Movies that betray their own message

[Eirik]

Skaboi's post on the thread on Road House made me think about a topic that bugs me: movies that present some high-minded philosophical ideal and then - in order to keep the audience's interest - go in exactly the opposite direction.

The worst offender I can think of is Jurassic Park III in which the audience gets saturated with "playing God is bad!  Dinosaurs are extinct and best left that way..."  and then three seconds later you get this big happy gushy scene where the paleontologist and the kid skip and prance about in a field with playful plant-eating brontosaurs.  Puke.

Same thing with The Postman.  The final scene has Costner deliver a heartfelt sermon about how there's been enough killing and the killing stops now and let's quit killing and start rebuilding.  Cue bad guy making a sudden lunge for Costner's back and BANG!  the villain is shot dead by an alert Costner disciple who fortunately missed the point of the sermon.

There is a whole littany of anti-gang life movies that fall back on the thrill of gang life too.  What other movies do this kind of 180?

[Velvet Brotha]

That is a brilliant observation. I have noticed the same trend in many films. You are indeed reffereing to a sort of formula that Hollywood film makers have been using for years now. Whether it be political or immoral propaganda, it has been used to sort of twist the views of the audience. After all... we're all mindless followers, right? ; )

Some films that come to mind are: Fatal Attraction, War Of The Roses, Twins, and Independance Day to name a few.

[jmc]

NATURAL BORN KILLERS has to be the champ, hands-down.

CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST is similar, but I don't think the director ever intended it to be otherwise.

[AndyC]

Not sure if this quite fits, but I just showed Glen or Glenda to my wife on the weekend, and remembered what a contradictory message it sends. On the one hand, it beats us over the head with the message that there is nothing weird about crossdressing, and that we should accept transvestites (but telling us repeatedly that they're not gay, which is just sick). Barbara also seems to accept Glen. Then she takes him to a shrink, and we get into a lenghty clinical examination of the root causes of the problem of transvestism, ending with Glen being cured and the couple living happily ever after.

I'm a little confused. Did somebody force Wood to add that ending?