Sad Endings - They die, they all just die!

[Trivun]

Also, the OP's mention of fairy tales? The thing you have to note is that all of the ones with bad endings (that is, pretty much every single one of them) fit into the category of ones that include large amounts of sex, violence, and blood and gore. And these were the original tales, the ones that were first told in years gone by, and they were never intended for children specifically (though it wasn't a problem if kids heard them) - they were a form of entertainment in the days when we didn't have games or TV or even books commonly available (and most people couldn't read anyway). It was only much later, when Charles Perrault (and even later than him, H.C. Andersson and the Brothers Grimm) got their hands on the stories that they started to become diluted more and were made accessible for kids and reworked as children's tales. Nowadays, society deems them to be kids stories and anyone over a certain age who still enjoys fairy tales are looked down on as weird, but seriously, these tales were meant for adults in the first place...

 

[DarkDain]

I remember a little RPG i played called 'The Quest', you play as a monk or mage or knight or rogue and start. The 'quest' being that your wife was kidnapped from your cozy little ranch home and your off to save her. When you do find her, shes already been ritually sacrificed by the cultists that took her, so you kill them. You learn about how they kidnapped many people from the nearby town, so you chase after them to find their lair and rescue the towns people. Too late, already dead by the time your there, so you just massacre the cultists, kill their leader, then commit suicide. Kind of a memorable game i might of skipped a step, it was a long time ago.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

-snip-

Well, to understand the ending of the Little Mermaid you have to understand that people in his day actually believed that mermaids and mermen existed, but they had no souls, so they were just the same as animals and thus couldn't get to Heaven. The point of the Little Mermaid is that although she loses her life, she does it for selfless love of the Prince, and that is deemed enough of a good act to gain her a soul, but she still must spend time in purgatory (I think it was, like an extra 100 years every time a child was naughty, being kinda a cheap way of getting your kids to behave.)

Oscar Wilde wrote a similar story called The Fisherman and his Soul, about a man who falls in love with a mermaid, and cuts off his soul so he can be with her, it's a lot weirder, but the idea that the saving of your soul being more important than saving your physical self is the same.

Also Hamlet, everyone dies in Hamlet, and Titus Andronicus (some kids get baked in a pie and served to their parents!)
And most famously Romeo and Juliet

 

[teutonicman]

Spoiler: Red Dead Redemption

I was so mad at the end of Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar had done such a great job connecting me to John. Then when Ross guns him down like a dog all I could think of was anger and vengeance.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Because sometime a character death has more meaning when he/ she died as oppuse to being alive. Beside a story with a happy ending can be quite repetitive and predictable. Sure the journey can be a hard one for the character but we can always predict that it would still be happy despite the odd pin against the character so a death can throw us off.

 

[Goofguy]

When I read the title of this thread, I immediately thought of the movie "The Mist".

Spoiler

Sure, the main character didn't die but pretty much everyone else did. And since he was rescued by the military a mere two minutes after shooting his own son, I'd say he's pretty dead on the inside

 

[Kopikatsu]

Disgaea 2's worst ending was magical.

The main character goes insane and eats his little brother and sister alive. The scene is censored with a black screen, but it still has sounds...

The sounds...t-they...*starts sobbing uncontrollably*

 

[That_Sneaky_Camper]

I think that sad endings can be very effective when done well but they should have proper foreshadowing and build-up or else the audience can feel slighted for all these unfortunate events randomly coming out of left field. On the other hand happy endings should never come easily, we should expect our protagonists to work hard and triumph over numerous obstacles in order to earn the right to their happy ending.

In any case I think what is kind of short sighted about endings in general is that in the eyes of the audience the story ends there, but in real life one's life does not end at a defining moment of sorrow or happiness, life always goes on. A truly happy ending is one that acknowledges despite the protagonist's moment of triumph life with all of its routines and problems will continue on (a hero lays down his sword and becomes a father and husband for example) and they continue onward having hope for future happiness. In contrast a sad ending is when the protagonist lets that moment of sorrow and/or defeat get the better of them and they give up on life or ever being able to seek future happiness.

