Apart from the irony of starting the blog by talking about endings, a rather specific pet peeve of mine is when a genuinely intriguing narrative is completely botched by an underwhelming or in severe cases, an extremely mediocre ending.
Now endings are crucial to whatever you are trying to make. The finishing touches to your clearly plagiarized painting, the closing sentence of your Statement of Purpose to that prestigious university for which you clearly do not have the grades for, and the ending for the story which took you 6 years to finish because of your slothfulness (I still have yet to finish mine, so it doesn't count). How you present it and how it wraps up everything that came before dictates how effective an ending can be.
Now to quite an extent this topic is subjective as everyone's tastes are different. Personal biases tend to cloud one's judgement of what is a well-written ending as from their point of view, the ending made them feel satisfied, which isn't exactly a bad thing but it is important to acknowledge that there are some objective standards by which we must evaluate the endings of stories. To prove my point further, I'd like to give a hypothetical example. Lets assume that I write a tragic story where the protagonist is surrounded by misery and anguish. A well-written ending would be one where the protagonist overcomes their obstacles but at the cost of a certain something during the runtime of the story which eventually leads to a bitter-sweet ending which further justifies the events which happened within the story. Now how do you ruin a story such as this? Conveniently, I have a perfect example for this.
EXHIBIT A (Spoilers)
Written and illustrated by Ken Wakui, Tokyo Revengers was a manga which serialized from March 2017 to November 2022.
The series during its inception had quite an interesting plot with some really likeable characters. For those unfamiliar with the series, the story revolves around Hanagaki Takemichi, a 26-year-old part-timer who learns that his ex-girlfriend was killed during a gang dispute in Tokyo. The story kicks off with Takemichi gaining the ability to go 12 years back in time right before he is about be run over by a subway train. The rest of the story involves Takemichi trying his best to change the past to prevent the "bad ending."
Now I'll be honest, I really enjoyed the story up until the ending. It's quite obvious that the story does get quite dark at certain points and you expect the author to take all of the previous events into consideration in order to craft an ending where regardless of the outcome, the impact of all that had happened so far can be felt. Apparently, Wakui did not get that memo because by the end of the story (SPOILERS: go read the manga or watch the anime) every single character who has died in the previous chapters were brought back to life in the most laziest plot twist. The ending makes it so that the entire conflict that had happened had no meaning whatsoever. To put it simply, it was a happy ending which was extremely forced to the point where it felt like the audience was being mocked.
HAPPY ENDINGS
Now, everyone likes a happy ending. Concluding a story on a positive note where the conflict comes to a resolution is extremely satisfactory to witness. Personally, I do enjoy happy endings if they are written well. The reason why the ending of Tokyo Revengers doesn't work is mainly due to the fact that the ending just seemed forced. Forcing an ending regardless of a good or bad outcome is always a recipe for disaster. I distinctly remember a year ago when I got into a debate with a classmate of mine, where he argued for the ending of Tokyo Revengers being really good because by the end, Takemichi got what he wanted and lived happily ever after. My argument was on how the quality of the ending and the way it was executed was extremely poor and does a huge disservice to not only the audience but also the story as a whole. It doesn't take a huge amount of literary or screenplay knowledge to understand that it is objectively a poorly written ending but as I mentioned in the beginning, personal biases tend to cloud one's judgement.
EXHIBIT B (No spoiler warnings; everyone has seen this)
I'll come outright and say that I'm not a huge fan of marvel comics. But I'll give credit where credit is due and state that Avengers: Endgame is one example of an ending done right. Don't get me wrong, it is not the best ending out there, but it is the most well-known example that I can use without going into an exposition dump.
Now, why does this ending work so well. A few reasons, but a major one is that the ending is not forced. The screenwriters for the movie, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely could've easily gone for an ending where the entirety of the main cast survived and then lived happily ever after. Instead, what we got was a well-thought out conclusion to not only one of the greatest franchises in movie history but also to an era of superheroes who defined a generation. The sacrifice of Natasha Romanoff for the soul stone, Captain America going back in time to restore the stones but later deciding to retire and pass his mantle onto Sam Wilson, and of course the "I am Iron Man" scene which not only was a great way to end a gruesome war but also complete the character arc of the most important character within the franchise (He is, cope with it). By the time the credits roll, you feel sad knowing that things will never be the same anymore and there will never be anymore movies like this one, but you feel satisfied. The series got a perfect conclusion which not only acknowledged and respected the narrative and characters so far but also the audience who have been with the franchise for so long. It was a bitter-sweet ending which was probably the best we could ever ask for.
Now that marvel has had a really phenomenal track record with masterpieces like She-hulk and they're bringing back RDJ as Doctor Doom, I am more concerned than excited.
CONCLUSION
Now that I've sort of laid out what well-written ending looks like, I'll show you what an extremely poor ending looks like.
THE END
Comments
Post a Comment