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Shoot the Shaggy Dog/Film: Difference between revisions
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* 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}}!
* The Japanese [[Toku|Tokusatsu]] feature film ''Casshern'' did this in spades. The story hinges on a [[Crapsack World]] [[After the End]] where everyone is dying of pollution, fallout and biochemical warfare agents unleashed in the last world war. A scientist creates a 'Neo-Cell' project where new organs can be grown at will and the human body regenerated and rendered immortal. This is the setup for a [[Freak Lab Accident]] that creates a race of Badass superhumans that must be battled by the hero, the scientist's dead war hero son resurrected by his father's techniques and suited up with an awesome cybernetic combat suit. Naturally this all goes horribly wrong - and turns out it was never right in the first place.
** If the fact that Casshern basically fails to do anything heroic whatsoever during the entire movie, backfiring spectacularly every time he tries to save innocent people and spending most of the film killing rather sympathetic [[Anti-Villain|Anti Villains]] who themselves engage in [[Kick the Dog|pointless violence for no reason]] wasn't enough to make this pointless and [[Glurge|Glurgey]], the ending really cements it. I guess it was meant to be a [[Deconstruction]] of the usually upbeat Tokusatsu genre, but...what?
* ''[[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."
* See the entry under [[Diabolus Ex Machina]] for Sean Penn's film ''The Pledge.''
* The ''[[Cube]]'' series:
** In the original ''Cube'', characters are repeatedly set up as heroes in an escape for their lives from a mechanical maze, but they all end up dying or being killed by another character, except for the [[Idiot Savant]] character. He would be the only person who could sound the alarm or summon help, but would not be able to communicate the situation, assuming he understood it at all.
** The sequel ''Hypercube'' is even worse. After many perils, the main heroine manages to escape the maze but once her superior has received what she was sent in to find, he has her unceremoniously executed for no apparent reason. Her facial expressions indicate that she knows what's coming, but she does not try to resist or escape.
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** Kurosawa seems to be fond of Shooting the Shaggy Dog. ''Ran'' is a good example, but his best is probably ''The Bad Sleep Well'', his (very loose) adaptation of ''Hamlet''. [[Toshiro Mifune]] spends the entire movie building up his plan to get his ultimate revenge on the corporate grifters who drove his father to suicide, but he ends up falling in love with the daughter of his primary target, leading the evil executive to drug his own daughter and arrange for him to be killed. You don't even see him die - the daughter and her brother return to his hideout, only to be told by his badly beaten best friend that he, too was drugged and then sent on the road, where he was killed by a train. The movie concludes with the executive's kids effectively disowning him, but other than this he gets away scot-free with literally every terrible thing the movie spent time elaborating upon.
* [[Alejandro Jodorowsky]] [[Signature Style|loves to do this]]. ''Fando&Lis'' ends with Fando killing Lis, whom he was taking to the mythical City of Tar in order to cure her paralysis. ''[[El Topo]]'' has the people the title character spent the entire third act helping mercilessly gunned down, rendering all his efforts worthless. And ''[[The Holy Mountain]]'' ends just before the climax, with a major character proclaiming the movie over and the shot panning back to reveal the film crew shooting the scene.
* ''Sorry, Wrong Number'' and the radio play it was based on. In the end, and after a few [[Idiot Plot]] scenes (between the protagonist's mistakes and the depiction of the police), she fails to prevent her own murder. And this was based on an episode of a radio show where the rule was almost always to make sure the bad guy ''lost''. (Oddly enough, it was also their most popular production...)
** The film did try to suggest she deserved what she got. {{spoiler|Her husband, who had planned her murder, doesn't get away with it either.}}
* ''[[Das Boot]]''. After everything they've survived for 99% of the movie, they're [[Kill'Em All|killed in an Allied air-raid]] once they get home.
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** This one's debatable, though - if John and Kate were killed before they could form the resistance and ensure humanity's future it would definitely count, but since they survive it may just be a [[Downer Ending]].
** The first film's message was that time travel can't change the past and that Skynet even trying to do so only caused both itself and the leader of the resistance to be. The second movie's entire Aesop was the change to the idea that we can change the future. Then it decides that maybe it was right the first time. An exercise in indecision, rendering a whole <s>movie</s>''series'' pointless beyond the pretty explosions?
** The original script for ''Terminator Salvation'' not only nearly did this to John Connor, but to the entire point of the character and all three preceding movies in the first place. Basically, Connor was supposed to have been killed, and then have his skin and face grafted onto the cyborg Marcus, who assumes the identity of John Connor and leads the Resistance. This ending was leaked, and the fandom was ''not happy'', forcing a rewrite. If they'd gone ahead with it, it would have meant that Skynet went on a wild goose chase across the entire franchise, since the John Connor we know wouldn't have been the "real" John Connor. It wouldn't have mattered if Skynet had terminated him or Sarah, since he was nearly that easily replaceable.
