Problem With Ending

Rating: 9/10 (5 April 2008)

I love this movie. And most importantly I loved the way it made me think throughout it's entirety. Near the end I was amazed that this mega-budget movie with a brain was actually going to have an ambiguous ending. I could not conceive of the notion of a studio picture leaving the audience to decide for itself what actually happened to Jodie Foster in the wormhole.
As she walks out of that congressional hearing I could hear myself screaming inside, "Roll the credits now!"
But they didn't. Instead we get that whole unnecessary scene between James Woods and Angela Bassett. Why? For me it marred a masterpiece. This film was for a little over 2 hours the most perceptive story about how disconnected we have become from each other as we become more connected through technology. I was overwhelmed by the intelligent debate between science and faith. And satisfied with an ending that seemed to say you could not have one without the other.
Then they just had to throw in that scene. Don't tell me that I have to have faith and then give me the proof! Why ruin the wonderful discussions that this film could have generated about whether or not anything actually happened by giving me the answers in a scene that seemed to be added in to please test audiences?
They tried to rescue the ending with that scene of Foster on the cliff looking thoughtful, but all I could think anymore was about that 18 hour video transmission. And would Jodie ever find out about it? Not the way I wanted to leave the theater that day. I agree that this should have been the 2001 for my generation. But instead it became a symbol of what is wrong with movie-making today.
Lisa Simpson said it best: "You can never go wrong appealing to the lowest common denominator." I expected better from Robert Zemekis, but I honestly don't know why.