The Stepford Wives : The ending is so wrong.

The ending is so wrong.

I know that it was the 70's & cynicism was rife & many think "Happy Endings" are dumb or something but I think Joanna should have found a way to cause the Men's Association's downfall.

If this movie is about feminism, it's apparently pro-feminist but it seems to be saying that no matter what women do to achieve the equality they deserve they will fail forever!

Pessimistic, defeatist.

Defeatism doesn't inspire people. Defeatism doesn't raises morale. If Ira Levin wanted to support feminism, he would make something that raised morale. Yes, the Men's Association are despicable but why must they win in the end? Why not show a glimmer of hope?

True, it was the 70's and the folks were weary of the way things were going with Vietnam & whatnot. 70's films express this ennui. But why couldn't they be uplifting? We needed movies that raised morale, not destroy it!

I think someone should rewrite this but change the ending but not in the way the remake did (the remake missed the point of the whole thing & was really stupidly done).

I see many movies as having a social message, even if it's just "entertainment" but movies seem to be defeatist with a Hobbesian view of humanity. Yes, I agree that humanity is flawed but I feel humanity can "think big" & "reach higher".

In MY version of The Stepford Wives, the Men's Association & their evil scheme will fail. There would also be a few sympathetic male characters to represent the good men of the world, the allies.

I love to look in the heads of both Ira Levin & the movie makers. Why write it that way? What's the point?

Why pessimism? Why defeat?

Screw defeat! We as a species need MORE "Happy Endings"! Real life has enough injustice & downer endings on it's own! We need a version of The Stepford Wives where the message is "Yes, you can fight against the oppressors and triumph! Never give up!".

Re: The ending is so wrong.

I know, I found the ending a real downer too. But there's always fan fiction. If anybody knows of any Stepford stories with happy endings I'd love to read them.

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The ending was the correct ending. These women were defeated by men. Nobody was around to help them

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It's dystopic. It's supposed to be defeatist. Think 1984.

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That means nothing. Dystopias can be overthrown. The original "Star Wars" trilogy comes to mind.

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Re: The ending is so wrong.

Just let people tell their stories, for f'ck's sake. Not everything has to have its dramatic integrity compromised by tendentiousness, or by having to serve as the movie equivalent of a "Hang in there!" poster.

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I'm not fond of the ending, either, but for somewhat different reasons than yours. I think Joanna should have managed to kill some of the bastards -- her husband and/or Coba -- and put up a fight against her robot duplicate before dying herself.

I'm Heather Langenkamp's husband in another universe.

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Perhaps a compromise between a happy & sad ending would even work.

How about Joanna having cool computer skills. Before the climax, she finds the central computer that controls the fembots. Just then the bot version of her comes & the story ends like the original.....

.....buuuuuut....then, the Joanna-bot comes home from the grocery store & goes to make some stew. Joanna-bot cuts a carrot as her hubby starts gettin' fresh with her.....

....a sinister smile crosses her lips....her knife-wielding hand slowly raises.....

....CUT TO....a news report showing footage of Stepford in flames! The mutilated bodies of the guys litter the streets.....

...Thus, Joanna, posthumously saves the day, gets the last laugh, the bad guys wiped out because she hacked the program & made a bunch of killer fembots who become bombs after slicin' & dicin'.



Okay, so it's the 70's and the whole "hacker" trope wasn't all the rage but it would make a cool twist.



I don't mind grimness per-se....provided the dark ending is bittersweet than a complete downer. The Exorcist comes to mind, where it's basically a draw. The demon achieved it's goal of causing Merrin's heart attack death but Regan the young girl is freed from the demon via a heroic sacrifice by Father Karras (he had his Last Rites read to him as he lay dying, so it's assumed he goes to Heaven). Pazuzu succeeds in causing the PHYSICAL deaths of two priests but fails in getting the little girl.

I never could understand why grim, nihilistic movies were so big in the 70's. If societies were going through a big funk, wouldn't it make better sense to get into escapism?

THE 1930's-40's: The Great Depression & a new Great War is going on, let's stay positive and enjoy some escapism to keep our spirits up!

THE late 60s-1970's: Vietnam is still going, the youth movement has seen better days, the best leaders have been assassinated & we wear all this silly polyester...LET'S WATCH SHOWS THAT WALLOW IN MISERY!

I could never understand that. Not just with the 70's but with any time. When times are rough, we like entertainment that reflects that....it's masochistic. I don't get it. I just don't!

