Shoot the Shaggy Dog/Film: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[The Strangers]],'' {{spoiler|the titular villains manage to overpower and kill the lead characters}}.

** {{spoiler|Subverted. Yes, the villains stabbed Kristen and James seemingly to death. However, Kristen turns out to still be alive! At first glance, you might think that makes no sense. However, Dollface showed feelings of guilt. It can be inferred that she was the one who was supposed to stab Kristen to death, but since she didn't have the stomach for it right then, she actually didn't try that hard to kill her}}!

* ''[[Buried]]''.

* ''Rocket Attack USA'', a 1960s propaganda piece featured on ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''. The heroes manage to infiltrate a Soviet missile base, but the missile launches anyway (with ''hilariously'' awful special effects) and wipes out New York. "We cannot let this be... THE END."

* ''[[Se7en]]'' Detectives Mills and Summerset {{spoiler|achieve exactly nothing, and indeed are an essential part of the serial killer's master plan. John Doe kills Mills's wife, prompting Mills to kill him, leading to Mills being arrested.}}

* ''[[Dancer in The Dark]]'' - subverted. It might appear as the most depressing movie ever, anywhere, and ultimately pointless. And ends with the {{spoiler|execution of the innocent, blind main character.}} As is typical of Lars von Trier, it's really about a gigantic [[Heroic Sacrifice]] on part of a female heroine. She does {{spoiler|accomplish her goal of preventing her son from going blind by getting him the operation he needs, which is all she wanted anyway}}. Plus she wasn't exactly innocent, {{spoiler|she did in fact kill her neighbor.}}

* ''[[Drag Me to Hell]]'': {{spoiler|the old gypsy dies (but of natural causes), the demon escapes, and our heroine, who doesn't deserve it in the least, gets, well, dragged to Hell.}}

** And don't forget {{spoiler|the medium who waited 40 years for a chance of redeeming her failure to save a young boy by meeting the Lamia again and killing it. Her assistant screws up the plan due to having a lousy aim, she fails to break the protagonist's curse and she ends up dead for her efforts.}}

** This is pretty much par for the course in anything having to do with the Warhammer 40,000 universe though.

* ''[[The Omen]]''. {{spoiler|Everybody dies, except Damien the Antichrist.}}

* ''The Warlords''. {{spoiler|The three main characters (and a woman that two of them fought over) die in vain as it is revealed they were only being used as pawns by corrupt politicians to do their dirty work.}}

** A bit of [[Truth in Television]] considering it is based on historical figures.

** ''[[Monty Python's Life of Brian]]'' - Loosely based on the life of Jesus Christ, you know from the start that the story can't possibly end well. Of course, there's somewhat of a {{spoiler|[[Pet the Dog]] moment}} at the very end to [[Incredibly Lame Pun|brighten]] it up".

** And ''[[Monty Python's The Meaning of Life]]'': {{spoiler|We are all shaggy dogs, because life has no meaning. Now, piss off!}}. That pretty much also sums up everything the group's done during its long existence, and is the last film they ever made as a group.

** Yes and no. David was trying to become a real boy so he could get his mother to love him. He does not achieve the goal of becoming a real boy. However, it turns out that he did not need to achieve this goal anyway. He does get one day of happiness with his mother and she tells him before she dies that she loves him and always has. He dies shortly afterwards (Why? Well, maybe he ran out of battery juice or maybe by that point he had gotten everything he wanted and so he 'shut down' as a result of this). So the ending does not quite qualify as [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]], because David got what he truly wanted in the end. Also, he went to "...that place where dreams are born" (i.e. the afterlife). That should be impossible for a robot that is not human to achieve. But the fact that he did indicates that he did become human in a sense. So he ended up achieving more than he set out to do, which is another reason the ending does not quite qualify as [[Shoot the Shaggy Dog]]. It does, however, qualify for Fridge Horror when you consider what David has done to his mother to achieve this.

* ''[[Rosemary's Baby|Rosemarys Baby]]''. All of Rosemary's attempts to escape her husband and the Satanic cult he's allied with before she gives birth fail completely, and she gives birth in their clutches. Not that it would've made the slightest bit of difference if any of her escape attempts had succeeded since her baby {{spoiler|is Satan's child, the Anti Christ.}} For all the difference it made, [[It Makes Sense in Context|Rosemary might as well've wolfed down the entire ice cream the night before her baby's conception, and been a blindly trusting idiot afterwards]] (not that she really is a blindly trusting idiot, mind you, it just would've made no difference if she was).

** Doesn't quite count. Although Willis was mislead into attempting the action that led to his death in the end with the belief that he was saving the world, his real purpose was not to save the world but merely to locate the virus so that a scientist could go back into the past, collect a sample of the virus and then develop a vaccine so that people living underground in the (futuristic) present could return to the surface and reclaim the world from nature. Thus, his mission and purpose was considered successful.

* ''[[Black Swan]]'': Nina goes progressively more insane over the course of the movie, and seems on the verge of some kind of breakthrough at the end, only to {{spoiler|die from a self-inflicted wound}} after her first performance. Of course, given the [[Unreliable Narrator|aforementioned insanity]], it's impossible to know how much of the movie is real and how much is only in Nina's head, thus making the story potentially even more pointless.

* ''[[Bat*21]]'': An Air Force [[Big Damn Heroes|Para Rescue]] team attempt to extract Lt. Colonel Hambleton after he is shot down over Vietnam, {{spoiler|but their helicopter is shot down, and the entire crew is killed soon after, either by being shot or [[Kick the Dog|being made to walk through a minefield.]]}}

* ''Mad City'' (starring John Travolta) had an ending like this. The protagonist spends the whole film trying a desperate (but admittedly stupid) move to get his job back. In the end, it not only doesn't work, but he commits suicide to boot.

 

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