*** Though there are [[The Spoony Experiment|those]] who wish they stuck with that ending anyway.
* One word: ''[[Bulworth]]''. Five words: Rapping politician, {{spoiler|meet sniper bullet. Yes, in a ''comedy''. And he ordered the hit on himself!}}
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* The same twist ending was used in ''The Cave'' and ''[[Ghost Ship]]'', {{spoiler|where the parasitic/ghostly evil that they spent the whole film trying to defeat has just infected a new host.}}
** ''Ghost Ship's'' flashbacks could be construed as this as well. So many people killed and the thieves didn't manage to get away.
** Note that in ''Ghost Ship'', the [http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/ghost_ship.html original screenplay] is available. This trope is averted in it.
* Along with a [[Crapsack World]] and a [[Diabolus Ex Machina]], the film ''[[A Simple Plan]]'' literally {{spoiler|shoots the helpless underdog, when Bill Paxton's character finally shoots his unwitting, lower functioning brother, played by Billy Bob Thornton}}, made even worse by the fact that the entire plot is rendered meaningless in the film's final frames, where {{spoiler|it turns out the money that all of the movie revolved around is marked, and has to be burned}}. And yet, the ending to the movie is cheery and lighthearted compared to the novel.
* In ''Dresden'' the main character (a British pilot) manages to {{spoiler|live through the bombing of Dresden with [[Only a Flesh Wound|serious injuries]] and escapes back to England. After the war, he flies back to see his true love (and, OMG, their child)... when his plane crashes. He dies. They don't even give him a death scene - he dies in the voice-over at the end.}}
* ''[[The Wages of Fear]]'' is particularly cruel. The protagonist takes on an extremely dangerous job (trucking badly needed nitroglycerin up a mountain). He turns out to be the only man in the group to make it all the way alive. Word of his survival gets back to his village, where everyone including his girlfriend dance with joy... and {{spoiler|as he drives back joyfully in his now-unloaded truck, he gets too excited, loses control, veers off the side of the mountain, and is killed}}.
** He did accomplish his original objective, though.
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* In the horror movie ''Catacombs'', we have an example of this trope. The protagonist visits her bitchy sister in Paris, and she is brought by her to a sort of rave party in the labyrinth-like catacombs under the city, along with a group of French goths. Then the two of them get lost, and the sister is apparently killed by an axe-wielding serial killer wearing a goat mask. The protagonist is then stalked by said monster in the catacombs for a whole hour... until it turns out that {{spoiler|it was all an overlong joke of dubious taste planned by her sister and friends. Unfortunately, this is revealed after the protagonist has killed one of them in the darkness. The sister then proceeds to yell at and insult the barely-sane anymore protagonist, who then proceeds to slaughter the rest of them, including her sister, and leaves. Some people just can't take a joke.}}
* ''[[Angel Heart]]'' - {{spoiler|It turns out that Mickey Rourke has been hired by the devil to condemn himself to hell.}}
* ''[[Titus Andronicus (theatre)|Titus]]'' - with Anthony Hopkins, based on the play by [[William Shakespeare]] ... Let's just say that it inspired the {{spoiler|Scott Tenorman episode of ''[[South Park]]''}} and leave it at that.
* ''[[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.}}
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* ''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.
* The 1970 film ''The Love War'' with Leslie Nielsen and Angie Dickinson pretty much defined this.
* ''Journey to the Far Side of the Sun'' (AKA ''Doppelgänger''). Turns out it's a mirror Earth. Literally; the exact same things happen, the exact same people are there, all of the writing is just backwards. The hero is thought to have aborted his mission to the mysterious planet on the other side of the sun; instead, he's arrived on it, but since the mirror Earth sent an identical astronaut to our Earth, both Earths believe their own astronaut has chickened out and returned home. The hero spends most of the film trying to prove he's not crazy, finds the evidence in orbit (his spacecraft with right-sided lettering- all other evidence was destroyed when his landing craft explodes), loses radio contact before he can tell anyone else of his evidence, crashes and dies immediately thereafter, and the only person who semi-believed him throws themselves out a window at the very end. The hero is dead, never vindicated, still no one knows what the planet on the other side of the sun is, and due to the inextricable mirroring of events, this happens on BOTH Earths.
* ''[[Monty Python and
** ''[[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.
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