Cabin in the Woods review

[Winter]

I do want to note that I'm not against Bittersweet or Downer Endings or stories that undo all the future good the heroes accomplished. Hamlet's ending is still one of the best in the Shakespeare canon in my opinion, I feel that the direction the Harry Potter series took by showing how bad things can get was a great choice story wise as it showed just how big of a threat Voldemort was and The Empire Strikes Back wouldn't have been nearly as powerful if it ended with the heroes winning and revealed that Vader was lying.

My issue is when the ending just let the heroes accomplish anything and render the rest of the story pointless. Hamlet's main goal was to kill and expose his unclear for the monster he was and to ensure that all those who added him were also brought to justice, which he achieved at the end at the cost of his own life and several of the people he loved but is able to insure that Horatio doesn't follow the same fate and lives to tell his tale. While Harry lost several people he loved in the end he brought down Voldemort which is what they were all fighting for from the start and remembered the good people they were from the start. And Empire had Han and Leia admit their love for one another, Luke resisting the call of the Dark Side and the escaping and vowing to save Han from Jabba.

One series I'm having very mixed feelings about right now is the most resent version of Tomb Raider as the whole point of the first game was Lara saving Sam from Himiko but in the tie-in comics Himiko managed to succeed in transferring a bit of her soul over to Sam and while Lara and Sam were able to get rid of Himiko once and for all the two have yet to mend their broken relationship which makes the first plot of the game seem pointless as Lara seems to have lost the person she loves most while being stuck with Jonah who radically changes personality game to game for no real reason.

Now the door to Sam returning has been left open and her and Lara rebuilding their relationship is something that could fill a whole game so I'm holding out hope but for right now it's really frustrating that Sam is just warming up the bench while her spot is being filled in by a character I find to be less interesting.

But on to the Cabin, ME3, AC3 and FC5 in all these endings your ultimate goal is never really accomplished and what's worse is that they make the situation worse for really stupid reasons and lazy writing. In Cabin the leads not only don't escape but doom the world because Marty felt like being petty. In ME3 Shepard either kills several of her own allies, becomes the very thing she is trying to stop, forces everyone to change into what the Reapers want them to be or loses for sticking to her guns. AC3 Desmond dies after being told a BS story about how he will become the next Christ Figure and kills himself after learning nothing and not growing as a character throughout the series. FC5 is all about trying to save Hope County only for all the endings to be, lose HC to the bad guys, lose HC to the bad guys or everything ending in a nuclear fire.

At least with TR Sam has grown and there's a chance of her returning so we can see more of her relationship with Lara but these endings, if the ending undoes it all then what is the point of going on this adventure to begin with. Nothing has changed, no one has grown and the villains win the the end because of short shortsightedness on everyone's part.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

In Cabin the leads not only don't escape but doom the world because Marty felt like being petty.

Thank you. You cut to the quick of what I struggled to articulate. He's not noble. He's not defiant. He's a "fuck the system" stoner with all the short-sightedness and apathy that implies. He's the kind of person who listens to Rage Against the Machine while completely missing the point of their music.

[Strejdaking]

The ending makes sense from the thematic perspective (which is as much of a concern with works of fiction as anything else), they are rejecting the shlock torture porn horror for something new. But yeah, hard to see it as any kind of moral choice, which I believe Whedon argued it was. I don't think people are obligated to always choose the pragmatic option-like, if a bunch of nazis tell you to shoot a baby or they'll wipe out a whole town, you are not a bad person for not doing it. But they aren't nobly sticking to their guns and refusing to compromise, they are dooming the world because if they get fucked over, so should be everyone else. The Organization may be sadistic assholes, but is them murdering a bunch of people by proxy regularly to prevent the end of the world that much worse than murdering everyone by proxy out of spite? You could say it would just be delaying the inevitable, but do we know that? Ancient Ones deliberately sabotaging their plans is just a theory, for all we know, it really does just take few schoolgirls with power friendship to fight their creations.

[Fianna]

I always saw the ending as more of "I am too damn tired to give a shit about this" moment.

[Beastro]

But yeah, hard to see it as any kind of moral choice, which I believe Whedon argued it was. I don't think people are obligated to always choose the pragmatic option-like

But they aren't nobly sticking to their guns and refusing to compromise, they are dooming the world because if they get fucked over, so should be everyone else.

It's what saw it as and why I find the show repugnant as it looks upon the symbolism of sacrifice, especially self-sacrifice, and sneers it's nose at it nihilistically (As in any system that demands that of even one person deserves to fall, which ignores the fact that that is what life is about despite the comfortable barrier we Moderns have placed between it and us).

I always saw the ending as more of "I am too damn tired to give a shit about this" moment.

There's an element of that there, but it's more "If no one gets out of life alive then we might as well end it all now".

Hamlet's ending is still one of the best in the Shakespeare canon in my opinion, I feel that the direction the Harry Potter series took by showing how bad things can get was a great choice story wise as it showed just how big of a threat Voldemort was and The Empire Strikes Back wouldn't have been nearly as powerful if it ended with the heroes winning and revealed that Vader was lying.

My issue is when the ending just let the heroes accomplish anything and render the rest of the story pointless.

I've heard the opinion kicking around that this is why ASoIaF won't and couldn't be finished. At it's heart it's too cynical and nihilistic in its outlook to pull out of the nadir it had dropped in, Martin simply can't do the archetypal "Darkest before the dawn" structure, because he personally sees no dawn coming. At the same time though, he's unwilling to bite the bullet and end things driving home that point to wrap things up, so he simply dropped it.

I have a feeling the show ended so badly by trying to be true to the spirit of the books, but attempting to walk a middle path between it and an ideal ending that just wound up pissing everyone off.

[pilight]

They should have given the film a more ambiguous ending.

Dana & Marty have no reason to believe the director is telling the truth when she tells the story of the ancient ones. The facility has misled them, drugged them, sent creatures to attack them, killed their friends. Lying to them would be nothing. So instead of some stoner nonsense about how humanity deserves to die, they sit on the steps and talk about how insane the director was and how committed to putting on a good show the facility is as the Earth shaking continues. There's an exceptionally loud rumble and cut to black and start the credits. It's up to the viewer to decide whether the ancient ones really exist or it's just a cover story for a weird kind of serial killer.

[PapaPalpatine]

Logical or not, I don't blame Marty for making the choice he did. If it were my head on the proverbial chopping block in that moment, my response to the Director would be something like this:

"If you expect me to be a good little lamb and hop up on the altar, you too must make a sacrifice; namely you must be still and allow me to kill you where you stand. Otherwise, you can die in vain and change you're middle name to 'Fucking' for all I care."