Movies: That would have been better with a poly ending.

Enchanted could have been helped with polyamory. It also would have driven home that the, "Happily ever after, love for only one" isn't the only relationship expectation one could have.

I was just about to mention it. I can't remember all the characters' names, but when the lawyer guy kisses Gisele, the Prince encourages him, the girlfriend tells him it's okay, and when she wakes up the Prince seems so happy... I felt it would have worked better with a poly ending because as it is, the 5 year relationship was suddenly discarded, and the Prince looked like he had no attention span and the first woman he saw was always the love of his life.
 
Sweet Home Alabama. She obviously loved one enough to want to marry him but then re-falls for her high school sweetheart so she just says, "Sorry!"??

and Aida (the musical). Though a lot of other things would have had to be different, like no treason, for that poly relationship to have even a CHANCE of working.
 
My oddball nominees:

Chasing Amy
The English Patient (although I doubt it would have worked out...)
Samurai Champloo (anime series)
 
I think there are many, many unrequited love and lack of communication movies where either the whole movie could have been avoided or the ending could have been much better if someone could toss a polyamory grenade onto the set at a strategic point in the film.

While I have often yelled at the characters on the screen that they're being stupid by making such a big deal about not being able to choose... You have to admit that throwing in a poly bomb would pretty much destroy the movie, since it would remove the conflict. What's a good movie without conflict??

As for unrequited love... well, if the other person just isn't into you, it really doesn't matter how many partners you prefer, they're still not going to be one of them...
 
I can't believe no one mentioned Casablanca or Gone with the Wind.

But, yeah, when the conflict of the plot is a love triangle (or quadrangle in GwtW), resolving it with a happy poly situation destroys the story.

I'm a fiction writer. Story = conflict.

If Anna Karenina's husband could just accept a co-husband, there wouldn't be much of a story...
 
Come on, anyone in a poly relationship knows that poly doesn't mean "no conflict" :p
The conflict and struggles could be different ones. Plus, the conflict could still be the same (who do I choose?) with only the answer being different (both!)
 
I can't believe no one mentioned Casablanca or Gone with the Wind.

But, yeah, when the conflict of the plot is a love triangle (or quadrangle in GwtW), resolving it with a happy poly situation destroys the story.

I'm a fiction writer. Story = conflict.

If Anna Karenina's husband could just accept a co-husband, there wouldn't be much of a story...
You don't sound very original in your storytelling then...
Come on, anyone in a poly relationship knows that poly doesn't mean "no conflict" :p
The conflict and struggles could be different ones. Plus, the conflict could still be the same (who do I choose?) with only the answer being different (both!)
My thoughts exactly.
 
I write screenplays, too, and MeeraReed is absolutely right in saying there is no story without a conflict. Those stories that are all about a person choosing between one or another person would fall flat at the climax if the protagonist chose both. The audience would say, "After all that struggle, she/he doesn't even pick one? How lame! I watched that journey for nothing!" They would feel cheated because they would be rooting for one of them, and feel like it's unfair if there isn't a clear winner. They also need a character to identify with, whether it's the winner or the loser. So, love stories with "happy poly endings" would have to center the conflict around some issue other than the typical two people trying to win someone's heart. But my choice would probably have an ambiguous ending where it looks like more than one person wins, but you're not sure, so the audience goes home and can't stop talking about it - "Who do you think she marries? No, really?! I thought..." That kind of thing.
 
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I dunno, I thought Harrad Experiment had plenty of conflict, and it ended with a six-people marriage. (Did I mention my parents took me to see it when I was twelve? I thought Don Johnson was dreamy.)(hay, I was TWELVE)

How about Keeping the Faith, a priest and a rabbi fall in love with Jenna Elfman (well, who wouldn't?). If it ended with all of them, it has the added benefit of turning the priest from the priesthood.
 
... Harrad Experiment... I thought Don Johnson was dreamy.

Oh, he sure was! Mmm, those juicy lips of his.

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The first movie that came to mind for me however was "Imagine Me and You." Don't get me wrong... Piper Perabo is hot and when she has that realization that she's a lesbian you can see her face transform (one of the best moments captured on film).
That said... Her fiance was totally broken-hearted and you could tell that she loved him in her way. I think it would have been better if instead of running off with the other girl they just threw some poly in there and everyone wins.
Don't mind me, just bringing up an old post… :eek:
He was her husband, not fiancé. She fell for another woman at the wedding, which to me makes it more unbelievable that she could just replace him rather than be in love with two people. Surely she still had feelings for the man she JUST married?! :confused: ah well
 
You're talking about Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who marries Juliet (Keira Knightley) while Mark (Andrew Lincoln) is best man.

