Happy endings that aren't happy the moment you think about them - Happily ever after...or is it? Deconstruct the shit out of happy endings in media.

[Radola Gajda]

Ending of Soma is pretty terrible if you think about it for more than few seconds.
Game is set in 2100s on underwater base after asteroid impact obliterated humanity. Survivors came up with "Genius" plan lets make digital copies of our personalities upload them to satellite and launch them to space. And when this goal is achieved by PC at the end of game it is potrayed as optimistic ending.
But if you think what existence will look like for "people" insideit doesnot look that good. They are stuck in computer generated world that has size of handful of square km. There is about 20-30 people inside. And they will be stuck there for potentially 1000s of years while fully aware humanity is gone including them .

 

[Judge Dredd]

There's a side quest in Fallout 3 I think. I might be remembering this wrong so correct me. The gist is that a guy wants to leave his girlfriend and go on a religious journey. One of the options is to drug him so she can date rape him, and convince him to stay via a baby trap. This is the presented as the "good" option in the games karma system. The "evil" option is to convince him to leave. I assume this is a bug, but if it is it was never fixed as far as I know.

More of a normie problem, but Fallout New Vegas. Most normies assume the NCR are the good guys. But it's shown throughout the game that they're incapable of running things. They are stretched thin and cause more problems than they solve. From letting convicts escape and terrorize the locals with dynamite, to being unable to maintain the monorail. This is a large part of why I'm a House man. He's the only one who seems to be able to do things to improve the life of the people in the Mojave.

Game is set in 2100s on underwater base after asteroid impact obliterated humanity. Survivors came up with "Genius" plan lets make digital copies of our personalities upload them to satellite and launch them to space. And when this goal is achieved by PC at the end of game it is potrayed as optimistic ending.

Not played it, just watched one of those autistic multi hour reviews. One thing he said people miss about Soma. The personalities are copies, not move, not cut and paste, but copies. So when you jump your consciousness into the Matrix, you're leaving the copies that did all the work to die at the bottom of the ocean.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

Not played it, just watched one of those autistic multi hour reviews. One thing he said people miss about Soma. The personalities are copies, not move, not cut and paste, but copies. So when you jump your consciousness into the Matrix, you're leaving the copies that did all the work to die at the bottom of the ocean.

Unless all that was added in the later version I played, I don't think it's possible to miss that.

Spoiler: Soma

The Main Character doesn't really understand it, but for large part of the game you're accompanied by one of the digitized people loaded in your PDA and she repeatedly explains this, for example once when you're changing bodies (and can execute your previous one) - but in the end you're really hit over the head with it. As you make your way to the satellite launching doodads and finally launch it.. nothing happens. She reminds you again about it being copies and that you (and her) were always going to end up stuck in the ocean depths, then self-terminates and leaves you alone. Only after that you go to the POV of the copy sent to the satellite (who probably still doesn't truly understand the whole copy thing). Or maybe the other way around (first the POV of the satellite copy, then the one left down there) it's been a while, but it should not be possible to walk away from the game without understanding this

 

[Nick Obre]

Not played it, just watched one of those autistic multi hour reviews. One thing he said people miss about Soma. The personalities are copies, not move, not cut and paste, but copies. So when you jump your consciousness into the Matrix, you're leaving the copies that did all the work to die at the bottom of the ocean.

No one missed that about Soma, unless they skipped the ending. It's explicit, you see the copy that got left behind freak out about it.

Which is the entire reason anyone found that shit ass game memorable, the whole "copied consciousness" thing blew their mind. Clearly they didn't see The Prestige, or other stories that did things like that before.

IIRC that's the same for the movie The Butterfly Effect. One of the deleted scene had the main character going back in time and committing suicide in his mother's womb which didn't go over well with test audiences.

Yeah, but in Butterfly Effect it makes sense, in terms of it really averting all the bad things. In fact, the implication is the main character had several brothers who also reached the conclusion that they had to go back to the womb and abort themselves. The main character's self-abortion is the one that sticks tho, since it causes his parents to finally divorce, which prevents any more time travelling children to be created (I don't quite recall if the power/curse was just the unfortunate combination of both parent's genes, or just something from the father's family, and in the final timeline he never had any more kids).

