I'm glad I'm not the only one to think of Flash Gordon.

From TFA: "For instance, in the following films, the ending turned out just fine for the main character, but totally screwed characters who were left conveniently off-screen."

Interesting. I've sometimes thought about the reverse situation, where a terrible downer ending ('how could they change it like that for the movie???") is actually more optimistic for the general case than the original ambiguous ending.

Case in point:The Mist.

Yeah, the movie ending is locally harsh, but on the other hand, UNLIKE the book, you know 100% it's not actually the permanent end of the world.

FTFA:
But then we also see that dozens, possibly hundreds, of people have been drawn to Devil's Tower in a similar fashion, each of them having abandoned their lives in the pursuit of their sudden obsession ... yet Roy is the only one the aliens take. The rest of those people are basically screwed -- they made all the sacrifice but got none of the reward.

They are the 99%.

I like Cracked, but that sucked.

Someone actually put more than five minutes of thought into the plot summary and underlying Cold War thematic elements of Top Gun.

I'm honestly baffled.

Two Dogs Farking: Is it just me, or was that the lamest. Cracked. Article. Evar?

And that's no mean feat.

disenfranchised violence hurricane

I like it!

The end of Minority Report sort of mystified me.

"We're under constant surveillance, down to our eyes being scanned when we walk into a store... and hurray, now lots of people who would commit murder are being released en masse!"

Oh a rain of fire on the Ewoks. Get cracking Lucas!

I thought the same thing about Titanic.

rcantley: The end of Minority Report sort of mystified me.

"We're under constant surveillance, down to our eyes being scanned when we walk into a store... and hurray, now lots of people who would commit murder are being released en masse!"

It could be a very very hamfisted allegory for how the U.S. handles criminals today. In the end they show a perfect system can be flawed. In the End, it's a small (or large) victory for civil liberties.

"Krotty Kid 2" ending isn't as bad as TFA makes it out to be when you consider the Japanese cultural trait of redeeming dishonor through suicide.

Killer Cars: Someone actually put more than five minutes of thought into the plot summary and underlying Cold War thematic elements of Top Gun.

I'm honestly baffled.

I'm not sure it would lead to any significant events as the Cracked author states if they were North Korean jets. We still are at war with North Korea, technically, and there have been plenty of military exchanges between the North and South in recent years that lead to nothing more than the political equivalent of: "That was bad. Don't do that again."

Okay,
now I want to run a Star Wars RPG campaign starting with the Ewok holocaust.

Of course the last Star Wars RPG game I was playing in fell apart, because I used a thermal detonator to obliterate the dam Ewok Jedi one character was playing. Ewok Jedi's are an abomination, actually all force users are abominations responsible for death, genocide and the generally brutal nature of the universe. The only good force user is a dead force user.

The most horrific part of Top Gun was watching Shorty Cruise having to wear his leather boots while playing a fricking sand/beach volleyball game.

But all ended well with Shorty giving a happy ending to Ice Man.



/Now that's dangerous.

FTFA: This would account for the red stars on the pilots' helmets and the fact that they were piloting state of the art MiGs they could have only gotten from the Soviet Union at the time.

No, those were F-5s.

But then we also see that dozens, possibly hundreds, of people have been drawn to Devil's Tower in a similar fashion, each of them having abandoned their lives in the pursuit of their sudden obsession ...

Actually, those people were pretty obviously military.

TommyymmoT: Science_Guy_3.14159: TommyymmoT: "2012" - If a second sun were to suddenly appear in the sky, it wouldn't be pretty, or inspiring.
It would be the worst disaster in the history of the planet, and it's highly doubtful that mankind would even survive.

Ummm are you talking about 2010???

Ummmm, yup!
I stand corrected.
Well I guess that's just another prediction Arthur C. Clarke got wrong.
I'm still waiting to fly PanAm to the moon.

I don't necessarily think it would be that bad. Here is why: Jupiter's orbit is approximately 5 AU from the sun, and the Earths orbit is (by definition) 1 AU, so the closest approach of the new sun to Earth would be 4 AU (5-1=4).

