Immediately after the film ended I thought to myself, 'that would have been so much more interesting if they had just left off that whole last scene'.
It was a classic case of the Hollywood tidy ending, the feel good ending, the everything is in it's right place so I can feel comfortable now ending.
Why not the ambiguous ending that keeps us scratching our heads and talking and guessing?
Am I the only one who feels this way?
Yeah I loved the movie but I wish it ended with Ellis looking at the girl, leaving us curious if Mud was dead or alive.
So many movies finish with a question mark hanging over the end these days. I half expected this film to finish like that when he got shot. I'm so glad it didn't.
The "what happened next? It's for the viewer to decide" ending is so overused these days it's almost a cliché!
It works really well in some films and provides some really interesting debate (Inception comes to mind), but in many others it feels almost like the script writer or director didn't know how to end it, so they "left the movie open" ("unfinished" would be another term!).
Lol what? That is not overused at all. If you can say the "what happened next" ending is used more than the happy ending...well you're just wrong.
shareIn general, you are right Trapper, but small budget, "indie" movies like Mud have "what happened next" endings much more often than big-budget Hollywood movies.
shareIMO..
Mud dies in gunfire at Ellis's place. Cops find his dead body and post gunfire inquiry, King and his rest men are fined. People believe that Mud was bad guy.
That could be a real life end. Its hard to believe these days that lead actor can dodge 15 rounds of bullet, ain't it?
They were shooting blindly behind the houseboat walls, they had no aim, most people can't shoot for scheisse anyway, and by the looks of it in the end, he did get shot jumping in the river.
shareAt least your confident of your opinion, even if you sound like an #ss.
shareI agree with Pioflite. The Hollywood ending used to be everthing wrapped up in neat little packages, but now they're all-kinds-of-loose-ends dangling. So often I'm left thinking, What? It ends here? So then apparently you're supposed to think about things, which is never bad, but maybe you're also supposed to supply your own ending. In some cases, it actually seems like laziness, or a fear of committing.
I said to myself when the movie was over, "I'm glad we got to know what happened." It was a "feel good" movie, but the likes of which I hadn't seen in a long time in an interesting film ... Disney movies not included. Remember, too, Ellis didn't know what happened. So if you look at things from Ellis's point of view, then you can imagine that things were left hanging.
There is the clip of Michael Shannon's character seeing a dead body floating by during the night right before the last scene of Tom and Mud on the boat (people with little fat don't float until they have been dead for a while). Whose body that is is deliberately left unclear. There are zero flashbacks in the movie, indicating that the second last scene wasn't one either. It could refer to Shannon having seen bodies floating by more than once in his life and it could thus have been linked to his statement about knowing what to save and what to leave alone. It could be seen as a sign to the viewer that Mud did not survive.
The last scene thus either is meant as reality (with the dead body just a diversion) or as a dream, maybe one Ellis had. Either way, love not working out (at least the partner-for-life kind) is one of the key themes running through the movie, however with the twist that there still is love in the world, like between Ellis and his parents (even between them with the father asking Ellis to be nice to his (ex)wife), or between Tom and Mud to some degree.
You watched that movie very carefully.
I was thinking that was Mud and that maybe Tom had found him and resuscitated him further down the river. Or that he was in some state of suspension from which he managed to recover; after all, the wound in his side might not have been too severe. Or that he was good at underwater escape sort of stuff. But I did think that if that were the case, he was awfully good at holding his breath.
Yes, I can see how this could be Ellis supplying an ending for himself. I hope that is not the case, or that reality happened to be the same as fantasy. Reality can be pretty tragic for a young teen. Ellis did seem to nurse the hope that, somehow, romantic love can survive in the world. I would hate to think of him pursuing the girls in his new apartment complex cynically, but that might explain why so many guys are players. Somewhere, somehow, romantic love has to work out. So someone has to be able to make it work or have it, find it, and maybe it still could have been someone like Ellis.
"The "what happened next? It's for the viewer to decide" ending is so overused these days it's almost a cliché"
Bingo.
