From the always delightful Cracked.com…

First up, 16 Happy Endings That Hoped You Weren’t Paying Attention:

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_1470_16-happy-endings-that-hoped-you-werent-paying-attention/

It boils down to this: Sometimes a movie’s “happy” ending, if you think about it, isn’t all that happy at all.  Perhaps one of the best examples of this is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a very popular (and profitable) Steven Spielberg film that featured an ending that even as a youngster made me scratch my head for the very reasons pointed out in the article above:

Even Steven Spielberg and star Richard Dreyfus have realized the protagonist’s journey and ultimate resolution, presented so positively and with such a sense of Spielbergian wonder within the film itself, wasn’t quite as pleasant in retrospect.  Mr. Spielberg, if memory serves, noted that when he made the film he was a young single man and, as he grew and married and had a family, realized the ending presented in this work makes Richard Dreyfus’ character a heel (and that’s putting it kindly).

Check out the others, they’re interesting as well!

Next up: 6 Terrible Scenes Wisely Left Out of Great Movies:

http://www.cracked.com/article_22350_6-terrible-scenes-wisely-left-out-great-movies.html

What we have here are six movies based on literary works wherein the movie wisely chose to eliminate or ignore certain elements of the book/original story it was based on.  My favorite has to be the very first one presented, Die Hard.  The original book it was based on, Roderick Thorp’s Nothing Lasts Forever sounds like a real downer of a novel compared to what was presented on screen.  That’s not to say the other five didn’t wisely eliminate/alter material as well!

The only one I might quibble a little with is Up In The Air.  Yeah, the twist ending might have been more of a downer than one would have liked, but for some reason the book’s idea of the main character (SPOILER!) being terminally ill makes a certain kind of sense in the context of what he does during the course of the story, though maybe less so as a surprise ending.  Perhaps if it were part of the plot from the beginning…