Rewatching the final fiery throwdown between Michael Ironside and Stephen Lack as brothers representing opposite sides of the psychic war in Scanners (1981) makes me think that, for the good of cinema, this the way that all movies should end.
Watch the above scene and tell me that the problems of every movie wouldn't be solved if the characters would use mental powers to rip each other to shit in the last five minutes. I know I definitely would've liked, say, Juno a lot more if that had been the case. I don't care what kind of movie it is or what the story had been prior to its mind-melting climax. It isn't even necessary for psychic powers to have been established as part of the plot because that's the thing about psychic powers - you never know when they're going to manifest themselves. Scanners didn't even have to be about scanners - Ironside and Lack could've been playing professional chefs or stay-at-home dads and its ending could still be the same.
Milk was a good movie, for instance, but I would've liked it a lot more and even added it to my home library if Josh Brolin and Sean Penn had unleashed on each other scanner style. It's not entirely true to history, maybe, to have Brolin as Dan White announce to Penn's crusading politican Harvey Milk "...We're gonna do it the Scanner way - I'm gonna suck your brain dry!" But from a movie standpoint, much more satisfying.
Milk was a good movie, for instance, but I would've liked it a lot more and even added it to my home library if Josh Brolin and Sean Penn had unleashed on each other scanner style. It's not entirely true to history, maybe, to have Brolin as Dan White announce to Penn's crusading politican Harvey Milk "...We're gonna do it the Scanner way - I'm gonna suck your brain dry!" But from a movie standpoint, much more satisfying.
That's the great thing about psychic face-offs - no matter who loses, everyone wins.
