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Man, these are some tough questions!

When I think of happy endings, I think everything worked out for the good–which can sometimes include some sad events, just like in life–and I think everything worked out the way it was supposed to. When I think of cliche endings…I guess mostly I think cheesy, lack of depth. Also, I think cliche doesn’t necessarily mean happy. You can have a cliche tragic ending, too. It’s a stereotypical ending, something that hits all of the generalizations and fails to provide a deeper meaning.

Hallmark comes to mind. Their film formula is always happy, and predictable–I mean you can even time the things and find the same pattern!–but it’s more than that, they don’t ever have any depth to them. Sometimes they try, but just when you think they could make it mean more, they only expose the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. On the other hand, I just recently rewatched the 2005 King Kong film, and it didn’t feel cliche at all! They added depth to their characters, to the theme, and to the plot. It was well-balanced, beautifully filmed, and excellently acted. But the storyline itself improved upon the previous renditions. It didn’t fall into any cliches, at least in my opinion.

Some of my favorite endings, hmm…well, I loved Ella Enchanted, as previously mentioned. Oh! I also really liked Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy. It didn’t end the way you expected it to at all; it was rather clever, I thought. Oh, her The Goose Girl had a “predictable” ending to some degree, but it was so well done that it didn’t matter. By the time you got to the end, you were rooting for that ending. It seemed like everything was going to end poorly and there was no way out, but because of the characters and because of the circumstances, you really, really wanted that happy ending. Song of the Sparrow ended really well. You know, I really like stories that tie everything together neatly. I like endings that address all loose ends and that are earned, like @missfaeriekaiti said.

Hmm, the endings I don’t like are usually the ones where the resolution is sloppy, incomplete, or unjust. I really get up in arms over an undeserved ending. For instance, I remember this one movie I watched with my mom when I was younger. It was creepy and I wouldn’t recommend it. I don’t like horror, but she does. Anyway, it was called Dark Water. This ghost was terrorizing a little girl and her mother ended up sacrificing herself to free her daughter from the ghost’s clutches essentially. She chose to stay as the little girl ghost’s companion for eternity in the place of her young daughter. Now, that sounds all fine and dandy on paper, but I was seriously torn up over it at the time. I hated the idea that the mother didn’t get to be with her daughter. It’s touching that she sacrificed herself, but they did absolutely nothing to warrant the obsession of this rotten little ghost girl! I would have been much more pleased had the ghost come to a different conclusion than that she had to keep one of the two around as a new ghost companion. She was selfish and mean and didn’t deserve to win in the end.

@missfaeriekaiti I love your thoughts on sacrifice! Such a great insight! It’s definitely very dissatisfying to see that shallow sacrifice or the unearned ending! Agreed! And YAS!!! Ella Enchanted was excellently written! I loved how her struggle built up throughout the book to the climax. She definitely earned her ending! It’s so important to reflect reality in stories in some aspect or another, and I think a great way to do that is in the cause and effect of choices, in character growth.

Oh! Oh dear! I can’t read your last post! XD I’m working through Fichter’s books now (I love her characters! She writes them so well!), so I haven’t gotten to The Girl in the Red Hood yet! And I just finished Shea’s Sacrifice, so I’ll skip that bit too!

@brandon-miller I know my sister thought the stakes in Mockingjay were too high. For instance, SPOILER! She says when Finnick died, she was out. END SPOILER! And I can see where she’s coming from. When I read it, I was disheartened, clearly, because I liked the character, but I chose to let it go and push through (she did finish the book, but felt like that was the last straw and the book couldn’t really recover after that) because of the genre, etc. I also thought, mistakenly, that things would work out the way they were supposed to in the end. I thought his sacrifice would be for creating a greater world, but it turns out it was in vain. I actually hit the same point she did later on in the book for two different reasons, but for both of us, that book showed stakes that were too high and costs that were forgotten! The characters didn’t learn their lessons and so the ending was extremely dissatisfying, though I’m not sure I would call it cliche…Hmm…