10 Movies That Explained Way Too Much

Look, I know this is an easy film to dislike. It’s not good. It’s unintentionally funny at best. Yet, I think there’s a particular moment of over explanation where we can see how 2006’s The Wicker Man completely lost sight of what made the original 1973 film haunting.

If you haven’t seen it Nic Cage, a policeman in the film, follows his ex to an island ruled by, to his horror, women, in order to rescue his daughter who may be in trouble. It turns out he is being lured into a trap by the women and gets burned in a wicker man in a pagan ritual that is meant to bring revive their stagnating honey production.

A lot of the 2006 version’s downfall comes due to its tone. The movie is very silly in a bad way. The old movie was silly in a good way. The original had interesting commentary on religion. The new one tried to provide gender commentary and failed in spectacular and frankly offensive fashion. One can see though how these mistakes might emerge from the makers of the new film miscalculating how to use elements of the old film to make the new one work.

But in showing us what happens after the famous burning wicker man scene, the film shows that these mistakes are not just miscalculations in the remaking process, but are instead a complete misunderstanding of the original.

The unrated cut, which is the better cut of the film if, for no other reason than giving us the “not the bees” scene, ends basically where the original ended: the policeman burns inside the wicker man, credits roll. The whole tension with the ending, original and new is that you don’t know if the sacrifice works. You’re stuck with this in between place between traditional Christian values and pagan values, unsure of who to call hero and who to call villain, whose worldview is right or wrong. If anyone didn’t see the 2006 film in theatres, which is most everyone, you’ve probably seen this ending.

However, the original theatrical ending explains what happens after this and man do you immediately understand why they cut it. The movie jumps to 6 months after the wicker man burning and shows a couple of the women of the island seducing James Franco and Jason Ritter, implying that they will end up eventually doing the same thing to that they did to Nic Cage, having children with them, luring one to the island on false pretenses, and sacrificing him. The issue here: it undoes the ending of the film. As stated above, the terror of the Wicker Man’s ending is that you cannot tell who is right. What is happening is horrifying, but the man being burned is also not a great person and his worldview is not a positive one (though the 2006 movie does gloss over this quite a bit). To show that they are starting this whole seduction process again 6 months later means the sacrifice didn’t work. That’s it. We’re just dealing with a bunch of crazy women entrapping good policemen. There’s no social critique, no intrigue, no lingering doubts. In its attempt to basically do the ending of the Thriller video, showing that the horror continues on, they completely explode the film and show the complete incompetence of the whole endeavour.