END THIS MOVIE

Let's get one thing straight: people who bitch about the ending to the "Lord of the Rings" movies have a disgusting bowl full of smog and maggots where their soul used to be. I can remember being the theater watching "Return of the King" in 2003, marvelling at the sheer scope of the film, at how perfectly Jackson interweaved the epic and the intensely personal. It was that rare circumstance of a filmmaker validated before the film was even out - "Rings" had already gotten him two nominations for Best Director and upped the New Zealand film box office by about a billion percent, so if he wanted to make the damn thing three and a half hours long, well, by all means, Peter. What I felt most of all was something so rare in movies - the desperate hope that it didn't have to end. I could've stood for fifty more endings - god knows that Tolkien provided them.

"Lord of the Rings" gets a pass - because it is an epic, because it captured the imagination of the world for three mesmerizing installments spread out over the years, because nobody - not the fans, not the studio, not the filmmakers who devoted half a decade to it - wanted it to end.

And yet, it started a terrifying trend in blockbuster Hollywood. Movies just don't fucking end anymore. They reach the climax, the point of highest tension, the moment at which, whether the movie is good or just really loud, everyone in the theater is jacked up on a mental high... and then, tension resolved, the movie just slowly slough away. It's not that everything ends happily - we're used to that by now. It's that everything ends really, truly, ridiculously happy, in no uncertain terms, let us explain this to you in bold lettering again and again and again.

Take Spider-Man 3, not a very good movie by any stretch of the imagination, the most disappointing sequel-to-threequel quality differential since "Empire Strikes Back" to "Ewok Treehouse Dance Party." Crappy-Assed Spoiler Alert: Harry "New Goblin" Osborn sacrifices himself to save Peter, secret-service-on-the-president style. Like all men who sacrifice themselves nobly, he manages to keep breathing long enough for Spidey to dispatch Venom and have a tearful exchange with Sandman, who explains that he was only a criminal in order to save his sick daughter. Spidey forgives Sandy for killing his uncle, at which point Sandy blows away. Spidey runs over to dying Harry. Harry: "I'm dying." Spidey and Mary Jane, in unison: "Don't Die, Harry!" Harry: "But I must." Cue tears from everyone except the audience. In the background, the sun rises over New York City. The score swells. And we are not finished.

We're off to a cemetery - remarkable, how much time movie Spider-Man spends at the cemetery - where we see everyone looking sincerely sad for Harry Osborn, certainly the least villainous screen villain since the fat guy with the mustache and the chainmail tank top in "Commando." Not finished. Cue narration from Tobey Maguire. "Whatever comes our way, whatever battle we have raging inside us, we always have a choice... its the choices that make us who we are, and we can always choose to do what's right." If I wanted the deeper themes of a mundane storyline beat into my skull with deadpan narration, I'd watch "Grey's Anatomy." Hell, even "Grey's Anatomy" has sex and drugs. All Spiderman has is... love.

Which we're reminded of, again, in the last last scene - Spidey goes to see his lady love Mary Jane, singing in a nightclub. They are reunited - not quietly, mind you, but with looks of desperate longing, and a tearful hug. Final fadeout.

Bleh. Remember how Spider-Man 2 ended? Mary Jane in a wedding dress at the doorway, "Go Get 'Em Tiger," Spidey thwipping away? THAT is an ending. You reach the climax - they're together finally! - and then you're through. Ernest Lehman, who wrote the perfect ending for Hitchcock in "North by Northwest," would be so proud. Sure, there were some groaner lines - "I've always been standing in your doorway" - but dammit, the kids had spirit! They talked! And damn, they kissed. Not here. They tastefully hug, and tastefully dance back and forth.

Too many big movies this year suffer from this ending malaise. Sometimes its the weepy "love will conquer all" ending. The latest "Harry Potter" was dark, weird, and terse - the shortest of the movies, made from the longest of the books. Until the endless last few minutes, when Harry telling Ron and Hermione that the greatest power in the world is love. Other times it's the final-narration obvious-juggernaut - see Transformers, with Optimus Prime winking his five hundred brown eyelid as he states that, with humans, there is "more than meets the eye." (The tenth time that particular line comes in the movie - was anyone else hoping that Bay would get 50 Cent to release a rap remix of the cartoon theme?) "300" ends with another big big speech as we see a lot of big big Spartans do a big big charge straight to the screen. Know what would've been an awesome ending? Leonidas' corpse, grinning. Know what's a lame ending? The thirteenth lead from "Lord of the Rings" giving a sub-Crispin's Day speech about saving the world from "mysticism and tyranny."

If "The Maltese Falcon" were made today, Bogart would have a five-minute speech about "the stuff dreams are made of." If "Gone with the Wind" were made today, there'd be another scene at the end of Scarlett finding Rhett and not saying anything, just dancing with him while the scene fades out. Fine, neither of those movies could be made today. What about "Raiders of the Lost Ark?" Good ending, darkly funny, twisty, straight to the point. Indiana Jones makes no speeches. Marion offers to buy him a drink. Ark gets put away in a storehouse. Bam. Or hell, what about Die Hard? "I gotta be here for New Year's!" Genius. Die Hard 4 came close... and yet, right there, at the end, there just had to be that extra little touchy feely line. 'That's why you're the guy," McClane says to nerdy little sidekick, eliciting groans from everyone over 11 in the audience. It's just a little bit too much.

That's the bad things about all these endings, really - they're not bad, they just go a little bit too far. See also: every movie Spielberg's made since "Schindler's List," finding just the right ending and then going for an extra couple minutes: precogs in a warm mountain cabin in "Minority Report," leaves falling on a mysteriouly undestroyed street in Boston in "War of the Worlds," saluting the gravestone in "Saving Private Ryan"... take your pick. Steven. We love your movies. Just end the damn things, already.