Sean Nelson has a list of the ten worst movie endings that’s a hoot. My favorite is his hilarious diss of Star Wars VI: Returnewok3.jpg of the Jedi:

“One word: Ewoks. A few more: Ewoks dancing and singing on the forest moon of Endor to celebrate the destruction of the second Death Star, the toppling of the empire and its emperor, the burning corpse of Darth Vader, the rehumanity of Anakin Skywalker, the brotherhood/sisterhood of Luke and Leia, the imminent copulation of Han and Leia, the general good guy redemption of Lando Calrissian (and his friendship with the vaguelyJapanese fish guy co-pilot), C3-PO’s elevation to deity status, something about R2-D2 and blah blah blah.”

Nelson’s list is in reaction to the discussion about the ending of No Country for Old Men, which many in the movie-going public thought was anti-climactic and inappropriate. Given this opinion, Nelson says,

“. . . you can be forgiven for thinking the average American moviegoer actually does want actors to reach off the screen and lead them by the hand to a world of unambiguous conclusions and happy resolutions.”

And of course he’s right: the average American moviegoer actually does want to be led by the hand and told what to believe . . . heck, I like to be led by the hand and told what to believe, sometimes, anyway, and I do like happy endings. After all, I was raised on American TV and Hollywood movies, and thus entrained by them to expect happy endings, to wait for them, to anticipate them. We are acclimated to happy endings in a way that is very physical: that warm-and-fuzzy feeling is physiological, associated with the release of endorphins and other chemical beasties into our brains. So it’s not a wonder that the “average American” (whoever she is) expects a happy ending, and expects not to have to work to hard to get there. And I have a hard time excoriating them for it. As Nelson notes, there are plenty of films out there that fulfill these expectations.

A friend, who shall obviously remain nameless, said she was disappointed with No Country because”it just ended” and the bad guy won! Well, yes . . . bad guys often win in real life, and she surely knows that, but she doesn’t go to the movies to have more “real life” thrown in her face. She gets enough of that in her job, working with children with disabilities and their parents. What she wants in a movie is escape from all that, a moment of respite from her life. Not an uncommon desire, or an unreasonable one, in my book.

As for me, I love the ending for No Country: Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) in close-up, talking into the camera. There’s a peculiar tree with a twisted trunk in the background, out the kitchen window. Ed Tom is describing a dream to his wife, and at his final words we are cut to black. What better way to end a nightmare story (complete with boogie-man) than “And then I woke up?”