Stephen King's The Mist

[Doc]

I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't have liked that ending, either. I'm only speaking for myself. I think most people would have only been satisfied with a happy ending.

The fact is KINGS ending in my opinion was better. Did the hero actually hear that one word over the radio static? Was he dreaming? Then they all go off heading toward that city. Everything is left open. No depressing lets all commit suicide no Gee the army saves everybody so easily.... Oh SPOILER LOL

[jp1969]

I dont like when adaptations do major changes to the original story.
Kings novella had a perfect ending in that it had no real ending.
Left the future of the survivors to your/the readers imagination.

[Sandman9580]

Now, I took the end to be a WARNING; that a person SHOULDN'T give up, 'cos as long as you're alive you've got a chance. But that doesn't mean I found the characters' actions unreasonable or illogical.

Yeah, what's interesting is that in both written versions of The Mist and Shawshank Redemption, King gave the stories the exact same ending: both are left open-ended, and both literally end on the word "hope".

In the movie version of Shawshank, the scene actually continues further and we see Red arrive in Mexico and meet his long-lost friend: the movie explicitly shows Red getting his "reward" for having hope. In the movie version of The Mist, the father loses that hope, and we explicitly see him get punished horribly for it. So my guess is Darabont didn't want to repeat himself in another SK film adaptation, and so decided to turn the ending 180 degrees. In that sense, the films sort of nicely complement and contrast one another.

[Sandman9580]

So many other stories have pandered to us that our hackles raise whenever something inspires a negative emotion. (Focus groups are meant to prevent that sort of thing....) Even if it's appropriate for the situation. Which is a shame 'cos it adds yet another limit on the kind of stories we're likely to see. Which is bad 'cos it makes everything a little more alike.

I agree with that point, too. I think we've lost a lot of our tolerance for negativity in stories. IMO the reason comes down to simple commerce. A lot of the old Grimm fairy tales were pretty dark and violent, back when they were an oral tradition and there was little or no money to be made from them. But after Disney sprinkled his magic pixie dust on them, they were transformed into cute dancing animals and happy endings. They had to be, if his films were going to make money and he was going to build his studio.

It also makes me think of how Gary Kurtz, the producer on the first two Star Wars films, wanted to end Return of the Jedi: Han Solo would die to protect his friends, and Luke would walk off into the sunset, alone. He wanted the theme to be that war always ends in sacrifice and loss - for both sides. (Lucas and Kurtz disagreed about a bunch of stuff, I guess, and parted ways for the third installment.) But Lucas wanted a happier ending where none of the heroes died. Perhaps he thought they could live on and have further adventure$. I love Star Wars to death, but I still think that was a missed opportunity.

I don't have a problem with happy, hopeful endings per se - but that kind of automatic, commercial instinct does limit the kind of stories you can tell.

[Doc]

I dont like when adaptations do major changes to the original story.
Kings novella had a perfect ending in that it had no real ending.
Left the future of the survivors to your/the readers imagination.

what he said.

[johnmiic]

Yeah, that ending was a letdown but very honest. You want your child to become a living egg-sac & breakfast for these monster/alien creatures and be devoured alive? The killing could've be handled better. It's almost like the rationale in the David Gerrold novel A Matter For Men. Killing someone is better than the suffering of being devoured.

And what about the cashier? She was in the Tales of Riddick film years ago. How freakin` young is that actress she hasn't gotten any older yet? What a sad way to go too.

[artskull]

Regards of changes to King's original story, I just found it great to be able to see a "monster" movie in the theater and not some tween retread of an 80s slasher flic.

[kennermike]

I need to rewatch this still hate the last 3 minutes but it was well done

[MarkStalcup]

I think the ending was well done and very grim, but I concur that building the suspense a bit more might have heightened the effectiveness. By the way, the black-and-white version is the way to watch the movie! Very effective that way!

[Megospidey]

I don't see how they could have ended it like the book and it be "satisfying" for today's audiences. Most would have walked away thinking "huh?" It would have been best for King fans, but not for the average movie-goer. They had to make a concrete ending - one way or the other - no ambiguity - and I was satisfied with what they did. Still love the movie.

One of his books I'm hoping they turn into a movie is "Under the Dome" - I would LOVE to see that come to the big screen.

[samurainoir]

You can really see Frank Darabont continuing with this type of character exploration in The Walking Dead TV series.

[Hector]

This movie is pure DREAD to me.

Great friggin' film...it's one of the best films that displays absolute hopelessness and DREAD...creepy too...it's like a nightmare...these visuals were really disturbing to me...these are some of the images and situations that I personally remembered when I was in an induced coma at the hospital...pure DREAD...this flick disturbed me more than any zombie flick ever made.

Yes...horrific ending...disturbing all the way.

To me...this movie is the king of DREAD.

[ctc]

>building the suspense a bit more might have heightened the effectiveness

That's the trick though. It's always something of a guessing game; trying to decide how the audience is gonna take what you do. I get the impression that for a lot of folks it really wouldn't have mattered.

>still hate the last 3 minutes

That's okay, you're SUPPOSED to. Although I think thhat's a lost skill of the AUDIENCE: the ability to be repulsed by the repulsive.... and not in a "we're all desensitized" kind of way; more in a "it makes sense in the bigger scheme" sort of way. Case in point: action films, wherein the bad guys THREATEN to do things more than they actually do. (Thank you again, Conmmando!) Compare that to any 70's action film wherein we'd get long, disturbing shots of the bad guys DOIN horrible things. Which was done so we WOULDN'T like them, and so's their messy death at the end would be well deserved.

Don C.