I’ve liked unhappy
endings in the books I read, the films I watch and anything else
story driven for sometime now.
My earliest memory of
enjoying one was an old episode of the Outer Limits. A human was
being held captive by aliens and a woman in the cell with him was
being slowly changed into an alien. She was upset and he confided in
her that the rest of the human space fleet was beyond x planet, ready
for another push. She stood up and thanked him, and the door
immediately opened as she was led from the room. As she left she
said, or he realized, I don’t remember which, that she was an alien
disguised as a human all along, and she was reverting to her natural
form. He’d just fucked the entire human race. The episode ended a
few moments later.
I was about ten at the
time, maybe a little older, and that has stayed with me to this very
day. I think it was the first thing I had seen that ended on such a
sour note that it shocked me.
So why do I like
unhappy endings? I think some of it is that life is more variable
than the hero always winning, and so an unhappy ending often feels
more realistic. In any typical action film full of peril, the hero
might do one hundred leaps, jumps, falls, dodges etc. If that was
real life, he or she would probably be dead after dodge five. Or if
they survived longer, something at some point would occur where their
luck would run out. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing for films
or books to be the height of realism, I do like my physics bending,
special powers happy endings too. It’s just that they don’t stick
with me as long as the bitter ones do.
Another reason I prefer
the darker ending is that it pays more homage to the people who may
have died along the way. How many times have we seen hundreds of
people killed in the course of a story, but when everything ends with
laughter and parades, its suddenly all okay again, and we don’t
need to think about them any more. A dark ending doesn’t mean
everyone has to die, but you can bet that the ones that do will be
remembered by the ones that didn’t.
On a purely gratuitous
note as well, its nice to see the monster/demon/or whatever actually
win for a change, instead of always being foiled at the last moment.
