Twin Peaks, anyone..? I do not mind a purposefully unsettled ending, but...

... when an ending is rather a build-up into the next series / the next installment that was assumed in the writing but got cancelled due to lack of financing - well, this sucks!

The difference, possibly, between "these days" and "nowadays" is the submission of production and story weaving values to commercial dictates, the latter being quite flimsy cum unpredictable.

I would like to state BG series as a tragic yet very honourable bright spot to counter the tide of commercially driven cynicism: BGII was massively popular, and I do think also quite a solid commercial success by the criterion of the era. And most of us would have wanted more, and probably still do!

Yet, the developers felt so strongly proud about this title that lest it be cheapened, the rights have been laid to rest up until very recently - as it seemingly was for the lack of worthy follow up story spin.


Edit: italics. Never seem to get it right at the first try...

cliff-hangars are good because

Minus, a little generously viewed, the first film of the LoTR series, all of these Tolkien bastardizations by Jackson should be lamented as a tragic waste of real talent ,drawn out box-office conscious endings obviously there.

Any number of directors, given the budget 'n opportunity, could do LoTR or Hobbit... but Meet the Feebles: unique and hence very delightful!

If I could ask Peter Jackson two questions: after "Why did you sell out so censord'ly?" would follow: "How the heck did you get New Zeland Film Board to sponsor Meet the Feebles by 25 grand???" ;-)

People don't hate cliff-hangers, what they do hate are cut-off's and the Hobbit is a perfect example of a stinking rude in your face cut-off and deserves to be hated for it.

Edit: one more time for the dummy's (in the movie industry), - Cut-offs are for five minute add breaks or intermissions, not 2 year go and make another movie!

Okay, I'm going to complain about the ending of Mass Effect 2. It's a piece of shit ending to a piece of shit game, and two wrongs don't make one right. ME1 has a suspenseful ending that I wouldn't call a cliffhanger per se; ME2 is a game that absolutely nobody ever thought through in its own right, never mind how it related to its predecessor or successor, and it follows the ending of the previous game about as smoothly as a nuclear detonation follows pouring milk into your coffee in the morning.

I read Digital Fortress (by Dan Brown, that bloke of The Da Vinci Code fame) in upper secondary school, and I swear that it swaps between two characters as near as makes no difference at every chapter. On a pathetic attempt to keep the reader in suspense for one character's story while they are reading that of the other, every bloody chapter ends in a cliffhanger, and that shit gets really jarring really quickly. If it hadn't been for the literature project, I would never have finished the book because of this.

I wonder why the Hobbit finished and i felt like burning down the cinema i was so pissed off, but the other Lord of the rings movies all ended with me feeling greatly satisfied? It is a bit hard to remember, but i think the others all had elements of closure to make sure moviegoers feel like they have watched a movie?

I still like the ending to the Hobbit 2. It was suspenseful for me and I am patient enough to wait a whole year.