Love Actually - the first feature film directed [as well as scripted] by the screenwriter of 4 Weddings And A Funeral and Notting Hill - was pretty much savaged by the critics. Call me a soppy old romantic, but I thought - despite some sequences which are embarrassingly awful - it MUCH better than either of those 2.

I can't understand your statement:at all! This story is dripping in polyamory!

(For those of who who haven't seen the film: it's made up of shuffled-together stories, so that it jumps from story A to story B to story C... comes back at some point to story A, then story D, then... comes back at some point to story A again, etc. with all stories having an epilogue at the same time at Heathrow Airport [London]. Bit players in story B turn up as major characters in their own story, F, vice versa, and so on.)

But somebody has taken the trouble to unshuffle the pack and pick out the bits of the story that Nexus refers to, which has been uploaded here. [Don't click on that YET!] Only they left out the epilogue which is included - along with everybody else' epilogue - here. [Don't click on that one either, yet!]

Nexus: Pay attention (in the first clip) to the points at 07:32 [when Juliet first starts to suspect], at 07:53 [when it's pretty obvious], and from 12:27 to the end of that clip [when she runs out of the house, kisses Mark for his open declaration and he ends up saying (to HIMSELF!): "Enough... enough now..."]

The fact that Mark says this proves that he isn't willing to cheat on his best friend. The fact that Juliet kisses him (like that) proves that she is attracted... (and not just sexually).

And then the epilogue ("1 month later"). Pay attention (in the 2nd clip) to the scene that starts at 0:42. Peter, Juliet, AND Mark show up together to meet Jamie and Aurelia off the 'plane. And they all seem happy... or at least relatively so. Mark mumbles: "Thought I'd tag along." And Juliet is ecstatic.

Open to interpretation:
a) Mark and Juliet have both admitted to an attraction / love for each other, but in order not to wound Peter, they've decided to put it behind them and be "just good friends". At least Mark's agonising of earlier has come to an end.
b) Mark and Juliet are having an affair, about which Peter knows nothing. I don't buy this, frankly. It's discounted as far as I'm concerned.
c) It's all open (polyamory) between the 3 of them, but they haven't come out of the closet as far as other friends are concerned.

I actually like the fact that it isn't spelled out for us. This may be pure marketing: if the ending had been rub-your-nose-in-it polyamory, they might have scared some of the die-hard romcom fans off. But there's certainly a hint that this is a possibility.

... And I can choose to believe the ending I prefer.

Whoa. You just blew my mind, and I love it.

The only thing that makes me think otherwise is that she's on the opposite side of Peter, with Peter between her and Mark. Her body language excludes Mark, and he seems almost glum, still.

Hmm... Could just be not being out about it?

Oh, man... Now I'm itching to write some fanfiction. :D
 
Just saw "This Means War." The entire movie is about Reese Witherspoon's character dating two men at the same time who happen to be partner CIA agents and best friends. At one point she even asks "is it possible to love two men at the same time?"

In the end she chooses one guy even though she has spent the whole movie comparing the two and finding them equal, but different.

Sooooo would have been better if they all would have ended up together - especially since the dudes were all about hugging each other, saying "I love you" to each other, and being family anyway. They would have made such a lovely little unit of three. :p

I got a weird look from an old lady at the theater, because as the credits were rolling I actually said something out loud to Keith about how it should have ended poly with them all together and apparently she overheard. Haha
 
I saw the commercial and rolled my eyes precisely because I knew it wouldn't end poly. Too bad! How did she end up choosing?
 
I saw the commercial and rolled my eyes precisely because I knew it wouldn't end poly. Too bad! How did she end up choosing?

The three of them are getting shot at and she has to dive towards one of them to get out of the way of the burning vehicle flying towards them. So, the one she dove towards in a moment where she had to follow her gut is the one she ends up with. Supposedly she'd already decided before then and had been getting together with the other to tell him she couldn't see him anymore.

