4. The Game (1997)
The Happy Ending... After realising that his brother has signed him up to participate in a mysterious "game" he didn't know he was playing in an attempt to get him to change his nasty ways, Nicholas Van Orton (played by Michael Douglas) has a sudden Scrooge-like transformation that sees him partying with friends, and finally learning to appreciate life. He talks to Christine, an actress who has been playing a role the entire time, and she offers to share a coffee with him before she boards her flight. Aw.
What We Really Needed... I understand the point of this movie is that Nicholas must change - that's what the story is about, and why the main character is put into through the game in the first place. But there's another part of me that thinks the ending is all too easy, especially for a David Fincher movie, where flaky scenes like this don't feel natural. I mean, there's no major reveal (you can guess what's going on from the start), and it's just so annoyingly "happy," almost as if a studio executive walked onto the set one day and demanded that they shot a party scene. The fact that Nicholas embraces the situation with a relatively easy going attitude doesn't seem particularly realistic to me (or true to his character), and that's mainly because the premise behind the events we've just witnessed seem, ultimately, far too ridiculous to really make any sense. I think this movie could've done with a quieter, more thoughtful ending, than this classically happy one. Even if there was a final aside where Nicholas contemplates the situation, or gets angry, or does anything but what goes on here. A shame.