happy_ending

Please have someone remove perjorative entries like this. This was written by a Frenchman with an axe to grind against Hollywood. Let’s collect unbiased craft information, not pretentious, biased crap like this.

The movie ending comes either as a general relief or a perfectly positive conclusion for all the dramatic plots and subplots.
Basically Happy Endings would go along this line: The Hero wins and the Villains receive a proper punishment. Yet Happy Ending conveys a pejorative meaning when it comes too much as an out-of-the-box/deus ex machina conclusion.
Example (bad version): Boy loses car to go to the prom then ends up a millionaire with a collection of wonderful cars to give away to his friends and family, especially to his separated parents who reunite as he marries this beautiful girl he met on his way to Endings Heaven.
===== American optimism turned manic euphoria ===== Unlike buzzwords and fuzz phrases in execspeak Happy Ending is more often a prerequisite in studio executives’ minds. Numerous movies made in the Studio System suffered from this Essential Truth that the Audience wants a Happy Ending else they would feel cheated with someone to root for who doesn’t emerge as a clear winner in the end. That’s why edgy material doesn’t blend well with happy endings. On the other hand light comedies do require a happy ending but the point here is more about reaching a funny ending that will top every previous laugh. The main grief against Happy Ending is that it goes against the idea of catharsis. We can see two mindsets here: movies as mere Entertainment (”Don’t worry be happy”) and cinema as a superior form of Art designed to “educate” the people. When a happy ending closes a plot that’s like all the answers have been found and there’s no food for thought left. A more ambiguous ending forces the moviegoer to think of the movie as a whole as the credits roll, not as just two hours away from the real world. Ironically enough one of Shakespeare lesser known (and adapted) plays is titled All's Well That Ends Well and fails to find its tone, mixing comedy and tragedy, before the heralded (thus defused) happy ending.