Book Ends/Film: Difference between revisions

* Some notable examples from the [[Disney Animated Canon]]:

** [[Lampshaded]] in Disney's ''[[Pinocchio]]''. Not only is the film set inside a book bearing the film title, opened by Jiminy Cricket, but near the beginning of the film, the Blue Fairy brings the eponymous puppet to life, and Geppetto celebrates by activating all his music boxes and dancing. He does the same thing at the end of the film when Pinocchio [[Become a Real Boy|Becomes a Real Boy]], and Jiminy remarks, "Well, this is practically where I came in."

** ''[[Fantasia]]'s'' ''The Rite of Spring'' begins and ends with the same sequence of notes, played on the same instrument.

*** An almost series-wide example would be the fact that at the near beginning of the first ''Fantasia'' film, the second segment involves several small fairies changing spring in summer, summer into fall, and finally fall into winter. At the end of the second film, there is a segment involving a larger fairy changing winter into spring, therefore bringing the series full circle.

** ''[[Pocahontas]]'' begins with the first scene fading in from parchment, and ends with the last scene fading into parchment.

*** Speaking of ''The Jungle Book'', this is how Kaa and the Elephant Patrol are both introduced: at the very beginning of the film, Kaa appears, then the Elephant Patrol; and at the end, the Elephant Patrol appears, and then Kaa.

*** Originally, ''Atlantis'' was actually going to avert this trope altogether, where the film was actually originally going to begin with [[Horny Vikings|a team of Vikings]] making an attempt to find the titular Atlantis using the Shepherd's Journal, only to end up being killed off by the Leviathan.

* ''[[The Triplets of Belleville]]'' begins and ends with the previous scene being shown on a TV screen, accompanied by the only real lines of dialogue in the film.

* ''[[Spirited Away]]'' has the family walking through the tunnel with the mother chiding "Chihiro, don't cling like that, you'll make me trip."

* ''[[Finding Nemo]]'': "Wake up! Wake up! Time for school! Time for school!" <ref>At the beginning, Nemo says this to Marlin, and at the end, ''Marlin'' says it to ''Nemo!''</ref>

* ''[[A Goofy Movie]]'' actually begins and ends with the sound of Goofy screaming.

** The second film begins and ends with Mater rescuing Otis from a ditch and dragging him to Radiator Springs.

** The series as a whole starts off in the middle of a race at the very beginning of the first film, and ends in the middle of a race during the finale of the second.

* ''[[Kung Fu Panda]]'' opens with [[The Hero|Po]] having a dream where he is a great warrior, loved by many, and to whom even the Furious Five, the most elite fighters, respect and bow down to. {{spoiler|It all comes true at the end}}.

'''End''': "This is Berk. It snows nine months out of the year and hails the other three. The food that grows here is tough and tasteless. The people that grow here are even more so. The only upside is the pets. You see, most people have ponies or parrots. We have... dragons." }}

** Also, in the beginning of the film, Hiccup opens a door, seeing a dragon flying and quickly shuts the door. {{spoiler|The ending has the same thing, only this time the dragons have now intergrated into the community.}}

* ''[[Happy Feet]]'' begins and ends with a shot of Antarctica seen from Earth orbit.

* ''[[The Plague Dogs]]'' begins with Rowf being drowned in a tank of water at a research facility. It ends with he and Snitter [[Bolivian Army Ending|presumably]] drowning after trying to swim to an island that may or may not exist.

 

* ''[[The Darjeeling Limited]]'' begins and ends with people running to get on a train as it pulls away from the station.

* ''[[The Sound of Music]]'' opens with panoramic views of the mountains, then zooms onto Maria (Julie Andrews) singing ecstatically how "the hills are alive with the sound of music!" before she rushes back to the nearby abbey. The movie ends with Maria and her new family, having escaped the Nazis at the same abbey, hiking through the same mountains towards the safety of the border. As the soundtrack sings "Climb Ev'ry Mountain", the camera pulls back to another panorama of those mountains.

* In ''[[Inception]]'', the scenes when Cobb meets an aged Saito are actually false Book Ends, [[How We Got Here|as it's just a scene from near the end, on which the plot later returns]]. However the music from the actual last scene almost perfectly loops into the music from the very first scene.

* An early scene in ''[[Star Wars]]: [[A New Hope]]'' features Luke Skywalker gazing out at Tatooine's binary sunset. ''[[Revenge of the Sith]]'' ends with Owen and Beru Lars in the same position holding an infant Luke and also watching the suns set.

