Here's a weird thing I had been thinking of, one of things I do like about supernatural horror movies that it can end with a very big bang, with the apocalypses!

Demons, Carpenter's Apocalypse Trilogy, Return of the Living Dead, many, many more ends in a downer ending, the world is over, or soon will be, the joke is on the characters and the audience is in on it.

A story like this is kind of hard to pull off really, like I said in good versions of this it is a joke, the world ending is the punchline, while a bad version of this just sours not only your current story it will cause the audience to be cautious of future works, kind of an example is Alien 3/cubed where Newt* was carelessly killed off screen instead of, Will Smith's Version of I am legend and so on.

I kind of ran out of steam here, just thought it would be a good subject to talk about.

*I know there was so much wrong with Alien 3, Newt is a symptom of it but there would had been so many other ways to write her out of the story like have Ripley's life support malfunction and they couldn't wake her, or take Newt away by corporate goons or have Newt age in stasis…

I dunno… I'm not partial to those sorts of final endings, haha, they're just not me.
I find them anticlimactic.

I don't mind ambiguous endings. They can work nicely. But apocalyptic ends feel like someone flipping the game board.

I liked the original ending of army of darkness where Chad takes too much acid and ends up a century in the future.

lothar wrote:
I liked the original ending of army of darkness where Chad takes too much acid and ends up a century in the future.

Director's cut. There was supposed to be a post apocalyptic sequel. TV series went with the studio reshot ending.

I did the nuclear option in Attack_of_the_Robofemoids but knew that it wouldn't stop it and some
characters would come back for sequels being basically nuke proof. The whole description says indestructible so nukes won't stop it. It's a cop out and the whole story had an escalation by the defending humans against the Robofemoids.

I think it's fine to end a story with the End of the World if the “end of the world” is a relevant concern within the body of the story. So if the story is about emotionally coming to terms with the End of the World, or if the character is immortal or otherwise expects to live to see the End of the World, if the character is somehow responsible for or connected to the End of the World and the body of the story was about exploring that idea etc. etc.

Basically, if it's part of the story then great, if it's just tacked on at the end of a story that otherwise had nothing to with it, not so great.

One could argue that Warhammer 40k is a setting of perpetually ending the world. Stories like The war for Armageddon or even more so The siege of Vraks is about wars on global scales where the world is, if not entirely fucked, then in a next to untenable state of destruction and death toll.

Wether its having the Space Marines massacre the entire population and grind their cities to dust, as the people are being possessed by the chaos gods and their demons, or having to exterminatus a world becoming overtaken by the parasitic Tyranids, basically nuking the planet Death Star style. It works for that setting because it's Grimdark and in a Grimdark universe you don't pull punches.

I've stated before that I'm not a fan of that kind of setting per say, but I would lie if I said that there were no aspects or concepts in a setting like that I do find myself fascinated by. There is something to a story situation where there is no hope for the future and all sense of mercy and foregiveness are lost, yet you see the struggle and you also see this almost illuminating, raw emotional flare come bursting out to the scene from a dooming finale. I feel that sorrow and tradegy can have its own beuty when used effectively, just like joy and comedy can have its own beuty when used effectively.

Galerians: Ash, a playstation 2 game I played, is I think one example of a very tragic, everybody-dies-kind-of-plot that I couldn't help but be kind of moved by at the end, even though I wouldn't recommend playing the game itself since as a game it was very dull and lacking.

Also it features one of those characters that are written to just be this gigantic asshole that you're setup to hate so that when that character finally get his/her comeuppance it produces a cheap release of satisfaction (I absolutely HATE that sort of character writing! It's so manipulative, cheap and flat out abusive to the audience!)

But I found the ending, although there was an unlockable alternative ending that was a bit more hopeful for humanity, to be very emotionally moving in that it gave the villain, one with a very tragic backstory and a tormented existence, a chance to actually live for real (even if he is doing so in the ruins of a humanity who's extinction he instigated^^)

Andreas_Helixfinger wrote:
One could argue that Warhammer 40k is a setting of perpetually ending the world. Stories like The war for Armageddon or even more so The siege of Vraks is about wars on global scales where the world is, if not entirely fucked, then in a next to untenable state of destruction and death toll.

“Grimdark” is their house style.
I find that really limiting. I could understand if that was just the cultural “racial” outlook of the humans in that world, but EVERYONE has that same outlook, doesn't matter what species, or what people from where, across billions of worlds and quadrillions of people. So it's stupid and doesn't make sense -_-

In our own world we have an analogue of that in Christianity, which is obviously what inspired that part of Warhammer- the old pre-reformation era from the Crusades. Christianity wasn't “grimdark” per se, but at its heart it's a death cult in that the idea is that life on earth is only temporary and the only thing that really matters is the afterlife and eternal glorious salvation (or eternal torment), so that it doesn't really matter if you suffer or have a horrible life because things will be great when you die, so long as you're faithful.

Warhammer simplified that so that torment is succumbing to Chaos, and staying faithful is loyalty to the emperor. The other races have their own versions of that, apart from the Orcs.

For Christianity though it does have that “end of the world” built into it, because that's the time when everything ends and people finally get to live their “true life” in heaven for ever. That's a really strong cultural belief and it's influenced writers for over 1000 years. Which is why I'm wary of it in stories.

Other religions have their versions of it too… Famously Norse religion does, but that's more about a rebirth of the world and starting again than a final end and heaven.
Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are all related so they have similar beliefs about death…

Anyway, world ending ideas are central to culture… let alone the old pre-Christian ideas about world ending at wintertime and being reborn… easter and all that.

@Oz - Yeah, that's pretty much the case:/ The Orcs being the exception that they're just doing what they do for the cheer hell of it basically. They are one of the few comical elements of the entire brand. I love it how in the 40k setting they're basically capable of building a fully functional, or at least functional by their own standards, spaceship or battle robot out of any junk they can put together, by the psychic enforcement of their mere conviction that it will work, giving them this borderline cartoon character type of logic that only works for them. That's one particular element I find awesome.

I don't mind some end of the world stories, they just need to be done well. I've seen some stories ruined cos I can see it should be a world ender, but they gave it a suddenly happy ending instead which always feels ‘off’.

That said I don't really like doing such stories myself. But if I thought a story should end the world, I'd do it!