MovieChat Forums > Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) Discussion > The movie's ending compared to the one i...

The movie's ending compared to the one in the book


The movie and the book end pretty abruptly. It's obvious that the book's ending wouldn't have looked to well in the movie, but I was pretty confused by the way they transfered it to the movie. It seemed as if it just ended. Then I finally got. Billy's trapped under a giant clock. He's unstuck in time.

That kind of redeems the ending, but it's still not great, IMO.

reply

When i saw this movie the last week on TV, i was a little bit confused too, especially at the end... but it did not end really, because it has no start and no end, it contains of many loops trough the time, so the end was only a final cut or so.
I am wondering, if Billi know, that he is unstuck in time and go to and fro in his livetime, whe did he don't try to change something, for example, the death of his friend in Dresden? Or his own death? But perhaps he had already tried it over and over, and it don't work (this lead us to the next question: When he tried it, why did he not experience his tries again and again too?).


"What happened mother? Why did we all run?"
"Man... was in the forest."

reply

It's explained by the aliens that there is no free will and every moment in history is, will always be and always has been. Billy is aware of going through all those different moments in his life over and over again, but he can't change a thing.

Just curious, are you from Germany, because I think the movie was on "Das Vierte" or "Kabel 1" a week ago.

reply

You would have to read the book. Just a couple of examples of it would be when the aliens talk about how they know how the world will end. When Billy asks them why they don't stop it from happening they go "But that's the way it always happens, always will happen, and always did happen." Or when they talk about dead people they simply say that at some other moment in time they are alive. Everything has already happened, probably billions of times over. The universe must work in that way. It would be like if you knew your mom would be hit by a train at 4 o'clock tomorrow. You could go to that train and try and push it off the tracks all you wanted but in the end that train would still take off and kill your mother. You trying to push it off the tracks yourself won't have made any difference. That train was always going to take off and always did take off. Trying to change it would have been pointless.

You seem a decent fellow, I hate to kill you.
You seem a decent fellow too, I hate to die.

reply