It's About the Journey, Not the Destination

Why Movie Endings Are Overrated

Here's entry number two of our series of guest articles! If you missed the first, we posted it yesterday. Again, if there’s anything you want to write about, just DM us on Instagram! Here’s our friend Chris Clark on why *checks notes* movie endings...don't matter?

My movie watching routine usually goes as follows: I look online for movie suggestions, something catches my eye, do some research on it, begin to watch the movie, and then immediately I spoil the movie for myself.  I look up the plot synopsis and read about the ending before gleefully continuing to watch.

If you are like most people, your reaction to my routine should be a mix of disgust, anger, and a sudden suspicion that I may be a sociopath. Why would I commit the most sacrilegious offense in film and spoil the ending?  It’s because endings don't matter, at least not as much as we have been conditioned to believe.

For most people, the ending of the movie is integral to the final evaluation cast upon a movie. Whether it's a cliffhanger, an unforeseen Shyamalan-esque plot twist, or Marvel cliche good defeats evil scenario, everyone loves a good ending.

It's hard to overcome the natural allure that final resolutions have. We are hardwired to value endings above all thanks to two factors. 

The first factor is recency bias, where our minds place a disproportionate value on information that was presented most recent. What happens in the first hour and half of a film isn't weighted as much in our final verdict in comparison to the influence the ending has.

The second reason is your nociceptive modulatory system. It's one of things you've experienced and have knowledge of, you just don't know the specific name for it. Similar to when you are deceived by unsavory folk with ethnic origins from Norway, Sweden or Finland, but don't know how to describe it (it's called Scandiknavery).

The nociceptive modulatory system has several functions, including being responsible for that feeling you've wasted your time and energy on something. Our minds have evolved to balance reward and effort, a homeostatic mechanism meant to keep in check how often we risk it for the biscuit. When watching a movie, our brains are constantly performing a cost benefit analysis. We ask ourselves: is all the emotion, stress and time spent worth it in the end? This is what makes ending so important to our movie going experience.

However, a bad dessert shouldn’t ruin the five course meal you had. The soup was good, the appetizer was delightful, the salad was as enjoyable as salad can be, the main course was exquisite, but the lemon cream cake just didn’t do it for you. In the end, you didn’t have a bad dining experience,  just a bad ending. Don’t discount the delight the dinner brought you because of the chef’s disregard to the importance that consistency plays in a good cream cake. If the ending was forgettable, then forget it.

Movie endings are the cherry on top that can certainly take a movie over the top, but they aren’t everything. Recognize the enjoyment the 4/5ths of the movie journey brought you, and overlook the end destination if it fell short of your expectations.

Eliminating the emphasis placed on movie endings will help you enjoy movies more, which is what we all hope to do when we sit down and commit two hours to them. Don’t let the genuine enjoyment you felt during a movie become spoiled by an unsatisfying conclusion. Endings are overrated.

**If you want an example of how a movie can be entertaining and great, without having an actual ending, watch the comedy/thriller Burn After Reading by the Coen Brothers.

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Food in Film: What Makes a Meal Appetizing to the Audience?

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RomComs: Guilty Pleasures and the Need to be Different