down and claims to be suicidal himself over being destitute, and the two lovebirds vow to see it through together. But Hitchcock's original intention was to have him poison her with a glass of milk and end up incriminating himself ironically. The studio didn't want Cary Grant to be the bad guy, so the movie changed entirely into one giant fake-out. It somehow still works, because the story, like the title says, is more about the suspicion than the answer itself. But it would have a much higher reputation if Hitchcock had been allowed to really go for the jugular, as he would later do with "Psycho."

Although it stays true to the hard sci-fi, academic nature of the Carl Sagan novel it's based on, 1997's "Contact" is a big buildup to a mild letdown. Jodie Foster stars as a researcher listening for signs of alien life from space who finally discovers a signal. It turns out to have the instructions encoded to build a huge apparatus that can transport people through wormholes. After a terrorist attack destroys the first machine, Foster's character finally suits up for the journey.

It turns out to be a sequence of wormholes that are hardly more advanced CGI than a screensaver, a few cool views of other star systems, and a visit with an alien entity that takes on the form of her late father, who tells her that this is "just a first step" in what will eventually be an intergalactic wormhole subway system that connects Earth with other planets, or something. She returns with no proof of what happened except 18 hours of static on her recorder, which is somehow enough to satisfy a skeptical congressional inquiry.

"Fight Club" is another example of a radical alteration of source material that drastically undercuts the meaning of the story. In Chuck Palahniuk's nihilistic novel, Tyler Durden's grand plan fails and the bombs don't go off. The narrator successfully vanquishes Tyler by shooting himself the same way, but gets committed to a mental institution and is still haunted by the movement he's created. It's bleak and doesn't have the neat, cinematic bow that the film version went with.

The movie blows up the skyscrapers, brings down the system, and drops the needle on The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" in an ending that's undoubtedly fantastic cinema, but takes the wrong lesson away from its own story. Why did the narrator have to get rid of Tyler if he turned out to be the hero? He's left with Marla, an army of Space Monkeys still at his disposal, and a clean slate instead of the ruins of a shattered life. "Fight Club" is perhaps too well made, aesthetically speaking. David Fincher made violence look so cool he obscured the lesson that it isn't the answer to anything.