You guys are misunderstanding the ending…
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Mist
Stinger911 — 11 years ago(February 18, 2015 07:02 AM)
You guys are misunderstanding the ending.
It's not about making the movie darker or more tragic just for the sake of it.
The ending is didactic. Meaning, it has a very explicit message it wants to impart to the viewer.
And that message is, "Never give up. Because the light at the end of the tunnel may be right around the corner."
It's essentially an uplifting message which is delivered to us through a horrible tragedy. If only David had held out hope for just a minute longer, everyone would have been saved.
The fact that he felt there was only one solution to the problem (killing everyone to spare them) was the cause of the tragedy. In essence, the movie is anti-suicide and implies that an end to misery and new beginning of happiness exists if one is strong enough to hold out for it.
I don't see how so many of you missed this -
zombiexpress — 11 years ago(February 19, 2015 01:29 AM)
100% spot on. Couldn't agree more.
The film's story is laced with so many important, underlying messages of morality and depicts a realistic overview of predicable human behavior in a tale presented with not-so-realistic enemies abound. The ending, especially, scratches-away at the '3rd wall' and was designed to leave you with more of a long-lasting, relevant and poignant
message
than simply just the end to a story in a movie.
We can blindly walk this earth believing that another power holds our destiny, all the while misplacing both glory & blame for any and all good & bad in the world. Or, perhaps humanity is truly the highest-power when we don't lose hope, stick together, and believe in ourselves, most of all.
This is a powerful message for our literal world, which can be at times, just as confused and horrifically-askew as the one is this fictional story. -
debunkerboy — 11 years ago(February 21, 2015 05:17 PM)
Duh, didactic you say? Sorry but if you had read much here you would know that your interpretation is obvious and commonplace and beaten to death on this board. The message would actually work if it had been in a believable context.
What is wrong with the ending is the way those plucky fighters in the car are taken out of character in an effort to force in the ending and the message. Haters of the ending are fully aware that Darabont's ending could be interpreted as being about hope - specifically keeping your hope and your head in the face of fear. He also intends the film and the ending as a commentary on the invasion of Iraq and the irrational, suicidal response to terrorism by the Bush administration. -
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depunkerboy — 11 years ago(February 23, 2015 04:02 PM)
he says as much here http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2008/jun/27/filmandmusic1.filmandmusic6
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Cyborg1989 — 11 years ago(March 13, 2015 08:47 PM)
To the OP Sorry but, you're reading a little too much into it. If thats what you want to take away from the ending, then fine.
But there was no intent at an "uplifting message", or anti-suicide agenda there. That is something YOU have chosen to interpret.
The director just thought it would be a great, "shocking" ending to cap off a bleak horror flick. Nothing more than that. -
!!!deleted!!! (34980460) — 10 years ago(April 29, 2015 02:32 AM)
The director of the Shawshank Redemption and the Green Mile (both of which are about holding on to hope) , you mean?
He totally missed this interpretation of the ending and was actually going for a horror-flick one?
Really? -
clytamnestra — 10 years ago(February 17, 2016 03:56 PM)
How is either of those movies uplifting?
Shawshank: the justice system is beyond beep but you may slip through the cracks (what unbelievable luck that he never got another cell or had his wall repainted) after a few decades of prison-rape
Green Mile: don't bother arguing for you innocence or trying to get the actual child-killer in jail, just die in the most jesus-like way possible. -
bananabutcher — 11 years ago(March 23, 2015 01:40 PM)
i didn't care to much about the meaning but as i was watching the end when they where shot up in the car i was saying to myself "it would be funny if he killed them and suddenly the mist disappear"and it happened. i was laughing my head off, best comedy that.
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debunkerboy — 10 years ago(April 06, 2015 05:33 AM)
The annoyance is that the characters are made to do something FUNDAMENTALLY false to the character they have established in the story so far, to their role as protagonists which we have come to IDENTIFY with, IMO. It rankles that this is everyone's gut instinct yet Darabont was so seduced by the idea of the ending that he used it anyway even though it didn't fit THIS story. Defenders of the ending actually feel this same sense of violation. I have read too many of their posts here, trust me, they feel it too. But they rationalize it away on various grounds . . that the ending was so brave in going anti-hollywood that they forgive Darabont, or that the problem is on our side for being unable to imagine their fear, etc.
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skullwrath — 10 years ago(April 14, 2015 07:19 AM)
Why do you say it's fundamentally false? The whole reason they wanted to leave the super market was the hope that they could escape the mist or at least find some other signs of human life. But instead they found the mist unrelenting, driving what we can only assume was for hours and finding nothing but more death and decay and enormous monsters. Then they ran out of fuel, could hear the sounds of more beasts in the background, and decided to end it on their own terms. Just because they had courage and hope in the supermarket does not mean that will last through the realisation that the world as they know it is gone and the only way out seems to be a brutal death at the hands of some demon.
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cyril_grey — 10 years ago(May 11, 2015 03:22 AM)
God, I love those "nature of character" arguments some people love to have. This idea that a character, who is also a human, is going to always act in accordance to some moral agenda that the story will set out, is plain foolishness. That's the beauty and the curse of the human race: we are unpredictable.
To argue that these people were set up to behave a certain way and the ending betrays that is the exact writing style that makes films so predictable and it's what shows like Game of Thrones are working so hard to corrupt. The film's ending is far more human than anything else because they do not do what the story set them up to do. -
clytamnestra — 10 years ago(February 17, 2016 04:19 PM)
Sometimes in fiction characters do things that are too far removed from how they were built up though, and just looks like lazy writing. It depends how it's done though.
True. A character changing behavior can be either due to 'lazy writing' or due to organic 'character growth'.
In this movie it did not feel like lazy writing to me. It makes perfect sense to me that they'd initially try to fight but eventually lose hope as they see one person after another dragged out of the store by monsters and return home to find the mother also dead and after that just keep driving and driving and driving without seeing the slightest sign of life anywhere.
It's pretty much what happens when people ask for euthanasia: they fight the cancer for the first few years but eventually decide they'd rather die right now than painfully suffocate in the next few weeks. The characters would rather take a bullet to the head than be chewed to pieces as their friends were.
I hated it when startrek did the 'i killed my father just months before life-saving medicine hit the market' story and i sure hope this movie wasn't aiming for that kind of connection. It's hugely disrespectful towards people who struggle with those questions at the end of their life to cut it off at 'you must live at all costs' and dangle a potential miracle in front of them (in reality a patient in that situation will be perfectly aware of new drug-trials and alternative medicine cures doing the rounds: new treatment doesn't just poof onto the market one day to the next) -
andrewpi7 — 10 years ago(March 12, 2016 10:09 AM)
The mist severely limited their vision so of course they were not going to see life when they were driving especially after an attack of that magnitude.
If all 4 of these once strong characters conveniently now did all lose hope then viewers should have seen some dialog and emotions between them to show that before all of them agree to suicide in mere seconds without saying a word. It was displayed as carelessly as if the dad was asking if they wanted some gum.
Euthanasia is a bad analogy as these people were not fighting monsters for years and were not under any physical pain, much less painfully suffocating for weeks. But even if we use that analogy then it is
no different
than StarTrek's "I killed my father months before life-saving medicine hit the market" scene that you found hugely disrespectful earlier because the Mist movie dangled a potential miracle in front of the dad seconds after he killed his son & the 3 others so that would make this scene hugely disrepectful if we accept that analogy.