![]() ![]() These sequences involve pitting the protagonist directly against the antagonist in a contest of strength, speed, and dexterity. They’re the bread-and-butter of all super-hero movies. Physical battles are perhaps the most popular climaxes found in action movies, thrillers, and sports dramas. The hero’s choice should be the best thing that person could do under the circumstances. It need not be a happy ending in the traditional sense, but it should be a good ending. An audience should not be able to see it coming, but when it does arrive, it should be satisfying both intellectually and emotionally. Like a great melody, the story’s ending should be surprising, yet inevitable. It usually means learning, growing and becoming a better human being. Or it means eschewing one’s personal happiness to promote the happiness of others. Sometimes this means losing something personally valuable for the greater good. Good endings often involve an element of sacrifice. And the choice should determine the ensuing course of the character’s life. The hero must make a choice, and the choice must be a difficult one. The Final Battle should present the protagonist with a crisis, ideally a moral one. Never should the protagonist enter Act III holding a winning hand. They can confront each other as equals, or the protagonist can be in an inferior position. (Love, home, family, career, etc.) Ideally, the protagonist should directly confront the antagonist, winner take all. If not objectively huge, then at least something that the protagonist considers huge. (Or your dramatic version thereof.) Something huge has to be at stake. With that issue out of way, let’s now focus on the types of endings we often see in movies, why they succeed and their level of impact on the reader/viewer.Īt a story’s climax, all of the factors that have played into the narrative thus far slam together and present the protagonist with the ultimate choice: Kill or be killed. If your ending does not address your central theme, if it just comes down to a chase or fist fight that illustrates nothing more that the participants’ physical prowess, then your screenplay will likely be regarded as a failure. If your movie is exploring the question, “How do you measure a person’s value?”, one or more of the characters will end the story with a significantly different set of priorities than they began with (e.g., friends over money, love over material possessions, etc.) If your theme is “Honesty is the Best Policy,” then your hero, who has been lying and conniving throughout the story to achieve some selfish goal, will be forced to come clean and somehow be rewarded for his probity. If your theme is “Love Conquers All,” then the central lovers, despite all the obstacles thrown in their path and the conflicts that have driven them apart, will eventually reunite and join in marriage (or its modern cultural equivalent). Whether your theme is as simple as “Love Conquers All,” “Honesty is the Best Policy,” or “Be Yourself,” or as complex as “What makes a person human?”, “How do you measure a person’s value?” or “Can and man and a woman every just be friends?”, a good ending is going to either illustrate your central thesis or propose an answer to your thematic question. So how you do write a killer movie ending? Let’s begin at the end.Īt some point during your writing process, you’re going to settle on a theme and then rewrite everything you’ve created to conform to that central question or message. How many times have you watched a movie or read a screenplay that began wonderfully and full of promise, only to end up feeling unsatisfied, let down, annoyed or even downright furious by the final page? It’s often been said that people remember the first lines of books and the last lines of movies, and while a zinger parting line can certainly be the cherry on top of a movie’s third act sundae, it’s really the whole climax, paired with the denouement (the final “cool down” after the main conflict is resolved) that seals the deal when it comes to cinematic storytelling. ![]()
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