 

[scw55]

Bastion

Spoiler

Undo the calamity and never meet your new friends and your love interest (and risk the calamity repeating itself [a rewind]).
Or
Go travel with your love interest and new friends on a magical flying rock to leave a land where everyone died.
Either option is bitter sweet.
The credit music enforces the feeling.

The music still makes me sad.

When I read the title of this thread, I immediately thought of the movie "The Mist".

Spoiler

Sure, the main character didn't die but pretty much everyone else did. And since he was rescued by the military a mere two minutes after shooting his own son, I'd say he's pretty dead on the inside

Watched that during a drinking holiday with my mates. I suggested to watch it and they pretty much were a bit 'meh' through out. But they rofled at the irony of the ending.

 

[EmperorSubcutaneous]

I think it matters more whether an ending is good and appropriate rather than if it's positive/negative.

It's more about what's appropriate and good than positive or negative.

Unfortunately, I have nothing constructive to add to this topic. I just saw these two posts right next to each other and made that face.

 

[Saltyk]

Personally, I like the occasion sad ending. Not everything has to be happy. For example, I liked the ending of Repo Men.

Spoiler

Our hero and his love interest break into the corporate headquarters killing numerous people along the way and come to the organ return machine. They literally have to scan the organs while still inside them. In the end, his boss and former partner shows up. His partner asks if she's worth it and he replies yes. Partner kills the boss, they destroy the machine and the three of them escape to some tropical paradise. It's a perfect happy ending. And then, it revealed that the last 30 minutes or so didn't actually happen. He was knocked out by his partner in their fight earlier and fitted with a machine that basically keeps in in a dreamlike state where he thinks everything is real. Someone asks what they are going to do about the woman, and his partner replies that he'll take care of her. His partner is going to keep him in a permanent coma and harvest the woman's transplanted organs as part of his job. The end.

Also, you people are jerks for posting Scrubs sad endings. I loved that show. I especially hated the ending where Dr. Cox becomes depressed convinced he killed numerous people. I always loved his smart ass humor.

 

[V TheSystem V]

I'm not going to say this is a sad ending, but more a realistic one considering the scenario.

In Dead Space:

Spoiler

Trying to find your girlfriend on an alien infested mining vessel. Everyone on there dies apart from you and (supposedly) your girlfriend, who turns out to be an hallucination due to the madness this alien artifact causes. Turns out she's been dead all along

THAT is realistic for that sort of game. Not a happy ending at all.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Eh, I can go for either happy or sad endings, as long as they're good. Hell one game I loved (not naming names, that would spoil it, even if it is a few months old) had a downright TRAGIC ending. You dedicate yourself to saving the world and being a hero.....and then in the end, you find out that a heroic sacrifice is needed, like, right the hell now. And it makes you do it IN GAMEPLAY. That....that was intense. One of the BEST endings to a game I've ever seen.

Bastion

Spoiler

Undo the calamity and never meet your new friends and your love interest (and risk the calamity repeating itself [a rewind]).
Or
Go travel with your love interest and new friends on a magical flying rock to leave a land where everyone died.
Either option is bitter sweet.
The credit music enforces the feeling.

Spoiler: UBER SPOILERS FOR BASTION

Kinda bittersweet, but not that much, for me. I had to sit down and think about it for a minute, but my choice was pretty clear almost from the moment I understood my options. If I reset time, it would likely lead to a stable time loop, causing the calamity to happen again and again. Time would never advance. All the lives lost in the calamity would be in vain.

So !@#$ the reset button. The only decent choice to make (IMO) was to Accept the consequences of the actions that Cealondia had taken, and face the future we had made.

Yeah yeah, there's a chance that everyone would keep their knowledge of what had happened if we rewound time, but think about that. What would happen? The mancers would probably immediately FIX the calamity device and then blow up the Ura properly this time, ASAP. That's just unacceptable. Especially since the root cause of the whole problem was cealondia. Well....Mostly one asshole Zia was dating. But still, the Ura were trying to reach out, and meanwhile, Cealondia was making superweapons to blow them up. >_>

I liked the credits music too. It was the whole reason I bought the soundtrack.

