That may be so, but the hero of "An American Tail," a young mouse named Fievel, is made to undergo such hardships in this movie that the children in the audience may despair long before the happy ending.
The Happy Ending Full Movie Down
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Fievel is the youngest member of the Mousekewitz family, which lives in a mousehole beneath the human Moskowitz family in Russia in the 19th century. One day the czar's mounted troops ride by and burn down both homes, and then Papa Mousekewitz leads his family on a long odyssey to the promised land, while they sing "In America There Are No Cats." There also are no pogroms, the lyricists might have added, except that the movie never makes it clear just why the czar's men burned down the houses. One of the central curiosities of "An American Tail" is that it tells a specifically Jewish experience but does not attempt to inform its young viewers that the characters are Jewish or that the house burning was anti-Semitic. I suppose that would be a downer for the little tykes in the theater, but what do they think while watching the present version? That houses are likely to be burned down at random? This bleak view of a cold and heartless universe is enforced onboard the ship to America, where little Fievel amuses himself by staring at barrels full of pickled herring with much the same delight that a modern mouse child might tune in Pee-Wee Herman's Saturday morning show. One day a fearsome storm blows up and, despite the frenzied protestations of his parents, little Fievel ventures up on deck to see the flying fish and is sucked away by the gale.
"An American Tail" is the second movie (after "The Secret of NIMH") to be directed by Bluth and his associates since they jumped ship at Disney and set out to rediscover the magic of such classic Disney features as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Pinocchio," of which Fievel's story is heavily derivative. The film's animation is full and detailed, enhanced by computers and an improvement on so much recent animation that cuts corners (the characters have shadows, for example). But the artistic vision is clearly inspired by the animal humanoids of the original Disney artists, and where did they get this story? From Steven Spielberg, I'm afraid. Spielberg is credited as the film's executive producer, and he was the person who brought the saga of Fievel to Bluth's workshop. Perhaps he felt some deep-seated urge to tell a Jewish parable in a movie and thought that animation would sugar-coat it for general audiences. The movie has such vague ethnic grounds, however, that only a few children will understand or care that the Mousekewitzes are Jewish. And few of those are likely to be entertained by such a tragic, gloomy story.
That's the setup for "Down in the Valley," a movie the actors and director take as far as they can until the story bogs down in questions too big to forgive. The first half is pitch-perfect, as Tobe (Evan Rachel Wood), who is 18, falls under the spell of Harlan (Edward Norton), who is thirtysomething but not quite grown up, or all there. He thinks of himself as a cowboy, loves that 10-gallon hat, takes her horseback riding and gets into a dispute over whether the horse was stolen or only borrowed. He has a lot of misunderstandings like that.
Tobe is fascinated by Harlan, by his cowboy act, by his posturing, by his (or somebody's) horse and by the sex. But she isn't dumb, and she grows disturbed about some of the things she senses. Her kid brother, on the other hand, is angry with his father and ready to fall for Harlan's line, and that leads to some closing scenes that plain don't work. Wade, having been absent or inattentive at crucial moments, becomes obsessed with hunting down Harlan after the "cowboy" gets into the big trouble that we've been expecting since the first scene. The chase actually leads to the movie set of a Western town, which is not merely symbolism, or even Symbolism, but Symbolism!
The ending is a mess, but the film has qualities that make me happy to have seen it. I like the peculiar loneliness of Harlan's life; he lives in the Valley as if it were the Old West, he haunts hillsides and wooded areas, he hides under culverts, he conceals from Tobe the fact that, apart from her, he has no resources at all. At the end, even if he's crazy, he's consistent.
But since the movie opened, there is now a countdown that has been slowly ticking away, as well as a cipher image that the user can access by clicking on "click for reward" text. That image, which you can see below, has a file name of "Its_Not_Over_Yet."
Update (3/7/22): Fans have begun to decipher what's going on with the ARG. It sounds like the cipher can be decoded to read: "You think I'm finished, but perhaps you don't know the full truth. Every ending is a new beginning. Something is coming." Additionally, the various lines of text on the loading page apparently refer to a key comic book issue or date in Batman's history. Get all those details here.
