this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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What movie puts the protagonist through the absolute ringer for it to all pay off in the end?

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

i was just talking with somebody about that fact yesterday

edit: specifically it's Red's transformation for me that means a lot

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

For when you’ve been crawling a river of shit, and need to come out clean

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Came here for this. Absolute masterpiece.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (1 children)

In my opinion, V for Vendetta. What Evie Hammond was put through was inexcusable, but I feel like it was worth it in the end.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Not sure if worth it, but it was definitely a cathartic movie.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

That's the beauty of it I think. We're left with this ambiguous feeling about whether the end actually justified the means.

Maybe they did, but surely there was a better way, right? Or was there really not? We can't know.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (2 children)

In a way, I think: Little Miss Sunshine.

A movie wherein everything, everything goes horribly wrong, and yet in the end you're left feeling absurdly good.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Dredd (2012) would be somewhere at the top of my list. I don't think there are too many movies nowadays that have such a classic "mission accomplished"-style ending.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

This is one of my favourite movies. It did everything perfectly. It was exactly what I wanted.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The Big Lebowski.. The dude just wanted his rug back.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Really tied the room together

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

That's just like, your opinion, man.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

Shawshank Redemption.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

Vanilla Sky! It’s a mind bending movie about a lucky man’s life that many of us could only dream of. That life quickly turns into a waking nightmare when the man’s jealous lover takes her own life with him inside the moving car. His nightmare of a life then melds into an actual dream. That dream then slowly transforms into a nightmare. All the while the main character doesn’t know what is real and what isn’t.

This all leads to an absolutely spectacular cathartic release for the main character when he finally understands what’s happened to him in the last 10 minutes of the film.

Did I mention it was mind bending? One of my favorite movies by far.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wow - I've never heard this take on Vanilla Sky. My only recollection of it was how bored we all were when we first tried to watch it. Didn't it get panned by the critics?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

It's very hard for me to recommend this movie because most people do not have the patience for the slow burn! A few of my friends fell asleep while watching it with me. The kind of person who will enjoy this movie is what Vanilla Sky itself refers to as a "pleasure delayer". Someone who delays gratification until the absolute breaking point... which, ironically, is precisely what is necessary to fully experience the orgasmic conclusion to the film.

This movie just resonates with my soul, I don't know how else to describe it!

It hits so many chords which have been interesting to me throughout my life: consciousness, lucid dreaming, sci-fi, romance and the lack of it ("you will never know the exquisite pain of the guy who goes home alone"), etc.

The soundtrack is also out of this world. Whenever a song plays during the movie the underlying visuals are in such perfect harmony that it starts to feel a bit like a music video.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I've watched that movie atleast 4 times and even knowing how it ends I've bawled like a baby all 4 times

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Did you say two Utes?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Fight Club

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Frodo in LOTR

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

Terry Gilliam's Brazil always does it for me. Depends heavily on which version you watch though, they're polarizing enough that you can play emotional Russian roulette with both versions.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Bladerunner 2049

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Nice to see someone else knows that one! I was coming here to suggest that

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Hell yeah! Great movie.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Tilda Swinton is just insanely good in that.. i mean she makes my hairs stand on end.. that character is a nightmare..

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

In big budget movies, protagonists facing unambiguous conflict and getting a clear, concise victory peaked in the 80s and early 90s. A lot of the other movies mentioned in this topic (V for Vendetta, Dredd 2012) have serious throwback vibes. Smaller movies usually have murkier conflict.

For a given value of, β€œthrough the ringer,” Karate Kid is my answer. It’s extremely easy to empathize with both Daniel and Mr Miyagi. I appreciate some movies that absolutely destroy the protagonist, but their larger than life troubles are more difficult to empathize with earnestly. Aliens fits well, too, the oppression of a faceless corporation may be heavier now than it was even on release. The Top Gun movies fit pretty well as long as you watched the original a long time ago.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Seven or Man on Fire. Not what you'd call happy endings, but the movies would be ruined any other way.

Except for in Seven, if it ended in a blast of colored smoke for a gender reveal gift box. That could have been very touching. /s

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Kung Fu Panda 2. A funny panda movie about dealing with buried trauma.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Grave of the Fireflies...but make sure to watch My Neighbor Totoro right after as intended

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I always found The Life Aquatic to be very cathartic.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Training Day, a movie about a rookie cop who gets paired with a corrupt senior on his first day who manipulates him from the beginning. ''I should have been a fireman"

Gattaca. I am not sure if you can call it an absolute ringer, but it does feel all the hard work pays off in the end.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Agreed on Training Day.

I totally forgot about Gattaca, I watched that in school in like 6th grade. Fantastic movie

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Wristcutters

The main characters go to a hell/purgatory specifically for people who've committed suicide, where no one can smile. It's not a very action-y movie, but it's one of my favorites. Also, it has Shannyn Sossamon from A Knight's Tale, so that's a plus

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Except that movie had no catharsis only tension.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

No joke. β€œSing” It’s this silly kids cover song movie, but it ends up having a wonderful consistent optimism and a brilliant payoff. It’s not an improbable massive β€œpulled it off” win, it’s surviving through failure and loving the act of making art so much that you keep doing it anyway. It’s joyful and a masterclass in writing a classic story arc without torturing your characters and your audience to get there.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Turn it off after they come back from being stuck on the bottom.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Das Boot is the movie you show an engineer if you want them to be anti-war.

The submarine itself is as much a character as the rest of the crew, and it fights alongside them through every struggle...

...only to die a pointless death at the end. A beautiful machine wasted on the cause of warfare.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

The original Robocop movie is an all-time favourite of mine, as far as violent revenge movies go.

It's a great blend with gratuitous violence - not to mention the story that puts the protagonist through the absolute ringer for it to all pay off in the end.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I only saw it once a long time ago so I may remember it wrong, but "It's a Wonderful Life"? I recall being surprised because as a non American I'd heard so much about it as a Christmas movie and expected that genre but when I watched it, it was incredibly depressing and I never watched it again.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

working at blue sky studios, the firm that produced nimona was the best job i ever had. i had great coworkers and the employees were awesome, so many parties also. then disney bought blue sky studios the fun stopped and it was closed 2 years later lol

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