Scary kids' stories

Warning: This article contains spoilers for the movie Cloud Atlas.

Cloud Atlas

I recently watched the movie Cloud Atlas and although it was an enjoyable movie which I would recommend seeing, one of the questions I had about the movie was the closing scene. As anyone who’s seen Cloud Atlas will know, the movie tells six different stories and edits them together in small segments as if you were channel-hoping between all six stories.

Anyway, at the end of the movie the final scene shows Tom Hanks' character from the post-apocalyptic storyline sitting round the campfire apparently telling his grand-kids the stories we have just watched. The kids obviously enjoy his tales as they excitedly plead with him, "Tell us more, grandappy! Tell us more!"

At first I thought to myself, ‘Ar, that’s nice,’ but then later on the thought occurred to me, ‘Hang on a second! I’m not sure that’s a realistic response for a kid to have after just being told the stories from Cloud Atlas.’

Just to give an example, the second story involves an aspiring composer who's happy to sleep with just about everyone in order to further his career. He then gets blackmailed by his boss and so he shoots his boss, then goes into hiding for a couple of weeks and then finally he commits suicide by putting a gun in his mouth and shooting himself through the back of the head. Is that the sort of story which would have kids responding, ‘Wow! What a great story! Tell us more!’?