Prisoners, directed by Denis Villeneuve, was released nearly a month ago, and its cliffhanger ending has lingered with me. A refresher: Jake Gyllenhaal's Detective Loki has wrapped up the kidnapping mystery, and Melissa Leo's character, the creepy Holly Jones, is dead. Everyone thinks that Keller (Hugh Jackman) has run away in order to elude the police (since he tortured Alex, who turned out to be innocent). But in fact, he's down a damn hole in Holly's back yard! Where she left him to die. In the film's final moments, Loki, about to leave the crime scene, thinks he hears something (it's poor Hugh Jackman, down the hole, blowing his daughter's whistle). Fade to black! No!
"Oddly enough, that's how it was in the script when it was bought. And it never really changed. When we were shooting, we did shoot a version where it goes a little beyond where the fade out is. There's a version where he moves the car and sees Hugh down there, and so on. None of us really wanted to do that version, but we wanted to make sure we had it in case once the film was put together it seemed like it really needed it. But after testing the film with the ending it has now, everyone decided that was definitely the way to go. Joel Cox, the editor, felt very strongly about it. I just think that's the moment when the movie is ready to end."
"I was very surprised that we were allowed to keep that ending. I was surprised I was able to get the movie made, actually. It's a pretty dark script. Especially ending the way it does. It's definitely a testament to Alcon, the producers on the movie, sticking by the script and not wanting to make it into something it wasn't."
In Shutter Island's ending scene, Andrew and Dr. Sheehan sit down on some steps for a smoke. Andrew was just told that he had made up his entire identity as the US Marshal Edward "Teddy" Daniels in order to escape from the reality that he killed his wife. Andrew, in short, has realized who he really is. Importantly, Dr. John Cawley (Sir Ben Kingsley) told Andrew that he, at one point, realized who he really was before, but then relapsed back into forgetting himself, becoming Teddy, and beginning the investigation all over again. Cawley tells Andrew that if his latest treatment fails, then he will be lobotomized. As Sheehan and Andrew are sitting, Dr. Cawley is observing them from afar.
The ending of Shutter Island can be interpreted in two ways. The first is the straightforward answer: that Andrew Laeddis has once again relapsed into his delusion, just as Dr. Cawley described earlier. The other possibility, though, gets into the heart of the movie's themes. The second interpretation revolves around what Andrew asked at the end of the movie, if it is worse "to live as a monster, or to die as a good man." Shutter Island is essentially about Andrew falling into a delusion that he is a better man who didn't kill his wife, that his time on the earth has meaning because he's looking for a way to avenge her rather than live with the guilt of having killed her. Andrew asking Sheehan that question reframes his actions. Instead of falling passively into the delusion, as a result of his subconscious, instead, he decides to fully embrace an existence where he died as a good man.
In a sit-down with Elle just after filming wrapped in 2005, she raved, "This movie was fate. To be able to walk through a movie called The Break-Up, about a person going through a breakup, while I'm actually going through a breakup?! How did that happen?! It's been cathartic."
16. They came this close to a happily ever after. "We shot two endings," Edwards revealed, the first taking place in a Chicago park "and it was a happy ending, it was just a different ending." But it didn't strike quite the note they were hoping for. "It just didn't ring well," said Edwards, currently working on a book of photographs of longtime pal Gus Van Sant. So they reassembled at the Universal lot in Los Angeles for the version that eventually made it onscreen. "I'm glad they didn't kiss and make up at the end," he continued. "It's just not true to the movie."
Sometimes, a downer ending can conclude the character arcs in a very satisfying way, despite (or because of) being dark, if the characters are Villain Protagonists and people feel that they got what was coming to them (unless the ending is a downer because the villain protagonists win). This is not an absolute rule however and there are cases where the audience can have enough sympathy and pity for the characters in question especially if they sympathetic qualities and poignant moments that can lead more into an Alas, Poor Villain perspective, especially when the character in question was once a hero. Other times, it can be overused to the point it feels like a Mandatory Twist Ending. If it comes out of nowhere or is the result of an Ass Pull, then it may be the result of the writers summoning Diabolus ex Machina. If enough people consider it fundamentally unjust, it may acquire the Fanon Discontinuity and Snicket Warning Labels. 2ff7e9595c
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