What movie puts the protagonist through the absolute ringer for it to all pay off in the end?
No joke. “Sing” It’s this silly kids cover song movie, but it ends up having a wonderful consistent optimism and a brilliant payoff. It’s not an improbable massive “pulled it off” win, it’s surviving through failure and loving the act of making art so much that you keep doing it anyway. It’s joyful and a masterclass in writing a classic story arc without torturing your characters and your audience to get there.
Vanilla Sky! It’s a mind bending movie about a lucky man’s life that many of us could only dream of. That life quickly turns into a waking nightmare when the man’s jealous lover takes her own life with him inside the moving car. His nightmare of a life then melds into an actual dream. That dream then slowly transforms into a nightmare. All the while the main character doesn’t know what is real and what isn’t.
This all leads to an absolutely spectacular cathartic release for the main character when he finally understands what’s happened to him in the last 10 minutes of the film.
Did I mention it was mind bending? One of my favorite movies by far.
i watched the original Spanish (Spain) version, that was fucking incredible. I would totally check that out too as Penelope Cruz is also in that one. It is called Abre Los Ojos
Wow - I’ve never heard this take on Vanilla Sky. My only recollection of it was how bored we all were when we first tried to watch it. Didn’t it get panned by the critics?
It’s very hard for me to recommend this movie because most people do not have the patience for the slow burn! A few of my friends fell asleep while watching it with me. The kind of person who will enjoy this movie is what Vanilla Sky itself refers to as a “pleasure delayer”. Someone who delays gratification until the absolute breaking point… which, ironically, is precisely what is necessary to fully experience the orgasmic conclusion to the film.
This movie just resonates with my soul, I don’t know how else to describe it!
It hits so many chords which have been interesting to me throughout my life: consciousness, lucid dreaming, sci-fi, romance and the lack of it (“you will never know the exquisite pain of the guy who goes home alone”), etc.
The soundtrack is also out of this world. Whenever a song plays during the movie the underlying visuals are in such perfect harmony that it starts to feel a bit like a music video.
The original Robocop movie is an all-time favourite of mine, as far as violent revenge movies go.
It’s a great blend with gratuitous violence - not to mention the story that puts the protagonist through the absolute ringer for it to all pay off in the end.
In my opinion, V for Vendetta. What Evie Hammond was put through was inexcusable, but I feel like it was worth it in the end.
Not sure if worth it, but it was definitely a cathartic movie.
That’s the beauty of it I think. We’re left with this ambiguous feeling about whether the end actually justified the means.
Maybe they did, but surely there was a better way, right? Or was there really not? We can’t know.
In a way, I think: Little Miss Sunshine.
A movie wherein everything, everything goes horribly wrong, and yet in the end you’re left feeling absurdly good.
One of my favorites
Amazing movie. I took Greg Kinnear’s 9 steps seriously for a time. I always loved his conviction.
Dredd (2012) would be somewhere at the top of my list. I don’t think there are too many movies nowadays that have such a classic “mission accomplished”-style ending.
Shawshank Redemption
In big budget movies, protagonists facing unambiguous conflict and getting a clear, concise victory peaked in the 80s and early 90s. A lot of the other movies mentioned in this topic (V for Vendetta, Dredd 2012) have serious throwback vibes. Smaller movies usually have murkier conflict.
For a given value of, “through the ringer,” Karate Kid is my answer. It’s extremely easy to empathize with both Daniel and Mr Miyagi. I appreciate some movies that absolutely destroy the protagonist, but their larger than life troubles are more difficult to empathize with earnestly. Aliens fits well, too, the oppression of a faceless corporation may be heavier now than it was even on release. The Top Gun movies fit pretty well as long as you watched the original a long time ago.
Terry Gilliam’s Brazil always does it for me. Depends heavily on which version you watch though, they’re polarizing enough that you can play emotional Russian roulette with both versions.
Kung Fu Panda 2. A funny panda movie about dealing with buried trauma.
Nimona
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Bladerunner 2049
Little Giants
“One time”
Seven or Man on Fire. Not what you’d call happy endings, but the movies would be ruined any other way.
Except for in Seven, if it ended in a blast of colored smoke for a gender reveal gift box. That could have been very touching. /s
John wick
Django unchained
