I’ve been thinking about endings lately, and what makes a good one…
Of course, on a technical level, the ending of your film should wrap up your plot — and wrap up the problem you’re tackling. You might wrap up your plot very neatly, like in Die Hard, where the John McClane kills all the terrorists occupying Nakatomi Tower. But you should also open up new questions — now that John McClane (Bruce Willis) has defeated these terrorists, what next? Will he be able to patch things up with his estranged wife, will he be able to be the father he wants to be?
Lasting films typically tie up the key plot elements of a film, but leave some room for what happens next. At the end of Everything Everywhere All at Once (no big spoilers here), you wonder how the relationship between Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) and her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), will evolve. Will Evelyn spend more time in the failing laundromat, continue courting her ‘husband’ in the glamorous mulitverse of Wong Kar-Wai, or wile away the evenings nibbling at Jamie Lee Curtis’ succulent hot dog fingers? The possibilities of what happens after the story ends continually draw us back, long after the film has ended.
To be sure, the plot needs to be wrapped up enough that the audience can feel some movement in the story — some change from the beginning to the end of this journey, but even a film like Star Wars: A New Hope, which ends with the very solid conclusion of the destruction of the Death Star, followed by a gushing coronation of our heroes, still asks some questions: what romances will bloom between Luke and Leia, Leia and Han Solo? Where is Darth Vader? What will the Empire do next?
If our stories reflect who we are, then the sad state of humanity is that — usually — our issues are never fully resolved. Even as we get better at occupying our mortal meat sacks, humans stumble over the same issues over and over, throughout the millenia. We are eternal works in progress, and we never really fix ourselves: we try, fail and learn — over and over again. So why should our stories be any different? An ending which truly wraps up every character flaw and plot point is likely going to feel suspect, some part of it is a lie. If we want to really connect with an audience, we need to understand that this ending is just one stop in the journey of life, there is more to come.
Leave some ground open for the audience to imagine what the future will hold for these characters and this world — invite your viewers to imagine what challenges lay ahead, so the audience aks themselves, “what happens next?”