MovieChat Forums > Hollow Man (2000) Discussion > The ending was crap, they should have do...

The ending was crap, they should have done this instead:

posted 5 years ago by Heisenberg (6730)
28 replies | jump to latest

This movie is very underrated, and could have been even better with a better end.
Ok, we don't really see him die so maybe he survived for a sequel...

But the ludicrous naked fighting, the fact that he survives being burned, and the fact itself that he loses to those two assholes all make it kinda stupid.

I wish he won, with something written better than just "his magic super strenght":
he is invisible, so he does manage to kill everybody and get away with it, but before dying they managed to do something to expose him publicly or to the military, so he's forced to be on the run from now on.

Anyway, up to the last 15 minutes, it's a great movie with a great bad guy as a protagonist!

[–] MickyMac (3175) 4 years ago

The only Verhoeven film that doesn't end with any winking pessimism.

[–] Heisenberg (6730) 4 years ago

I guess, that's why it's one of his weakest.
This "happy ending" was totally floppy, nobody liked Shue+Brolin.

At least they could have hinted at the possibility Bacon survived, like have another scene where the Shue character is recovering at the hospital, talking on the phone, pestering the investigator in charge about Sebastian's corpse, and the cop says "we couldn't find any body, it must have been incinerated in the fire. An "invisible corpse" anyway....Let it go, doctor".
She hangs up, takes a second feeling encouraged, looking a bit more hopefully at her future.
She stands up, sips her coffee gazing outside her window, but then sees the disappearing vapor of somebody's breath on the glass.
She opens the window to look out but there is nobody in sight......

[–] MickyMac (3175) 4 years ago

I think Hollow Man would've done better as a proper Invisible Man retelling not a generic self contained fight for survival plot.

If you want people to like your heroes best not to make them a complete scumbag or cheating harpy.

[–] SlackerInc (1101) 4 years ago

Who was cheating?

[–] MickyMac (3175) 4 years ago

Elizabeth Shue's character.

[–] SlackerInc (1101) 4 years ago

No, she was not. You must not have been paying attention to the phone conversation she has with the Kevin Bacon character at the beginning, when she tells him he doesn’t have the right to worry about who is in her bed anymore.

[–] MickyMac (3175) 4 years ago

But it felt like she left him for Josh Brolin since the whole movie was frustratingly uneven. All the women in it were mouthy which added nothing to the film it takes away because it made them feel like fouled mouth people.

[–] PaladinNJ (21510) 4 years ago

She wasn't cheating. Sebastian knew she had met someone else after they broke up. He didn't know who it was.

[–] SlackerInc (1101) 4 years ago

Precisely. There are some very retrograde sexist mores being represented on this board.

[–] MickyMac (3175) 4 years ago

You have this aspect of it being told from the Invisible Man's perspective, There's something about the original story and the most recent movie where it's told from other people's point of view not the Invisible Man which made him more threatening, you don't get any of that with Hollow Man/Sebastian he just feels like a lovable pervert especially when it's Kevin Bacon in the role.

[–] Drooch (5333) 4 years ago

‘Lovable pervert massacres colleagues’

It takes a genius like Verhoeven to make a pitch like that work.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

"But the fighting, the fact that he survives being burned, and the fact itself that he loses to those two assholes all make it kinda stupid."
You've got it the wrong way round, THEY were fine people, HE was the asshole.

[–] Heisenberg (6730) 4 years ago

Says who?

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

I do. Kevin Bacon's character, throughout the film, came across to me as an arrogant, hot-headed PERVERT even when he WASN'T invisible, and he was just generally unlikeable. They really should screen these military researchers before allowing them to become heads of teams.

[–] Heisenberg (6730) 4 years ago

That's what makes him cool: he was a genius, better than everybody else around him, who now had a way to make it tangibly so.
He's a great character, it's his movie, and he would be a great evil guy to win it in the end.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

I don't agree, his character was a JERK. No wonder I haven't watched it for over 20 years, since the initial viewing, until a second viewing on Amazon Prime.

[–] MickyMac (3175) 3 years ago

If you want people care about your protagonists don't go out of your way making them unlikeable, with movie villains the less human the better.

[–] Heisenberg (6730) 3 years ago

What are you saying?

[–] MickyMac (3175) 3 years ago

Less human the better would be don't humanize or neutralize the villain by having a girlfriend leave him for another man.

[–] Heisenberg (6730) 3 years ago

I agree, that made him more human and likeable.
He was dumped, he cared about her and she acted like a bitch by secretly fucking their own co worker. I don't know who thought that was gonna make Shue and Brolin heroes for us.

But that goes with my OP: Sebastian IS the protagonist, and evil one but we sympathyze with him nonetheless also because of these details (how he is the genius and everybody else is just sponging off of him, how his ex dumped him to fuck his less brilliant parasite, how he is a victim of the procedure and was not planning to go crazy etc).

Hence, there should have been a better ending with HIS triump, not theirs.

[–] MickyMac (3175) 3 years ago

Did feel like an excuse for a bit of on screen sex.

Rooting for the villain and wanting everyone to die happened with the Nightmare On Elm Street and Halloween remakes.

2020 Invisible Man had a villain to be afraid of and a heroine to root who was a victim of abuse by the invisible man.

It's common knowledge that the serum makes the test subjects crazy and none of the co workers think that's an issue until he starts raping women and escaping through the night, what kind of people are you? that is a giant red flag.

[–] MickyMac (3175) 3 years ago

Humanizing the villain and vilifying the protagonists severely hurt the film's potential.

2020's Invisible Man had a villain to be afraid and a heroin to root who was a victim of abuse.

[–] Patman111196 (1775) 3 years ago

I did not find him likable at all. He's one of the worst scumbags in Verhorven's filmography. Yes, they were assholes, but they did the proper thing by confessing and trying to fix the mistake they made. I will say they were stupid for letting an egotistcal hothead take command.

[–] Heisenberg (6730) 3 years ago

Let him take "command"?
He was not commanding it. He was it.
He singlehandedly figured everything with his genius, nothing else. Everyone else was a passerby.
Not only that, they were riding on his tail.
And finally they became obstacles.

He is evil allright by the end, but he clearly becomes so because of the events.

[–] Mario32 (65) a year ago

A better ending would be if he woke up in the lab and Linda told him he passed out from the pain but they managed to make him visible again. That way the whole thing would be a dream and they would have succeeded with the project. Also that would mean that Sebastian wouldn't have raped or killed anyone.

[–] Heisenberg (6730) a year ago

Well, a cliché but yes, a better ending than the one in the movie.
Also, it leaves the idea that he would be willing to do any of those things if he had an opportunity, leaving the door open to a sequel where he does.

[–] yvesyves (682) 8 months ago

agree , last 15 minutes are so typical and common with any action movie (lame in my opinion) , whereas the movie was very original and had a very particular vibe to it ; still a great movie in my book.

[–] Heisenberg (6730) 8 months ago

Yes, it is unfortunate, as if the production did not truly believe in the movie's potential and just went with a B movie cliché ending.

Instead, like you wrote, it was very original and had a very particular vibe to it, I think because of Verhoeven and Bacon and the script so far elevated it above the rest.