* In the 1993 film version of ''[[The Secret Garden]]'', Mary mentions at the start that she didn't know how to cry. At the end of the film her closing narration says that her uncle learned to laugh and she learned to cry.

* The film version of ''[[Sin City]]'' begins with an unnamed hitman claiming his victim before the opening credits. He is not seen again until the end of the film when [[Gilmore Girls|a character who turned traitor]] encounters him in an elevator. He introduces himself to both of them the same way.

* ''[[Juno]]'' begins and ends with a shot of a chair, with the narration explicitly pointing it out.

* ''[[Bride of Frankenstein]]'' opens with [[Mary Shelley]], played by Elsa Lanchester, [[Framing Device|telling the story of Frankenstein]]. As she begins relating the sequel, she spreads her arms wide... and at the end of the film, the Bride of Frankenstein, also played by Lanchester, makes the same gesture.

* ''[[The Jerk]]'' ends with the hero singing and dancing on their porch just like at the start.

* The 1932 drama ''[[Grand Hotel]]'' opens with a character stating of the title locale: "People come, people go...[[Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here|nothing ever happens]]." At the film's end, and following numerous dramatic episodes, the same character repeats the line with [[Ironic Echo|unknowing irony]].

** Before the opening credits, The Operative makes a short speech about [[The Power of Love]]. At the end, Mal makes a short speech about the importance of love.

** In the beginning, Mal is telling Simon that River has to go on a job to earn her stay on the ship. Simon, of course, says that what he does should pay for both of them, and then Mal says that she should learn from his fine example. {{spoiler|She winds up being his new pilot since their previous one died.}}

* ''The Maiden Heist'' begins with Christopher Walken staring in wonder at a beloved painting. {{spoiler|It ends with a guard at the Danish museum looking at the ''fake'' painting and getting the same reaction.}}

* ''[[The Searchers]]'' begins with the camera moving from a darkened interior, through an opening door, to the spectacular vista of the Utah desert. The reverse happens at the end.

* ''[[The Bourne Series|The Bourne Ultimatum]]'' ends with Jason Bourne {{spoiler|being shot at from behind, falling into water, and being lost and presumed dead by his pursuers}}. This directly mirrors the events preceding the first film, where we first meet Bourne {{spoiler|being rescued from the ocean, having been shot in the back and left for dead by Wombosi and his men}}.

** {{spoiler|And like ''The Bourne Identity'', it turns out that he's [[Only Mostly Dead|not quite dead]] although unlike ''TBI'', Bourne swims away under his own power in ''TBU''.}}

* ''[[Total Recall]]'' begins and ends with Quaid and Melina looking towards the Martian horizon.

* ''[[Pulp Fiction]]'' begins and ends with Pumpkin (AKA Ringo) and Honey Bunny.

** Interestingly, watch the film in chronological order and you get the same effect: The first scene has young Butch receiving his father's watch, the last scene has him retrieve it from his apartment.

* ''[[Shaun of the Dead]]'' is bookended with shots of the title character shambling in a zombie-like fashion after waking up in the morning.

* ''[[V for Vendetta]]'' begins and ends with a British landmark getting blown up to the tune of the 1812 Overture on November 5th. The fact that ''everything else'' is so different between the two events shows just how much can happen in a year.

* ''[[Lawrence of Arabia]]'' begins with Lawrence's death in a reckless motorcycle accident. The rest of the film, which is told in flashback, ends with Lawrence being driven along a road in a jeep, while a man on a motorcycle speeds by and recklessly passes him.

* ''[[Glengarry Glen Ross]]'' starts and ends with a shot of a passing train.

* ''[[The Curious Case of Benjamin Button]]'': A particularly sad example involving a clock.

* ''[[Pretty Woman]]'': The Happy Man walks by both near the beginning of the film and at the end, telling us that this is Hollywood, the Land of Dreams, and asking, "what's your dream?" The first time his appearance is ironic, the second time it is meant to be taken at face value.

** To the ending monologue:

* ''[[The Lovely Bones]]'' has Susie's narration of "My name is Salmon, like the fish. First name, Susie. I was fourteen years old when I was murdered on December 6th, 1973." said near the beginning and at the end of the movie.

* The ''[[The Onion|Av Club]]'' review of the ''[[Marmaduke]]'' movie notes that it book ends itself with a fart joke. Which pretty much [[Refuge in Vulgarity|sums it up]].

* ''[[Eight Legged Freaks]]'' starts and ends with Harland's radio broadcast.

* ''[[Shane]]'' begins with him riding into the valley on a clear morning and ends with him riding away in the middle of the night.

