whats up with the ending?
whats the point of having the girl die at the end? just seemed silly and tacked on for no real reason.
shareI've read that in those days, much of Hollywood would not approve of an interracial romance ending happily (she's Sumerian, although looking more Caucasian, and was) and he's Euro-American. So they had to kill her off. Yet that ending actually goes against most of the period's standard happy ending ("The Incredible Shrinking Man" 1957 is another example), making this stand out.
shareExcept 'shrinking man's' ending was good and this wasn't. I would have preferred a happy ending with the hero and the girl living happily ever after, because this made no sense at all.
shareYou seem to be correct. I understand Cynthia Patrick years later gave an interview in which she stated that the original ending had her and the two male stars walking off the mountain together. Believe it or not, an executive got his panties into a bunch worrying about the miscegenation implications of this ending and the three actors were called back for a reshoot in which Patrick is rather casually and pointlessly killed off.
It seems too incredible to be true, but apparently is.
I thought the ending was stupid. Too bad the movie isn't available with the alternate ending.
shareI thought the ending was stupid, too. However, I thought they were trying to bury all evidence of the sumerians so it would be hard for anybody to believe them since the mountain was extremely treacherous to climb. All the two guys had left at the end of the movie was a story; nothing to bring back and show the shirpas and everybody what they found.
signed,
"Buy breasts where you work or bank!"
All the two guys had left at the end of the movie was a story; nothing to bring back and show the shirpas and everybody what they found ... That's all they would have had anyhow. The woman would not have been taken seriously if she had spoken of her life below. The ending was very stupid and pointless.
shareYou guys all miss the big themes of the movie with your shallow assessments of the ending. This society was guilty of slavery, intolerance, and a pre-Christian pagan religion that used human sacrifice. These people were an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. They needed to be wiped off the face of the Earth. They should've been destroyed by the great flood, and were living on borrowed time.
ALL traces of this civilization needed to be erased, even the girl at the end, sadly.
But they spent the entire movie establishing she was different from the others, genetically (i.e. via inheritance) as well as morally. They wouldn't have done that if they intended for her the same fate as the others - they could have had her heroically sacrifice herself underground if that's what they wanted.
And the idea various people have been pushing here that the moviemakers wanted no evidence left at the end of the story also fails - they've got the entire above-ground complex to excavate (which the film could have portrayed as being obliterated in the final quake, but didn't) and if people are going to excavate that they might as well go spelunking down a few hundred feet to check out the rest of the civilization.
Was she morally different? She couldn't even grasp the concept that she was "free" and not a slave. I think if she had white pastie skin, she would be the same as the rest. She had the same values as the rest of the people in her society. The fact that she was physically different only opened her up to new ways of thinking, it doesn't mean she was morally different.
shareI really hope your post aren't serious. So what, the whole repenting and instant forgiveness thing wouldn't work for her? She had to be killed in your narrow view instead of baptism and getting a clean slate?
As far as being a slave and failing to grasp the concept of being free, there are stories from the Civil War of slaves who continued to live on the plantation because they knew no other life.
I'm going to just make an assumption and take the point of view that these post Xnet95 are parody and nothing more.
And if they aren't......well, it doesn't speak well of our society that people such as yourself are out there.
"I leave Symbols to the Symbol minded" George Carlin
Thanks for judging me, you must be a Christian. I'll try to live up to your expectations in my next life.
shareWhat a crock. The ending was originally the girl living. A studio exec was worried about interracial marriage so they had to change it so she died. None of that existential bull you came up with had anything to do with it.
share