We know from the film that the 'habitable zone' around the new sun includes Europa. The orbit of Europa is 671,000 km, whereas the orbit of Earth around the sun is about 150 million km. That implies that the old sun puts out 150,000,000/671,000 = 223 times more radiation. So, the energy that the Earth would receive from the new sun would be, following the inverse square law, (1/223)/4² = 0.028% extra energy. The average amount of energy hitting the Earth from the Sun is 1,366 watts per square meter. The new sun would add less than 4/10ths of a watt to that at closest approach to Earth, and usually it would be much less than that.

/hot like Nova

Slaves2Darkness: Ewok Jedi's are an abomination, actually all force users are abominations responsible for death, genocide and the generally brutal nature of the universe. The only good force user is a dead force user.

You would love the Sith Warrior campaign on SWTOR then.

/it's Jawas

dittybopper: I don't necessarily think it would be that bad. Here is why: Jupiter's orbit is approximately 5 AU from the sun, and the Earths orbit is (by definition) 1 AU, so the closest approach of the new sun to Earth would be 4 AU (5-1=4).

We know from the film that the 'habitable zone' around the new sun includes Europa. The orbit of Europa is 671,000 km, whereas the orbit of Earth around the sun is about 150 million km. That implies that the old sun puts out 150,000,000/671,000 = 223 times more radiation. So, the energy that the Earth would receive from the new sun would be, following the inverse square law, (1/223)/42 = 0.028% extra energy. The average amount of energy hitting the Earth from the Sun is 1,366 watts per square meter. The new sun would add less than 4/10ths of a watt to that at closest approach to Earth, and usually it would be much less than that.

One they didn't mention: In "Fifth Element" Mr. Shadow is stopped within six miles of hitting the Earth. That means a moon-sized object is within six miles of the Earth's surface. That's bound to f*ck some shiat up, having something that big that close. In essence Leelo and Corben failed to save Earth anyway. But they got to f*ck in a tube, so I guess it was worth it.

Meh, weak article.

Top gun: American planes go toe to toe with Russian planes on a semi regular basis because the Russians will sell their jets to anyone with cash.
WW3 has never started because of it.

Titanic: So what's the woman to do? Spend the rest of her life in misery because her one night stand turned into a Popsicle?
The movie wanted to romance a tragic event, not the fact that women will move on and have multiple sex partners in their life.

Close encounters: We're kinda lucky they didn't screw the entire planet over, just sayin...

Karate Kid 1 thru 20: How to turn a PG-13 movie into an R rated one that has half the ticket sales due to its lack of actual adult content? Kill people for no reason!

The Sound of Music: With a war on, killing Nuns was probably not on the top of their to-do list. Depending on who was in charge, it was as likely they'd move on as go back and execute everyone.

ROTJ: I admit, I would have paid money to see that ending.

Kangaroo_Ralph: I thought the same thing about Titanic.

Same here.

I also wondered if it ever dawned on Rose that if she had gotten on the lifeboat, there would have been enough room on that flotsam for Jack and he would have possibly survived.

Kangaroo_Ralph: I thought the same thing about Titanic.

Every time my wife forces me to watch that movie, this pisses me off.

badLogic: rcantley: The end of Minority Report sort of mystified me.

"We're under constant surveillance, down to our eyes being scanned when we walk into a store... and hurray, now lots of people who would commit murder are being released en masse!"

My take on the end of Minority Report is that Cruise is actually still under the halo. Everything that happens after his incarceration is him dreaming. Note the change in light quality after that scene. In reality the Pre-Crime division went on to exist, it only ends in his halo-induced dream.

The movie even foreshadows that when the warden talks about how "busy, busy, busy" the prisoners' minds were.

My theory: that was the original ending, but after Terry Gilliam publicly blasted Spielberg for being unfit to handle Phillip K Dick's work, he didn't want the movie's ending to seemingly rip off Brazil.

In the ending of the Terminator, they basically left a crushed and smashed Terminator in the factory.

