10 Movies That Ended Way Too Early
300 ended before its true climax.
Brevity is the soul of wit, or so the saying goes. There's something to be said for knowing when to end a movie while leaving the audience wanting more, especially considering how blockbusters seem to be getting longer and more bloated on average with each passing year.
But sometimes filmmakers' go a little overboard with their "restraint," to the extent that viewers feel genuinely short-changed at the end.
While there are often external factors responsible - namely a troubled production or executive meddling - these 10 films all ended much earlier than most would have preferred.
In some cases it's clear that the production ran short of time or money and just... didn't deliver a third act, while others were obviously setting up a sequel that ultimately never happened.
Whatever the reasoning, these movies all had much more of a story to tell, but they instead rolled the credits just as audiences were preparing themselves for the real finale.
While many of these films were still pretty entertaining, in others the abrupt, sudden ending left viewers with a sour taste in their mouths, perhaps even feeling that their night out at the movies had been wasted...
10. Jurassic Park III
Can movie endings really be any more anti-climactic than that of Jurassic Park III?
At the 80-minute mark of the much-anticipated threequel, Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and his fellow survivors on Isla Sorna make it to the coast, where they're greeted by the Marine Corps and the Navy, who were called in by Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern, in disappointing cameo form).
At this point it seems like the film is gearing up for a third act battle between the island's remaining dinosaurs and a fleet of disposable soldiers, but then the film just... ends, with the heroes being evacuated and the escaped Pteranodons flying past them.
As won't surprise anyone, the film had major production issues to the extent that it began filming without a completed script, where the ending hadn't even been written yet.
Director Joe Johnston considered quitting the project several times, ultimately calling the shoot "a living hell on a daily basis."
Given that the final film clocks in at just 92 minutes including credits, it's painfully obvious that audiences were robbed of an entire act's worth of action and excitement. Awful.