Sunday, October 17, 2010

A sucker for happy endings

The story of Cinderella: young girl turned houseslave by evil stepmom and dito step-sisters is aided by her fairy godmother into going to the ball. Here our enchanted little slave meets her Prince Charming. Cue the spotlight dance, the almost-kiss, the race against time and the grand finale that culminates in the marital bliss of Cindy and Prince. Cut. Print it. Walt Disney's got the happy endings down to an art.


I confess: I myself am a sucker for happy endings. I mean come on, secretly, we were all rooting for Romeo and Juliet to hop on the first horse drawn carriage out of Verona and into the sunset where they'd live happily ever after, weren't we?

The Bodyguard Poster
This morning I saw 'The Bodyguard' with Kevin Costner and Whitney -IHIIIAAA will always looooove yooouuu- Houston. Even though I never saw the movie before I could vividly remember this profoundly sad ending where the bodyguard takes a bullet for the diva and dies on stage. To me, this would've made the most sense, what's more, this was how it should've ended.

Essentially director Mick Jackson had three possible endings: the bad (but actually best) ending: Costner dies in the arms of Whitney, leaving her with the inspiration for singing "I will always love you", face it, audiences love the whole good-guy-dies ending (Titanic, anyone?). The good (sorta) ending: Costner lives and he and Whitney live happily ever after. And finally, the neutral (aka sucky) ending: Costner survives the two bullets to the chest and continues to work as a bodyguard (for a priest!), while Whitney carries on with her singing career. Result: everybody loses.

Now, hypothetically speaking, if you were the director of this movie, which ending would you choose? The bad -but really, best of all- ending, right? I knew it! Well, 'fraid old man Jackson got his endings screwed up, because he chose the neutral ending. Result: everybody loses plus the movie receives a 5.5 score out of 10 on IMDb.

Surprised? I think not. Guess Jackson should've followed Disney's lead. Maybe if he had, Whitney would've had a great career, instead of  a great high from all the coke that followed. But to each his own, ay?

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