Now, although the premise for T2 was based on the technology found at the factory - which turned out to be Cyberdyne Systems - specifically, an arm they later used as basis into new research, what about all the other bits and pieces?

If someone died and an ambulance was called, then it was a police case and surely, given that Sarah and Kyle was involved in a mass slaughter at a cop shop the night before, which incidentally had all the videos of Reese talking about cyborgs and the future and all that, then it would make sense that the factory incident was a crime scene and all the related bits and bobs of which would be claimed as evidence ie, taken back by cops for further investigation.

So, with that in mind, and with the news media aware of someone, or something that was murdering people called Sarah Connor and her friends and family, coupled with what happened in the factory, then what we have is an all out media frenzy.

There would be no way that Sarah would have simply gotten off and get to drive into the sunset and have everything wrapped up so conveniently. Maybe she escaped, but the world (or LA at least) would have certainly known about everything that had happened and made her a fugitive and imposed border controls and whatnot. Simply put, she would have never left the confines of county jail or asylum. No sequels but thems the breaks for being involved in mass murder, directly or indirectly. No driving away in a jeep and recording tapes for you, missy.

Two Dogs Farking: Is it just me, or was that the lamest. Cracked. Article. Evar?

Its only saving grace was that they didn't spread it over two pages.

You think so? It seemed just like every other "here are gaping plot holes from 6 popular movies" list they've done.

dittybopper: FTFA:
But then we also see that dozens, possibly hundreds, of people have been drawn to Devil's Tower in a similar fashion, each of them having abandoned their lives in the pursuit of their sudden obsession ... yet Roy is the only one the aliens take. The rest of those people are basically screwed -- they made all the sacrifice but got none of the reward.

They are the 99%.

The ones who were meant to get the message were detained early on by the government, Roy and what's-her-face managed to sneak in, and she only to find her kid. Of all the ones lined up to go on the ship, Roy was not only the only one who made it, he was also not a military-trained observer like the rest of the group. Since he got the message, they probably knew him by sight anyway.

Did someone say Happy Ending???



I love happy endings!

blackminded: dittybopper: I don't necessarily think it would be that bad. Here is why: Jupiter's orbit is approximately 5 AU from the sun, and the Earths orbit is (by definition) 1 AU, so the closest approach of the new sun to Earth would be 4 AU (5-1=4).

We know from the film that the 'habitable zone' around the new sun includes Europa. The orbit of Europa is 671,000 km, whereas the orbit of Earth around the sun is about 150 million km. That implies that the old sun puts out 150,000,000/671,000 = 223 times more radiation. So, the energy that the Earth would receive from the new sun would be, following the inverse square law, (1/223)/4² = 0.028% extra energy. The average amount of energy hitting the Earth from the Sun is 1,366 watts per square meter. The new sun would add less than 4/10ths of a watt to that at closest approach to Earth, and usually it would be much less than that.

[i2.listal.com image 640x422]

Dude, it's just simple multiplication and division.

dittybopper: blackminded: dittybopper: I don't necessarily think it would be that bad. Here is why: Jupiter's orbit is approximately 5 AU from the sun, and the Earths orbit is (by definition) 1 AU, so the closest approach of the new sun to Earth would be 4 AU (5-1=4).

We know from the film that the 'habitable zone' around the new sun includes Europa. The orbit of Europa is 671,000 km, whereas the orbit of Earth around the sun is about 150 million km. That implies that the old sun puts out 150,000,000/671,000 = 223 times more radiation. So, the energy that the Earth would receive from the new sun would be, following the inverse square law, (1/223)/42 = 0.028% extra energy. The average amount of energy hitting the Earth from the Sun is 1,366 watts per square meter. The new sun would add less than 4/10ths of a watt to that at closest approach to Earth, and usually it would be much less than that.

[i2.listal.com image 640x422]

Dude, it's just simple multiplication and division.

Shh, he is a Liberal Arts major, it is all voodoo to him.

This is a well-reasoned, cogent, and compelling list. What the hell is it doing on Cracked?