I'm not gonna say it's a great movie, but at least it does a better job of tying the causality of the tragedies to the main character's survival, unlike Donnie Darko, whose "happy ending" means a pedo gets away with it (and I don't buy the "he got caught after, trust me bro" from the director or writer or whomever).

That said, Butterfly Effect does break its own time travel rules with the stigmata thing (when he goes back in time and changes something, it changes the timeline from that point; but one time he's in jail and goes back and hurts his hand so in the present he just manifests a wound in front of all the inmate's eyes in real time to make them think he's Jesus or some shit, which shouldn't happen, the hand injury would have changed the timeline organically and had many more consequences -like, I don't know, THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT?- which would probably mean he'd never gone to jail to begin with).

Also, I've never heard anything about the sequels other than "there's a scene in one of them with a big titty bartender and she fucks the main guy and she has BIG TITS".

 

[teriyakiburns]

Forrest Gump is the classic example. Retard gets saddled with an AIDS-riddled whore and her bastard child which she claims is his but probably isn't. She dies and now, best case scenario, he's raising a child by himself. Somehow this is portrayed as a good thing.

It wasn't really protrayed as a good thing, just as a thing that happened. The entire point of the film is that Gump pops in and out of events and we follow him, from moment to moment, seeing events happening around him. Gump is happy, because Gump is always happy. He's happy for Lieutenant Dan and his magic legs and he's happy for his kid being smart. He just carries on doing what he does because that's what seems like it would be best. The film ends the way it started, with the audience following the POV of a feather that is being blown around by random chance. It's not a happy ending, or a sad ending; it's just another change.

 

[Not A Bunny]

The Princess Bride.
The novelization's pseudo-sequel hints that things don't turn out so good for the heroes, and that's before considering that Humperdinck is still alive and probably pissed off (I don't remember everything that goes wrong, but I think Inigo's open wounds make him start bleeding out, Westley keels over because the spell keeping him alive wears off, and Buttercup's horse throws a shoe).

The Hunger Games.
Since it would be off-topic for me to go off on how the whole god damned world of the Hunger Games wouldn't work like that (that is: the population is lobotomized or is at least wildly dispassionate up until the plot needs to happen. Careers only develop in the richer districts and not in the ones that, say, people have less to live for? Effie Trinket doesn't show up in District 12, looks amongst the crowd and observes meth-mouth and pregnant teens for days...I'm rambling, but I am so primed to sperg for days about how authors who think they understand dystopia don't fucking understand dystopia), let's talk about the ending:
Peeta and Katniss go off to live a quiet life. Okay, but here's the thing: Katniss kills off the presumptive new leader after she was supposed to kill off Snow, who the crowd proceeds to kill anyway...so, who's in charge?

The book does explain this, but I don't give a fuck about the book, and even if I did, the societal collapse and eventual rebuild is probably an unmitigated fucking disaster, in part because of how the books and movies ignore how society would operate in a dystopia and the ensuing power vacuum to follow.

 

[The handsome tard]

There's a side quest in Fallout 3 I think. I might be remembering this wrong so correct me. The gist is that a guy wants to leave his girlfriend and go on a religious journey. One of the options is to drug him so she can date rape him, and convince him to stay via a baby trap. This is the presented as the "good" option in the games karma system. The "evil" option is to convince him to leave. I assume this is a bug, but if it is it was never fixed as far as I know.

I remember these two, they are from Rivet City. I tend to avoid their drama unless I really need the EXP or feeling like doing every side quest.

The Hunger Games.
Since it would be off-topic for me to go off on how the whole god damned world of the Hunger Games wouldn't work like that (that is: the population is lobotomized or is at least wildly dispassionate up until the plot needs to happen. Careers only develop in the richer districts and not in the ones that, say, people have less to live for? Effie Trinket doesn't show up in District 12, looks amongst the crowd and observes meth-mouth and pregnant teens for days...I'm rambling, but I am so primed to sperg for days about how authors who think they understand dystopia don't fucking understand dystopia), let's talk about the ending:
Peeta and Katniss go off to live a quiet life. Okay, but here's the thing: Katniss kills off the presumptive new leader after she was supposed to kill off Snow, who the crowd proceeds to kill anyway...so, who's in charge?

The book does explain this, but I don't give a fuck about the book, and even if I did, the societal collapse and eventual rebuild is probably an unmitigated fucking disaster, in part because of how the books and movies ignore how society would operate in a dystopia and the ensuing power vacuum to follow.