 

[Dastardly]

I don't see WHY the main character that you've spent an hour and a half watching in a movie or days/weeks reading about in a book just dies. What was the point? I've spent a crap load of time getting to know and enjoying this character only for all their pursuits to lead to death or some bittersweet moment where the storyteller didn't want to completely leave the reader hanging which is probably worse because you might as well just go all in.

If there is no consequence, no lesson is learned (by the reader). This tale is about wanting to be something you're not, being careful about what you wish for, not making deals with the devil... all of that. And the lesson is don't, because you'll always end up on the losing side.

If the mermaid is allowed to continue doing her thing, the "lesson" is "Don't, or you'll end up inconvenienced for a short time." Very different lesson, very different message, very different story.

To carry a point, the message needs to be given weight. And the "weightiest" thing mankind knows of is death. How you end the character is just as important as how you punctuate a sentence?!

 

[Deadyawn]

I came to this thread thinking of something fairly different to whats actually being discussed but this is an off topic thread so i'm just going to say this anyway. This is an official SPOILER WARNING although that was kinda obvious. Dragon age 2, at the end of the game pretty much every major character dies for no goddamn reason. I get that having people die can have a great emotional effect but it was so poorly handled if anything it diminished the story. It was just really wierd, it felt like the writers had dicided it would be too much effort to write in characters depending on whether they were alive or dead and just killed everyone. So yeah, that was stupid.

 

[twistedmic]

Also, you people are jerks for posting Scrubs sad endings. I loved that show. I especially hated the ending where Dr. Cox becomes depressed convinced he killed numerous people. I always loved his smart ass humor.

Just be glad that no one, as of yet, has posted the endings to any of the sad Futurama episodes. Those can be worse than any Scrubs episode.

 

[idodo35]

Frog Prince? The Princess threw him against a wall because she thought he was ugly.

wait if she throws him against the wall how can the story continue without him? i mean what is the point?

 

[Dango]

If it feels appropriate for the show, it's fine. The anime Bokurano probably has my favorite happy-ish, but depressing ending.

Spoiler: You find out everyone is going to die in the 6th episode anyway, so it's not major spoilers...

Every single 13 year old pilot dies. They all pilot Zearth, and it drains the life from all of them. Still, by the end of it the villain is dead, Earth is saved, and Ushiro chooses to sacrifice himself so his little sister doesn't have to die. Overall, it could have been a lot worse...

 

[catalyst8]

I don't see WHY the main character that you've spent an hour and a half watching in a movie or days/weeks reading about in a book just dies. What was the point? I've spent a crap load of time getting to know and enjoying this character only for all their pursuits to lead to death or some bittersweet moment where the storyteller didn't want to completely leave the reader hanging which is probably worse because you might as well just go all in.

You seem to have missed a fundamental objective of the literary arts: Catharsis.

If you genuinely feel that a protagonist's demise is unrewarding or nonsensical then you should probably stay away from all actual literature from classics like

Spoiler

Oedipus, Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, & Beowulf, to moderns like The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina, & everything Beckett wrote.

Even pulp fiction protagonists die (e.g.

Spoiler

Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic, just about anyone Vonnegut

wrote about). The potential of tragedy validates the investment in time the reader/viewer has made following the conflict between the protagonist & their surroundings.

This conflict is particularly conspicuous in the medium you originally cited. The original fairy tales were particularly dark & bloody:
Sleeping beauty was awoken not by a kiss, but by giving birth. She'd been raped in her sleep.
The 14th century Little Red Riding Hood either eloped with the Wolf (traditionally a werewolf) after getting drunk on Granny's blood (& presumably lived happily ever after raising a litter of were-puppies), or was eaten & that was the end of the story.

Essentially it comes down to there being a perceived risk for the protagonist, & without that risk there's no incentive for the audience to invest time & effort in the story. Think about it like sex, where investing in the narrative is the sex & the catharsis is the orgasm.