6 Happy Endings That Accidentally Screwed The Movie's Hero

We have previously pointed out how many movies only have happy endings because the film doesn't show us what happened after the credits rolled (and don't get us started on Big).

The problem is that 90 percent of the movie is spent piling challenges in front of the main character, only to try to resolve them all in the last 10 percent. Well, as these characters are about to find out, life doesn't work that way ...

#6. The Survivors From Predator Will Have Some Explaining to Do

In one of the most brilliantly insane cases of genre-bending since From Dusk Till Dawn, Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and some war buddies are sent out into the Guatemalan jungle to fight a bunch of rebels. The mission goes pretty smoothly until an invisible alien shows up and kills everyone.

Which, if we remember our history right, was basically the Korean War.

The Ending:

Everyone, that is, but Arnold and a female POW. Arnie defeats the Predator, who detonates himself with a self-destruct mechanism/suicide bomb. Meanwhile, Arnie and the girl escape in a helicopter and the good guys win.

But After the Movie's Over ...

So ... when Arnold is in called to recap the situation to his superiors later, how the hell is he supposed to explain what happened to his team?

"I want an explanation without the words 'alien' or 'sudden river of acid'."

If he tells them it was an invisible alien, it doesn't paint a great picture of his mental stability. There is no sign the Predator was there other than a huge crater in the jungle. Yes, Arnold has the girl to back him up. But which is more likely, that a killer alien showed up on Earth, or that this crazy professional killer 1) murdered his squad and then 2) intimidated this woman into going along with his idiotic alibi?

We were already dialing for a chopper before we realized he wasn't in the room with us.

We know what you're thinking: Arnold could just lie and say the rebels killed everybody. But he didn't do that; in the second sequel, Predators, one of the characters tells the group that the only survivor of a 1987 Guatemalan mission gave a detailed description of the alien. He doesn't say what happened after the guy gave said description, but how could it have been anything other than jail or a mental institution?

"NO ONE WILL EVER BELIEVE YOOOOOOU!"

Remember, Arnold's character, Dutch, is a gun for hire who does borderline illegal missions with a rag-tag group of even more questionable comrades. If you're hearing this story, you're going to assume one of two things: Either Dutch snapped from PTSD and slaughtered his crew because he thought they were aliens, or else the team got into some argument over a game of cards or who had the biggest biceps and murdered each other (and then Dutch went crazy).

Who needs cards when you have rippling sexual tension?

Either way, there's no way society is going to allow this huge, delusional, finely tuned killing machine to ever again sniff anything resembling freedom.

#5. The Little Girls of Kill Bill and Kick Ass Have No Future

We lump both of these movies together for a reason. Both follow a female main character out for vengeance against a crime syndicate. Both achieve this goal through wholesale, indiscriminate slaughter. One is full of snappy Tarantino-penned dialogue, while the other features Nicolas Cage as a Batman analogue with a mustache.

One of the sanest moments of his career.

And in both cases, the slaughter revolves around little girls. In Kick Ass it's the 11-year-old Hit Girl, and in Kill Bill it's the young daughter of the Bride, Uma Thurman's character.

The Bride earns custody of her daughter by killing the girl's father and every single person he knows. Hit Girl sees her own father tortured and burned to death in front of her.

The Ending:

Kick Ass ends with Hit Girl happily going to school like a normal kid, smiling as she beats the shit out of a pair of bullies right as the credits roll. Kill Bill ends with the Bride weeping with joy and relief, while her daughter peacefully watches TV in the next room. All is well!

"Boy, I hope Daddy comes back from his vacation soon."

But After the Movie's Over ...

Let's start with the obvious: Everybody is going to jail.

Hit Girl and the Bride kill more people between them than some tin-pot dictators, and they do it leaving behind multiple messy crime scenes, including several settings where they were either on camera or where you'd expect there to be cameras (or at least witnesses).

Um, there was probably a janitor or something.

With Hit Girl, think about her connection to the title character of Kick Ass and his incredibly high level of media exposure (culminating in the criminal-massacre finale that's entirely caught on worldwide webcast). How long can it be before the authorities connect him and Hit Girl with one of the worst massacres their city has ever seen? In the eyes of the law, it doesn't matter that the victims were all drug dealers. What matters is that Kick Ass killed a prominent businessman with a freaking bazooka. At any point does anyone involved take steps to prevent evidence or witnesses? And this was all done while wearing superhero costumes the witnesses will easily pick out of a lineup.

Subtle!

The Bride's trial would be even more open and shut; she carries out her vengeance with the typical Tarantino level of subtlety, and she doesn't even hide her identity beneath a half-mask. Who knows how many people saw her come and go from her various rampages while wearing a "can't miss it" yellow jumpsuit. Oh, and her murder spree involved all of her former associates and the father of her daughter. Hers will literally be the first door the cops knock on.

So Hit Girl is going into the juvenile justice system and the daughter of the Bride is going into foster care (her father being dead and all). That, or they both spend their lives on the run, using fake identities, always living in fear of a justice system eager to get literally dozens of unsolved killings off their books. This isn't like skipping out on some parking tickets here.

Holy crap. Bear with us, but we reckon we have a theory here.

And then we have the emotional trauma. Hit Girl had absolutely no childhood beyond learning how to murder people. In addition to the fact that she's had none of the normal upbringing, role models or interaction with peers that would let her develop as a stable human being, she also has the memories of dozens of murder victims that will start weighing in on her once she learns to develop empathy. And no, these weren't self defense -- all of this was a mission of revenge. At one point, Hit Girl slices apart a woman in an evening dress as she tries to get away, simply because she was hanging out with the bad guys Dad hated.

"If I kill enough women, maybe Mom will come back."

The Bride's daughter? She was raised by murderers, then rescued by another murderer who murdered the first murderers. That's a hell of a knot for some future therapist to untangle.

#4. Westley From The Princess Bride Will Be Hunted Down

The Princess Bride is a lot like '80s pro wrestling, what with all the ridiculous one-liners, choreographed fight scenes and Andre the Giant. There are so many charming lines and adorable moments that you can watch it five times before you realize it even has a plot.

There are literally 93 minutes of film that don't include this scene.

Basically, an evil prince is about to marry the beautiful Buttercup. In reality, he intends to kill her and blame it on a neighboring kingdom to justify a war. It's up to the dashing pirate Westley to swoop in and save the day.

The Ending:

Westley and his cohorts break into the castle. Even though Westley is too injured to duel with the evil prince, he uses his wits to get the prince to surrender. The good guys tie him to a chair, and Westley escapes with his girl.

Excuse us, we have something unmanly in our eyes.

But After the Movie's Over ...

"Evil Prince" isn't the guy's name; he's royalty. He has a kingdom, and guards, and an army. So Westley kind of picked a bad time to mend his swashbuckling ways and spare the evil prince's life. It's not like you can just break into the White House, strap the president to a chair and carry the first lady over the lawn and just get away with it. Especially if the president knows your name and where you live, which the prince does.

How far can we even reasonably assume Westley and his band of adventurers could have possibly gotten? The only statement the movie makes on the matter is that, when the sun came up, "They knew they were safe," which only makes sense if the prince was also a vampire.

Or a massive World of Warcraft fan.

But let's be optimistic for a moment and imagine that Westley and Buttercup will be able to defy impossible odds and escape unharmed. That definitely involves disappearing -- going away, changing their names, etc. Well, remember that the whole point of the prince's plan was to kill the princess and frame the neighboring kingdom for the crime. So he got what he wanted, right?

"So the moral is, if your foe has all the money and power, you can never win. Night, junior."