The same way that Twilight proved your story doesnt have to be good, Hunger Games proves that your world building doesnt have to NECESSARILY make sense for it to make big bucks, it just has to appeal to a specific audience at the right moment. I hate it but it is what it is. But I honestly think what kept people hooked (mostly teen girls) was the Battle Royale rip off plot and the political revolution drama mixed with teen drama.

 

[Chilson]

Unless all that was added in the later version I played, I don't think it's possible to miss that.

Spoiler: Soma

The Main Character doesn't really understand it, but for large part of the game you're accompanied by one of the digitized people loaded in your PDA and she repeatedly explains this, for example once when you're changing bodies (and can execute your previous one) - but in the end you're really hit over the head with it. As you make your way to the satellite launching doodads and finally launch it.. nothing happens. She reminds you again about it being copies and that you (and her) were always going to end up stuck in the ocean depths, then self-terminates and leaves you alone. Only after that you go to the POV of the copy sent to the satellite (who probably still doesn't truly understand the whole copy thing). Or maybe the other way around (first the POV of the satellite copy, then the one left down there) it's been a while, but it should not be possible to walk away from the game without understanding this

It also makes sense for the main character to not to get it. He was one of if not the first brain scans to have been scanned and digitized. He is a prototype scan and probably doesn't have the abilities that more modern scans possess in terms of processing ability, comprehension, etc.

More of a normie problem, but Fallout New Vegas. Most normies assume the NCR are the good guys. But it's shown throughout the game that they're incapable of running things. They are stretched thin and cause more problems than they solve. From letting convicts escape and terrorize the locals with dynamite, to being unable to maintain the monorail. This is a large part of why I'm a House man. He's the only one who seems to be able to do things to improve the life of the people in the Mojave.

I think one of the major points of NV was that none of the major factions were particularly good options. The NCR was very corrupt and disinterested in protecting smaller assets under its care, Caeser's Legion was inflexible, ignorant and backwards, House lived in an almost literal ivory tower and had no idea what issues were really going on in the day to day Mojave and the issues that plagued its people.

The player taking over and making Vegas independent ending is the best one for me purely because the only way New Vegas doesn't get abused is to be under the control of someone who, at least the way I played it, cared about the little man in Vegas and would fight to keep it from being rolled over by bigger powers who would let it rot, burn or dominate it.

 

[HodgePodgeRogerDodger]

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. The headaches from the car and the credit cards.

The really pretentious but aesthetically pleasing Gattaca comes to mind.

TL;DR Science perfected gene editing but only part of the population gets perfect conditioned humans creating a apartheid state. The protagonist wants to be an Astronaut but is ruled out for having a heart defect. The happy ending is he gets to go to space and proves his will power has more say over his destiny than his genetic testing.

But here's the thing, the dude has a HEART DEFECT. He shouldn't go into space! You need a clean bill of health to be an astronaut!

He doesn’t have the heart condition. He has a chance of developing it. The issue is that society is hard into genetic determinism, the idea that he may get an irregular heartbeat when he’s 70 basically has fucked him for life.

 

[Marc]

How soft has this community gotten that no one has yet posted “trooning out” as a happy ending in media that sours the moment you consider its obvious consequences (e.g., you cut your dick off and nobody wants to be around you)?

To bring the Thomas theorem into this century: The Main Character Syndrome people imagine to be real becomes real in its mediocre tropes.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

How soft has this community gotten that no one has yet posted “trooning out” as a happy ending in media that sours the moment you consider its obvious consequences (e.g., you cut your dick off and nobody wants to be around you)?

To bring the Thomas theorem into this century: The Main Character Syndrome people imagine to be real becomes real in its mediocre tropes.

I think the idea is more about movies we've seen and / or give a shit about?

 

[Marc]

I think the idea is more about movies we've seen and / or give a shit about?

Thank you for clearing that up.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I think one of the major points of NV was that none of the major factions were particularly good options.

That's why I say it's a normie problem. Anyone paying attention it seems obvious (I picked it up on my first playthrough), but people who are just there to shoot bad guys and grab loot don't seem to notice or care.

There's a bunch of Fallout 4 mods that have synths as generic cannon fodder, failing to account for the player siding with the institute. This leads to awkward dungeons where you casually walk through a careful laid out combat course.