If you're in a metaphorical dark room and hate the darkness, you turn on the light switch, not close the blinds!

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I loved the ending. The ending for the remake was horrible horrible. The original was great. I don't need happy endings. This felt right. This is exactly like life. Life doesn't go as planned. Movies are the same way. If all of them ended on a good note, that would be awful

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I don't think horror thrillers are for you, my friend.

This is not a film about feminism. It's about evil, and how conspiracies allow it to persist and grow.
Joanna cannot win here because she never sees that the Association is always three steps ahead of her, a concept central to a good thriller. There are other genres where the heroine can prevail, but this isn't one.

What did you feel at the final frame? Sadness? Mission accomplished. Ultimately, horror really is just Shakespearean tragedy, except the protagonist's only "fatal flaw" may be their humanity.

The ending is powerful, tragic and sad. In other words, perfect.

"Why?
Because we can."

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You can still have a horror film full of horrible horror stuff and still have good & humanity win, my friend. Even those cheesy slasher flicks often had that "final girl" dispatching the spooky masked killer. Even Poltergeist had Carol Anne freed from "The Beast" on various occasions.

The thing is, if a scary story has a social message (like Stepford Wives' 'feminism' theme), one assumes there's a social message, an important point being made.

I know that unhappy endings exist in real life. I know there's injustice. I know that sometimes the bad guys win & there's no comeuppance. I'm not naive.

But I just don't understand the "Grim Times Needs Grim Stories" mindset.

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"Pessimistic, defeatist".

How about true to life? Either way the film was making a point there and a happy ending would have undercut the whole thing. You sort of sound like you're brainwashed into believing false idylls yourself.



"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

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From what I can remember (and it's many years since I've read it) the book has a very similar ending. Thus the film makers were true to the original story (if only that happened more!)

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Not even one of them felt guilty about it or regretted it, seriously?

That floored me too. I guess it was to show exactly HOW evil these men were.
The leader, Diz, knew how to pick 'em.
The author of the novel, Ira Levin, also wrote 'Rosemary's Baby'. In that novel also, the males are all 100% icy-cold.
Same thing here I guess.

In the film, we do see (very very briefly) some 'regret'. Joanna's husband talks of his uncertainty to Diz, who in turn eases his mind.
Same with Ed Wimperis, we see him crying & drunk after killing his wife Charmaine.

But...BOTH men get over it really quick.







I'd say this cloud is Cumulo Nimbus.
Didn't he discover America?
Penfold, shush.

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The ending has nothing to do with all that, the 70's and so forth ; many thrillers films end in doom and gloom. Any other films where you wish to cite false misogyny and feminism?

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Well, it's a horror film, first and foremost. The subject of feminism is really used to drive the plot, as when Joanna says to Bobbi "I messed around with feminism in NYC" ("who hasn't", I believe, was the response), and "I'm not talking a Maidenform Bonfire here, but...", and then, in reaction to the alarm they feel at what they see in Stepford, they go around trying to raise consciousness.

But if you really need to make the ending meaningful, in a (somewhat) positive way in regards to feminism, how about "if we women don't stick together, bad things can happen". The men used a "divide and conquer" scheme to change the wives, as when Bobbie went away and never came back. Just spitballin'...

Takes two to tumble it takes two to tango
Speak up don't mumble when you're in the combo

Re: The ending is so wrong.

Makes sense.

And like you said, it's a horror flick, and the downer ending was part of it. I now just realized that it's not saying that "Feminism will fail". It ends grimly because that's SCARY. It's just one town, anyway.

Besides, there was a sequel where the "Men's Association" get their comeuppance. The two afterwards are just milking the concept to stupid degrees. I like to pretend that only the first two movies are canon. There's the "Feminism vs. Misogyny" theme and the fact that it allows the bad guys to lose in the end. I like that.

I need to quit getting sensitive about bummer endings and not see every flick as a big social message....and just take each movie on a story-by-story basis.

For me, I'll just check out "spoiler" websites to ease the sting of a grim ending.

.....and get into fanfic writing for relief.

After all
"You don't have to accept the ending they give you." - Joel (To Crow & Tom Servo on MST3K)

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Downer endings are for adults. So many authors have satirized the cliche of the "coddled, insecure public that can't stand a harsh ending and needs a simplistic, happy Hollywood outcome," and I like to think people are tougher than that. But yikes, threads like this just show how pathetically true that particular cliche is.

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Because when I think of cautionary tales, I think of, "Don't worry! Everything will turn out alright in the end!"