* The first and last shot in the movie ''[[Daybreakers]]'' is that of a bat flying overhead.

* ''[[I Robot]]'' has a scene at the end that serves as a perfect mirror for the drawing Sonny made to show Spooner his dream, although YMMV on whether or not this counts, as the scene where Sonny creates the drawing is more towards the film's middle.

** Also, it's worth pointing out that, when Sonny first creates the drawing, Spooner and Calvin assume the man in the picture is him, but Sonny says it's Spooner. At the end of the film, the man leading the robots to freedom turns out to indeed be {{spoiler|Sonny.}}

* ''[[Going the Distance]]'' has in the beginning and towards the end, Dan contemplating that there are no baby pigeons in New York and Garrett playing Pac Man at the bar.

* ''The Last Picture Show'' opens on a shot of the Royal Theater and pans left along Anarene’s main street. The closing shot of the film is the exact reverse -- the camera pans right and pauses on the {{spoiler|closed and shuttered}} movie house before [[Fade to Black|fading to black.]]

* Also averted in the film ''[[We Were Soldiers]]'' where an alternate ending actually shows a lizard emerging out of its hiding spot just right after the Americans leave Vietnam (when the Americans arrived there at the very beginning of the film, the lizard ran away).

* ''[[The Da Vinci Code]]'' begins and ends with a dead body in the Louvre. The first time it's Jacques Saunière's. The second time {{spoiler|it's the corpse of Mary Magdalene, whose tomb was hidden under the Louvre by the Priory of Sion}}.

* The ''[[Saw]]'' series begins and ends in the same [[Disgusting Public Toilet]]. In addition, the first shot of the main character in the series is also the last via the last of the series' trademark flashback montages.

* The plot of ''Metropolitan'' is set in motion when the protagonist shares a cab with the other main characters, after they refuse to steal it from him. Late in the movie, he hails a cab, in the process stealing it from another person he barely notices.

* ''[[Mystery Team]]'' begins and ends with the eponymous trio getting a new case.

** In the first book, Harry arrives at the Dursleys when he was just a baby, brought there by Hagrid on Sirius' bike. In the last book, Harry leaves the Dursleys when he was an adult, being taken away by Hagrid on Sirius' bike. Hagrid even lampshades this.

** Also, near the end of the first movie, Harry hugs Hagrid. Near the end of the last movie, they embrace again.

** Each film also begins and ends with Optimus' narration. Had the line not been cut, the ending of the third film would have even reflected the closing line of the first (the ''Dark of the Moon'' line survives in the novelization):

'''Optimus''': [''Dark of the Moon''] I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message out into the universe. We are here. We are home. }}

* ''Walkabout'' has [[Bilingual Bonus]] [[Book Ends]]. The film opens with the sound of a roulette wheel, and the croupier's call to place bets "Fait vos jeux, mes sieurs, dames." (Make your plays, sirs, madams.) It ends with the printed text "Rien ne va plus" (Nothing goes any more), the croupier's call for no more bets. Perhaps a reference to the way that the protagonists lives were thrown to the whims of fortune by the events at the start of the film, and to the way that this has now reached a conclusion, and perhaps not the happiest one.

* My name is Quintus Daius. I am a [[Centurion]] of Rome. And this is neither the beginning, nor the end of my story.

** An [[Ironic Echo]] version - the movie begins with Mark working with Eduardo on Facemash after being dumped by Erica. The movie ends with {{spoiler|Mark trying to friend Erica on Facebook after seeing how much of a chasm had grown between him and Eduardo.}}

* ''[[Love Actually]]'' begins and ends with the arrival's gate at Heathrow airport, with shots of families and friends reuniting.

* The [[Clint Eastwood]] film ''[[Dirty Harry]]'' begins and ends with Harry facing down a criminal and doing a version of the 'do you feel lucky punk?' speech. In the opening sequence he's phrasing it to intimidate the criminal and keep him from taking a shot. In the final sequence, he's phrasing it to get the killer to take a shot at him so he has an excuse to kill him.

* ''[[William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet]]'' begins and ends with a news broadcast on TV.

* In ''De Laatste Zomer (The Last Summer)'' the film starts with the main character at home during the start of summer vacation. After a fair bit of drama and adventure the film finishes with him sitting at home again and with his family returning from their vacation.

* ''[[Taxi Driver]]'' begins and ends with Travis Bickle driving his cab on depressing, nighttime streets.

* The original ''[[The Hitcher|Hitcher]]'' begins and ends with C. Thomas Howell's character lighting a match, although photographed in very different ways.

 

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