 

[Standardized Profile]

The whole point of the story is that Donnie surviving a the start of the movie is him averting fate and has a ton of bad consequences for everyone, the main one being his girlfriend's death, and him at the end of the movie choosing to die as he was "fated to" prevented all the tragedies.

Donnie wasn't escaping fate; he was lured out of his room before the engine hit because he had to send it back, and he couldn't do that if he was dead. But the backstory was relegated to the DVD extras until it was integrated into the director's cut, which no one has seen. I think it works better as a separate thing, let the movie be mysterious and then you can read the time travel stuff if you want and appreciate the film in a different light.

Even without doing extracurricular reading, the montage at the end shows us everything Donnie did in the tangent universe had an effect on people after they returned to the primary universe. Whether that would result in Jim Cunningham going to prison, killing himself, or deleting his CP and being a better person doesn't really matter. The DVD extras say he killed himself, I guess, but I think the montage works on its own.

 

[Pokemon Conquistador]

The movie Big ends with the female lead having to watch as the love of her life - whom she slept with - reverts back to being a 12 year old boy. The scene gives off strong pedo vibes and is a lot more disturbing than the filmmakers probably intended.

Titanic ends (at least in the Theatrical Version) with Rose dumping the necklace the salvage team was seeking and for seemingly no reason. She then dies and goes to the Afterlife Titanic to be with her One Night Stand. Meanwhile her husband will sit forever in Heaven's waiting room waiting for her to show up. Imagine, devoting decades of your life to building a family with a woman only to have her run off with the guttersnipe artist who took her V-Card in a Rolls Royce. Sad.

All versions of A Christmas Carol. Scrooge might become a good, generous man and save Tiny Tim with his money, but Scrooge's wealth was built on him being the meanest, cutthroating-est son of a bitch moneylender that London had ever seen. Two years of throwing his wealth at the poor and Scrooge's finances will be so fucked that he'll have to move in with the Cratchits just to make ends meet.

 

[Pedophobe]

Scrooge's finances will be so fucked

Yeah but he'll be a beloved member of the community not a miserable dried out turd.

 

[Crypto Six Gorillionaire]

50 first dates, it looks like a happy ending until you realize that he has to explain every time

This is just a normal relationship

 

[RumblyTumbly]

I saw The Barbie Movie last night.

Yeah, they try to pass that off as a happy ending until you realize the Kens will go right back to being 2nd class citizens and subjugated by their oppressive matriarchal overlords.

 

[Crypto Six Gorillionaire]

I saw The Barbie Movie last night.

Yeah, they try to pass that off as a happy ending until you realize the Kens will go right back to being 2nd class citizens and subjugated by their oppressive matriarchal overlords.

It didn't have to be this way

 

[Kulee Baba]

You should, it's a good show. With all the stuff about rich people being evil, you can probably imagine what kind of politics it has (including an Alex Jones pastiche, and some jokes about the then recently elected Trump), but it's also surprisingly nuanced, and both the character work and the plot (and the goddamn great cinematography) elevate it beyond just lefty messaging.
I don't really wanna say more to not spoil things (more than I already did, I spilled out part of the ending), so any jokes or comments I'd like to make about the tranny, I'll keep them to myself.

I only watched the Pilot and I found it immensely interesting. I only didn’t follow up on it because I got distracted so thanks for getting me to put it higher on my daunting watchlist.

For me what really impressed me about Mr. Robot was that the tech jargon used to explain hacking sounded good to my ear, like in the introduction when he busts a CP trafficker. I don’t know if it would actually sound right to someone who actually understood web security (someone like Null) but it was so much better presented than your typical tv “hacking” where it’s a person furiously typing away on a keyboard like or the hilarious dialogue used on a show like CSI.

I saw The Barbie Movie last night.

Yeah, they try to pass that off as a happy ending until you realize the Kens will go right back to being 2nd class citizens and subjugated by their oppressive matriarchal overlords.

Gosling Ken was such a better protagonist than Barbie herself it’s not even funny. And yes the reason why it is Barbie world is because it’s a girl’s line of toys. A little boy playing with Barbie better be deforming the toy ala Sid in Toy Story or else that lil boy is destined to be a homo.

IMO if Margot Robbie got to be a real woman then the ending for Ken is that he should have been allowed to join the GI Joe universe. A movie where Ryan Gosling has to adjust to a boy’s fantasy world and make it better would be hilarious.