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This ending was terrifying. As it is supposed to be.
It worked for me.

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There always, always has to be a woman to find pretentious hidden meanings of females being wronged, feminism etc., and also cite the 70's as some target also. The year is was made is irrelevant

Yet, when men are defeated and doomed by women (or men) in a film, there is no reaction. Women like the OP are venting their own demons, I think. And over a harmless horror film/thriller

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There always, always has to be a woman to find pretentious hidden meanings of females being wronged, feminism etc., and also cite the 70's as some target also. The year is was made is irrelevant



Ira Levin, a guy, wrote the damned thing. The year the book was written and the year the film was made is very relevant. Feminism was a large part of the story. Men, at that time were feeling a loss of control.
It isn't all that relevant today. That's why that awful thing they call a remake didn't work.


Yet, when men are defeated and doomed by women (or men) in a film, there is no reaction. Women like the OP are venting their own demons, I think. And over a harmless horror film/thriller



Well, off the top of my head, I felt the same sense of sadness at the end of The Mist..... Another "harmless horror film/thriller".

"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night"

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What if Joanna damaged her android replacement in the struggle? Just enough that fixing it would be to costly and starting over take to long. Diz makes the decision to take human Joanna and turn her into a half human/half android. She is still under the control of Diz in this new form thus making it worse than if she had died. The look in her eyes at the end of the film would make sense as she is still human though under the influence of her android programming.

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The film implies from the start that the wives are real women. The robots are only temporary.

Whether they could be half android as well is certainly possible.

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Personally, I thought the ending was perfect.

The book and the film had basically the same end.

I use to think Joanna was foolish to come back to town after seeing the psychiatrist. She should have just driven away instead of coming back for the children. They would have been just fine.
She could have stayed with friends in the city and eventually filed for divorce and custody of the kids......

Nah! Not a good ending for a great little thriller like this.


"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night"

Re: The ending is so wrong.

It's like the popular story "The Lottery." Or the movie "The Wicker Man." An insular, secretive community that's hiding a pitch dark secret. And, an innocent, or innocents, are doomed to be taken down by it.

Ira Levin devised the most diabolical horror plots ever. And, he likes to ride them to their end. This book/movie follows that trend.

[SPOILERS]

It is so completely evil! And, I so completely love it! It's one of those cinematic moments where my tears are welling up. Not because of sadness. But, of joy at how cinematically perfect the moment is. Beautifully freaky, including Owen Roizman's cinematography, and Dick Smith's makeup work on Katherine Ross. I so wish this would get a restoration and a Blu-ray.

Plus, the fact that the robot is the one who kills the original is just absolutely twisted.

For those wanting a "happy ending," you get it! It's just a purely EVIL happy ending, as shown in the still photos of the "idyllic" new Katherine Ross with her family.

I. Drink. Your. Milkshake! [slurp!] I DRINK IT UP! - Daniel Plainview - There Will Be Blood

Re: The ending is so wrong.

Perhaps the ending could be read as the failure of feminism.

Exorcist: Christ's power compels you. Cast out, unclean spirit.
Destinata:💩

Re: The ending is so wrong.

My problem with the ending was that Joanna just seemed to give up when she spotted the robot. Why wouldn't she have at least tried to fight it off? It didn't seem true to her character to just accept what was happening.

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Perhaps she was still trying to register it all....
Even after stabbing my friend and seeing what I had seen, I am still not so sure that I could comprehend the sight of this robot who looks like me... even BETTER than me in a carbon copy of my bedroom. I'd be a bit stunned by it all. I'd still be reeling at the thought of such a betrayal on my husband's part.

"Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night"

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The ending is perfection.

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I love that this movie didn't punk out with some cliché and contrived Hollywood happy ending. This film certainly has the strength of its own grim convictions as far as the central premise is concerned.

Yes, this is really me.

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I'm also happy that it ended the way it did.
It's basically the way Ira Levin wrote it. No need for any changes.

You asked a pretty question; I've given you the ugly answer.
Fasten Your Seatbelts….
It's Going To Be A Bumpy Night!

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The element of betrayal at the end gives it an extra emotional gut punch. The whole fact that Joanna was betrayed by her own husband – a man that she basically loved and trusted or at least once did – is what makes the ending so chilling and upsetting. The same thing happens to Rosemary at the end of Rosemary's Baby. So the theme of betrayal is a constant one in Levin's work.

Yes, this is really me.
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