Making a long story short, I have no job. To keep myself occupied i'm volunteering at the moment. My particular work load includes dealing with movies, and plowing through my workload, it got me to wondering about Cliff Hangers.

Depending upon how things are played out, a cliffhanger can be an ending scene in the same book, same season of a TV show, or half-way through a movie to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. The opposite is also true where it can end the season of a TV show, keeping the audience guessing and making them want to come back for the next installment, or keeping the audience guessing at the end of a movie to make them wonder what will, or would, happen next.

As the poll questions imply, what are your thoughts about cliff hangers?

Most horrible endings in all existance for cancelled series............

Adventures of Brisco County Jr

Surface

Pirates of Dark Water.

Dark Skies

Threshold

I don't mind them as long as they're not too drastic. I hate when something big is going to happen in a series and they put it at the end of the season. Obviously it's a way to get viewers for the next season, but it still annoys me at times.

My Name is Earl got canceled on a cliffhanger. They never revealed who Dodge's real father was.

As long as there really is going to be a sequel. Otherwise, the cliff hanger is useless and may as well went with a tie-up ending.

Speaking of cliffhangers on cancelled serires, remember G-Police? Weapons of Justice (the second one) ended with with a rogue general heading to take over Mars, but Psygnosis went belly up and a third sequel never happened.

Oh, and Episode 3 forever

On topic, they leave you wanting for more which is good, but they royally svck when the series get cancelled. So yes, i like them as long as the series doesn't get cancelled before it's concluded Also, if there is a long times between the parts, it does lose it's effectiveness.

I'm cool with cliffhangers as long as it is resolved eventually. If it's the last episode in a series (can't really be helped if that series is cancelled) or the end of a movie, then I don't like them. Some endings I didn't like are still better than a cliffhanger. Imagine if Death Note had ended with Light and his team arriving at the warehouse... that would have been lame.

Cliffhangers are great when done right.

I.E. Who Shot Mr. Burns or some of the Star Trek stuff.

I know a LP'er on YouTube who does a pretty good job at doing cliffhangers. They can be great when done right, it makes you wanting more; however, they can be used wrongly and ruin a show. I can think of three that falls in to this category:

1: Super Mario Bros. (movie): Yeah I know not a lot of people like this movie (sad really cause I love it) but the movie ends in a cliffhanger and no sequel was ever made (Bob Hopkins be praised ).

2: Reboot: This show ended in a major cliffhanger but sadly the voice of Megabyte passed away and they didn't conclude the show (oddly enough I saw a commercial recently and the voice actor on it sounded just like Megabyte, I'd say hire that guy and finish the show).

3: ThunderCats (New): This show is dead because of mismanagement and bad planning and it too ended in a cliffhanger. Lion-O finds another female Thundarian but she's evil and betrays him and Mumm-Ra get's away so basically the show ends with the villains winning.

I used to like cliff hangers, but then...

You took an arrow to the knee?....

Cliffhangers should only be done when the writers know for sure that they're going to be able to resolve the plot in the near future. Otherwise, just finish the damn story, have some closure, and be done with it.

What's a Cliffhanger? I have any idea what those are. Never had any experience with them.

Suddenly Cptjoker closes his account and we're left to ponder what the conclusion was http://i.imgur.com/NZQhi.gif .

Don't like them.

I think that the story should be wrapped-up. But watching some old western serials, some of them thar cliffhangers were pretty fantastic! Of course, I could just pop in the next episode and keep watching

It's probably my general distaste for over arching stoires, or seeing it as just a ploy/hook to get you to keep watching. I find both of them to be demeaning - I'll watch/read fi the story is good, you don't to try a cheap gimmick.

edit: I can't remember, does Sherrif Woody make it across the gorge?

hate end when a series ends on a cliffhanger then is cancelled.

HALF LIFE 2 EPISODE 2!!!!!! *FLIP GODZILLA* /end thread

Seriously. If well done a cliffhanger can be good, but I find these days they are too often overused and there is no real sense of closure and it makes the endings suffer. I find the best cliffhangers are the ones that flow organically from where the plot is going as opposed to simply writing in one for the sake of it.

In general though.... I don't like them. I would prefer to have things wrapped up, with the potential for more.

Do I like them? No. Do I understand there necessity? Yeah. Some series orgames getting canceled when they end on a cliffhanger really blows. The worst one was...

Hey, I see what you did there. Is this post to be continued now or next season?

I don't really like them. Sure, there are times when they fit nicely, and help to encourage the viewer/reader/whatever to continue, but too often it has ended up pissing me off since I'm not always the most patient of people. So yeah, I don't really hate cliffhangers; I kind of look at them as

Can be great, can be terrible. The Empire Strikes Back ended with pretty much the greatest cliffhanger of all time.

I don't like them at all. I prefer either closure, or a good open ending.

Best use of cliff hangers: the old Doctor Who had each story over four episodes. End of week one, the last scene was the dalek bursting through the wall, or the cybermen coming through the airlock, or some guy realising his arm was turning into something resembling broccoli. Three cliffhangers per story, only a week to wait, damn near perfect format imho.

Pay to see a film or spend good money on a book or game with a big cliffhanger an unsatisfactory conclusion, feels like penny and diming unless you know from the start it's not stand-alone but part of a series.

You'd have to refresh my memory on that one. I remember the ending where there was another young Enzo(due to system "reboot"). I know Megabyte had gotten so powerful that even Hexadecimal was overthrown by him.

It was the series finale episode "Crouching Binome, Hidden Virus".

Haha, yeah really I can tell by the avatar. The last couple seasons especially have been aggravating just because of the length between the seasons. I cant wait til august 11th though!

But yeah, cliff hangers can be good and bad, depending on how they're done. I mean if the cliff hanger is some stupid drama moment like "some chick witnesses her husband cheating on her, then bam cliffhanger" well that's just overall lame and un needed drama. Now the way breaking bad has done it on the end of season 3 and 5 (the first half) was pretty good. (season 4 not really a cliffhanger, in fact that could have been the actual ending if they wanted)