The Ending
i've watched it a thousand times and everytime i'm still going 'run faster! faster!' and then 'noooo!'. everytime.
shareYeah, great ending. I saw it for the first time when I was ten, and it really shocked me.
shareYeah, it shocked me, too, because in the book, Ryan made it to the train! Why do you suppose they decided to change that in the movie and have him killed instead?
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Most decent World War II "Bunch of guys on a mission" movies don't do well with sequels anyway. "Force 10 from Navarone" and "The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission" both come to mind. I can't imagine what the sequel would've been... "Von Ryan's Limited Stop Train"? "Von Ryan's #4 train to Yankee Stadium"?
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Von Ryan's Return, which was the sequel to the novel.
And for what it's worth, Force 10 from Navarone didn't begin life as some boneheaded idea by a studio trying to cash in on the first movie's success. It was an actual sequel novel written by Alistair MacLean. I'm unsure how many people realize this though. (The book is better, incidentally, mostly because it has better continuity with The Guns of Navarone.)
"I mean, really, how many times will you look under Jabba's manboobs?"
Von Ryan's Return, which was the sequel to the novel.
And for what it's worth, Force 10 from Navarone didn't have to suck. It was an actual sequel novel written by Alistair MacLean. One that was pretty decent. The problem was the filmmakers had some... baffling ideas when it came to what parts of the story to change.
"I mean, really, how many times will you look under Jabba's manboobs?"
Yeah, it shocked me, too, because in the book, Ryan made it to the train! Why do you suppose they decided to change that in the movie and have him killed instead?I had heard or read somewhere that Sinatra insisted Ryan dies. And by insisted I mean he wouldn't do the film unless Ryan died at the end. share
Sinatra didn't want Von Ryan to survive, because he knew that meant there'd be no sequel. Sinatra hated sequels.
sharePretend for a minute that NOT EVERYONE HAS SEEN THIS FILM YET ! Thanks for the spoiler you guys ruined my night, was just about to watch this one !
shareYou do realize the movie is 50 years old and you're complaining in a topic that's six years old, right? The moratorium on spoilers is not infinite. What, no one is allowed to discuss the endings or twists in older movies (e.g., The Usual Suspects or The Empire Strikes Back) on the off-hand chance you never saw them?
Just in case, I wouldn't go to the Citizen Kane page, either.
As that great philosopher Bugs Bunny said, "Something tells me I shoulda stood in bed."
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Not to mention YOU come to a thread entitled "The Ending" and expect NO spoilers. Might want to search around for those missing crayons, pal.
"Bullets! My one weakness. How did you know?"
i can remember watching it with my dad when I was 9 years old and I turned and looked at him completely stunned by the ending and he was crying. He was a world war 2 and Korean War vet who could barely say to me that was part of war.
i'll never forget that moment and when he approached me five years later to go see Patton I said no because of this very memory of watching my dad cry. never having been in a war I would never even begin to understand what its like to watch a friend killed in front of you but I'm sure all our veterans remember it like it was yesterday and do thier damndest to suppress the memory. war movies like this and many others (saving private von ryan) must be difficult to watch by any combat veteran. God Bless them all. The living, the dead and our active troops.
"...Bless them ALL, the long and the short and the tall!"
thanks for sharing this story. we both had a similar experience with our fathers at the same age. in my case my father never saw action in either WWII (he was too young) or Korea (he was married and had a child, me). but my father remained a weekend warrior Naval reservist for 35 years and i think secretly waited for the chance.
i don't think these early war movies come as close as Saving Private Ryan's reality of war. i still remember being totally overcome with fear during the beach landing scenes and saying to myself i don't think i'm going to watch this movie ever again while i was riveted to the theater seat. i did of course get over that fear and have watched SPR a few times since.
i agree with you that we owe our veterans and enormous debt and i can fully understand the difficulty watching these war movies must present.
"only one food for the rest of my life? That's easy, cherry-flavored Pez. No question about it."
I watched it for the first time today and you could see it coming but it was still sad that he got shot! I wish he had made it!
real human being and a real hero
It seemed to be dramatic irony. Trevor Howard's voice over at the end while Ryan lies dead, 'I told you once Ryan if only one escapes it's a victory', is the irony in that all but one man made it yet it felt like anything but a victory.
Yours sincerely, General Joseph Liebgott
how do you figure that all but one man made it? did you notice how many died prior to those who got away at the end?
shareI expressed myself wrongly I admit. What I meant was Maj Fincher was always on Ryan's back about one man getting way being a victory. My point is that the one man who believed they could escape en masse is the one who didn't get away.
I've had a lot of sobering thoughts in my time Del Boy, it's them that started me drinking!
I have to laugh at people who proclaim, 50 years after the movie came out, "I saw it coming".
News Flash: the movie was made for audiences of 1965. Not for people who could have encountered at any point a half century's worth of coverage of the movie or of other movies either directly or indirectly influenced by it. There's even a bit of influence on the ending of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, if you care to think about it.