Disturbing doesn't make up for a lack of cleverness. It kept building and building like everything was going to come together perfectly and it just kinda flat lined.
shareIt was a perfect ending - surprising yet inevitable, and gives you plenty to chew on after the film is over.
To those who don’t like the legendary ending, how would you have ended it?
I like Mills shooting John Doe, I just don't like the tacked on studio ending. Fincher wanted to cut to black as soon as Mills shot him. Either that or just ending on that birds eye view shot of the desert so we're left wondering if Mills is also going to shoot himself after losing everything while leaving Somerset still utterly disillusioned with humanity would've been perfect for the bleak, nihilistic tone the film has but no, Hollywood wanted compromise so we get the awful Hemingway quote and Somerset deciding to stay on the force because...reasons.
Somerset and Mills' fate should've been left unresolved.
I like the coda at the end. It’s Somerset’s story ultimately, we open the film with him and it’s nice to end with him, and a Morgan Freeman voiceover is about the best thing in the universe to close your film on.
Also, it suggests that Somerset was actually affected by Mills’ ‘you pretend to believe these things because you’re leaving’ which is a nice reversal, usually Somerset is the wise man and Mills is the bullshitter, but to Mills’ credit he was right this time and it looks like Somerset is staying on the force.
Nice to see Mills sat in the cop car too. I don’t want to speculate whether he blows his head off - if he did it would mess the ‘perfection’ of Doe’s plan, and it’s actually more disturbing to know that Mills continues to live his destroyed life.
Of all the movies ever made - Se7en and The Usual Suspects have the best endings. Ending a movie well is different than having a stroke of genius ending. And to think that there was some effort by the studio to change Se7en’s ending. I believe Pitt said if you don’t have this ending, I’m not doing this movie. Or at least parts of the movie that were not to be changed were in his contract - that included Gwyneth Paltrow’s head in the box.
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