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Wait a minute . . .

That epic battle at the end? That only destroyed one base and a fraction of the troops the empire had at its disposal. The Death Star was taken out, just like it was two films before, but that didn’t exactly stop them last time. Sure, Vader and the emperor were both blown up, but that wouldn’t destroy the empire any more than blowing up the Pentagon would dissolve the United States.

What it does create is what’s known in international politics as a power vacuum. Return of the Jedi leaves the galaxy with fleets of star destroyers and no coherent power structure to control them. Throw in roving gangs of pissed-off troops desperate for money after their paychecks went up in flames with the Death Star, and you start to realize how bad shit’s about to get.

Soon these power-hungry military officers would form factions and destroy entire planets in their brutal attempts to seize power. Eventually, Palpatine would simply be replaced by a new emperor, possibly even one competent enough to devise a plan that can’t be foiled by developmentally stunted bears throwing rocks.

4. SUPERMAN RETURNS

The “happy” ending

Lex Luthor fails to kill Superman by stabbing him with kryptonite and leaving him in a shallow pool of water, and Superman stops Luthor’s evil plan in a thrilling action scene that consists of Superman holding stuff over his head.

Having saved the world again, Superman says good-bye to his son and flies into space.

Wait a minute . . .

And by “says good-bye to his son,” we mean he abandons his crippled, illegitimate son for the second time.

The whole setup of Superman Returns centers on earth’s greatest hero knocking up his girlfriend and then skipping town for five years. While he was gone, the combination of human and alien DNA resulted in the child becoming weak and sickly, with Lois mentioning that the child was failing gym class. (What kind of PE teacher fails a five-year-old for having asthma?)

So how does our hero respond when he returns and learns about his son? By breaking into the kid’s bedroom, telling him “good luck with the whole outcast thing, kiddo,” and leaving him alone. Again. So we’re left with a kid with:

1. superpowers,

2. gross genetic defects,

3. good reason to hate Superman.

It doesn’t take an evil genius to see the supervillain potential, and you know what? If he takes on Superman, we’re rooting for the kid.

3. JACK

The “happy” ending

Robin Williams plays the titular character, an elementary school child trapped in the body of a middle-age man. By the film’s end, Jack’s formerly intolerant classmates learn to love and accept him for the horrifying genetic aberration he is.

Wait a minute . . .

All this just makes it even sadder that Jack won’t live to see college.

There’s a reason why in other “kid becomes an adult” films the transformation is brought on by some fantasy element. In Jack, the main character is instead said to have a rare genetic condition that causes him to age four times faster than normal.

Now, the problem with this is that it strongly resembles an actual medical condition known as progeria. And, sadly, most people afflicted by this disease don’t live past age thirteen, as you’d expect for a disease that makes you age really, really fast.

Jack won’t get the ending Tom Hanks got in Big, where he magically shrinks back into a child and gets to live out his life as the only twelve-year-old who knows how to make love to a grown woman. Jack, meanwhile, will be walking with a cane by high school. The only way he’s getting laid is if he lives long enough to see the invention of Viagra.

2. THE MATRIX TRILOGY

The “happy” ending

Thanks to the triumph of human will and several baffling plot contrivances, Neo sacrifices himself and convinces the machines who are enslaving humanity to not enslave humanity quite so much.

The machines send their Colonel Sanders avatar to announce that any humans who want to be freed from the Matrix will be allowed to do so.

Wait a minute