It was a good movie and fun to watch, but yeah... Altogether disappointing. lol
 
And of course the other guy ends up with his ex-wife again. :rolleyes:
 
I write screenplays, too, and MeeraReed is absolutely right in saying there is no story without a conflict. Those stories that are all about a person choosing between one or another person would fall flat at the climax if the protagonist chose both. The audience would say, "After all that struggle, she/he doesn't even pick one? How lame! I watched that journey for nothing!" They would feel cheated because they would be rooting for one of them, and feel like it's unfair if there isn't a clear winner. They also need a character to identify with, whether it's the winner or the loser. So, love stories with "happy poly endings" would have to center the conflict around some issue other than the typical two people trying to win someone's heart [...]
Got to disagree with you here. Not about the necessity of conflict, but about your assertion that "those stories that are all about a person choosing between one or another person would fall flat at the climax if the protagonist chose both". As long as the conflict is kept going up until the end, there's no need for "a clear winner"... or rather - from a poly point of view - no need for anybody to lose. The posts on this thread - in fact, the very existence of this thread - are/is evidence that many of us feel that the "typical Hollywood happy ending" (ie "[one] boy gets [one] girl") is often a cop-out, the coward [scriptwriter]'s way out. (It's like that other old chestnut, the hero dying bravely because the writer hasn't got the imagination to resolve the drama any other way.) We ask for more courage, more imagination, more willingness to explore alternatives to the hackneyed traditional resolutions.

As an analogy, I'd point out that one of the best books ever written loses none of its charm or magic because it contains, near its end, the sentence:
So Alice got up and ran off, thinking while she ran, as well she might, what a wonderful dream it had been.
Nobody is terribly disappointed or says"How lame! I watched that journey for nothing! It was only a dream after all... Alice didn't have to solve all her problems and find her own way back to reality: she just had to wake up. I want my money back!" (Or, in fact, the even more typical and traditional resolution: "Hey! Why didn't the hero show up to rescue her?! Where's the love interest? We was gypped!")

[Added in editing] Imagine the non-poly but open-to-new-ideas film-goer who watches a film saturated in romantic conflict: WHICH ONE will she/he choose??? (Place your bets...) And then she/he chooses both - or all 3/4/5... Don't you think that the viewer could see this - far from being an anti-climax - as being mind-blowing, fresh, and [as far as they know] an original twist?
 
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"typical Hollywood happy ending" (ie "[one] boy gets [one] girl") is often a cop-out, the coward [scriptwriter]'s way out. (It's like that other old chestnut, the hero dying bravely because the writer hasn't got the imagination to resolve the drama any other way.) We ask for more courage, more imagination, more willingness to explore alternatives to the hackneyed traditional resolutions.

As an analogy, I'd point out that one of the best books ever written loses none of its charm or magic because it contains, near its end, the sentence:Nobody is terribly disappointed or says"How lame! I watched that journey for nothing! It was only a dream after all... Alice didn't have to solve all her problems and find her own way back to reality: she just had to wake up. I want my money back!" (Or, in fact, the even more typical and traditional resolution: "Hey! Why didn't the hero show up to rescue her?! Where's the love interest? We was gypped!")

I'd like to just interject a tiny thing here, having been an actor for forty years. This is off topic, but the reason movie-goers get hackneyed endings is almost always because of money. There are huge amounts of money invested in movie productions. The investors want to see a profit. Millions of dollars are put into a show that might bomb.

Naturally, humanly, of course they want to see the show not bomb but turn a profit. The best way is to play it as safe as possible. What is safe?

Stories, endings, actors, directors that are already proven winners. That have already turned a profit. In other words, hackneyed.

The same goes for published books.

Quality can be found in entertainment. It usually can't be found in big budgets, because people get scared, even the big people with all the money.
 
Is anyone familiar with an old flick, "Murphy's Romance?" Sally Fields, James Garner? She's a single woman starting life over with her son, buys a horse farm, starts training horses. Garner's a local pharmacist, gets interested. They're getting together when her no-good ex shows up. Classic triangle. He cheats at cards, is a flim-flam man (the ex) but sings like an angel. Then his pregnant girlfriend shows up, wants him to come home.

The ex goes back to the girlfriend, not Sally Fields. This flick was begging for a group solution.
 
Is anyone else watching (TV show, not a movie) "Missing"? Without knowing too much of the story yet, I'm thinking there could be a pretty dang good trio :D
 
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