I definitely agree, I couldn't carry on with my life if they didn't put that end scene in. Amazing how much emotion and passion characters can create in us.
shareI think that's what the story is telling us, actually. Michael Shannon's character saw a body float by at the end, and I believe that was meant to confirm Mud's death for us. It's just ambiguous enough to allow us to believe in the rest of the ending, which I think is really a fantasy that Ellis fabricates for himself - for the same reason we want to believe it's the real ending :)
shareWhat I expected was a surreal ending where we find out that Ellis was playing with neck bone on the island. He fell into the creek with the snakes, then began to hallucinate and invented "mud" an older version of himself. There are a lot of parallels between the two. Snakes, met the love of his life at the same age. His love doesn't want him.
Then in real life neck bone takes him to the hospital, shortly after he wakes up at home, his fake character"mud" is killed off, because Ellis recovers and finds out his parents love him very much and he doesn't need Mud
Then I rather have his body fished out of the river than such an open end that is also an instrumentalled thing (and would fit such a movie like a cliche). And not only in Hollywood.
I thought he was dead or dying (falling in the dirty river with such a wound).
I hoped he was alive but thats not probable... so I thought until the end. But I rather have it this way than yet another open to guess and eternal to discuss way of ending.
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Lincoln Lee: I lost a partner.
Peter Bishop: I lost a universe!
I agree! I was expecting it to end there and I was feeling optimistic that he was alive, then as Ellis walked toward his apartment just as I was expecting the movie to cut to black I thought no maybe not, and started thinking of the 'passing of the torch' metaphor, and thought Ellis is still young and has seen so much that he will grow up making smarter choices then Mud. For feeling like such an independent movie with big name actors attached to it, I wasn't quite expecting the "Hollywood ending", but I still enjoyed the film.
shareTo me Mud being dead would have been predictable, I was predicting it the whole movie. The whole point of the ending is that even if you get your heartbroken, the sun still rises the next day.
shareWell said. I was on similar thoughts, but could not express myself so good.
Hollywood Ending ? Pretty much of, but sometimes it is OK.
The whole point of the ending is that even if you get your heartbroken, the sun still rises the next day
Hollywood Ending ? Pretty much of, but sometimes it is OK
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I actually was thinking a good ending would him being actually bitten by the snake even though he thought he wasn't bitten.
The kids would be wondering what ever happened to him.
He ended up making it back to the boat, leaving her behind, going downstream, after all the adrenaline is gone, he finds he was bitten on his leg, worry-some look on his face, looks out to the river, sun sets, and he smiles one last time.
Credits roll.
That's a pretty nice ending man. I definitely could have dug that.
shareTotally agree with you on this ending and alternative would have been to fade out as they were showing the boat under power going down the river.
alternative would have been to fade out as they were showing the boat under power going down the river.That's pretty much the ending I was hoping for, either the boat driving away, or the boys finding the boat gone and wondering if Mud took it. share
Nothing Hollywood about that....
shareI felt the same way! I was like I would have much preferred to him have been left mysteriously vanished then showed him at the end.
share[deleted]
Actually, I interpreted it as he WAS dead and the ending IS ambiguous....
shareThis is just a guess, but I'll bet the epilogue scene on the boat was filmed as a pick-up after Lionsgate tested the film with the more downbeat and ambiguous ending, and the audience gave them a negative response. Anyone know for sure?
shareThis movie was fully shot and finished before Lionsgate even came into the picture.
shareA Hollywood ending would have been Ellis' parents staying together, their home not getting torn down, King shooting himself and Mud getting together with Juniper. I don't think a downbeat and ambiguous ending fits the story. So much of the story is about things falling apart but in the end it being for the best.
shareI thought the whole "Hollywood Ending" complaint would be evened out by the fact that Ellis' parents don't stick together at the end, when there are some signs pointing to their reconciliation.
It actually didn't seem too outlandish that Mud survives. He gets shot, and manages to swim to the other side of the river to Tom. Tom takes him and flees immediately for the boat. Then, Tom treats his wound.
I want to die in my sleep, like my uncle. Not screaming and yelling like his passengers.
I wouldn't call it a "Hollywood ending", Mud still is a marked man with the goons and wanted by the police. He's ALWAYS gonna be looking over his shoulder. 7/10
Look at the night sky, where does it end?
i thought the cops and goons would assume mud is dead in the water....
i wasnt too fussed by the ending. maybe it would have been better to see the old guy sailing the boat out and we're unsure if mud was in it!?
Except that earlier Mud made a comment about needing a boat that could handle the open sea, here we are, they've reached the sea. They're leaving the country aren't we supposed to assume?
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