Ok, I'm not one to defend Robert Altman. One, he doesn't need it ( MASH for the win, people); two, I'm still aggravated with Altman over Popeye; three, I happen to enjoy the Lucas Howard the Duck movie, so you might take my opinion with a grain of salt.

That said, I'm going to disagree with Dean, and his commenters, on ambiguous endings: see here for a good list. Note what's on the list: The Thing, for example. Blade Runner, for another. 2001: A Space Odyssey (don't leap to Blame Kubrick (TM: Stephen King): remember that Arthur Clarke co-wrote the script, and in this case, the movie preceded the book, or at the least Arthur wrote the book as the movie was being produced.)

Ambiguous endings, in other words, aren't just a gimmick, they're part of the foundation of SciFi and Horror. Flowers for Algernon. Frankenstein (book, not movies). 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dune, if you understand what Frank Herbert has laid out as a trap for his Kwisatz Haderach. The Amber series and Corwyn's path that leads to... where exactly? Alien, and Aliens. The Terminator.

Meaning, calling ambiguous endings a cop-out, or "literary", sort of misses that the best of our work, in this little corner of the imaginative arts, actually lives and dreams with the ambigious ending.

That said: you have to do the work. All endings grow from the story that's been told. There can be no half-measures, here. And now we're back to the real question: Did Altman and company do the work in the rest of the picture to make that ending work?

Dunno, I haven't seen Countdown, so I can't say whether it would work for me personally. I think, from Dean's reaction, that we can assume that, for most, Altman and company didn't pull it off, at least not at remove?

Would it have worked in 1968? When none had yet set foot on the moon? But we'd lost Apollo 1, and Grisham, White, and Chaffee along with it. I think maybe, in this case, Altman might have been playing with a loaded deck. The world had set the stage for him, built up the anxieties, and he may have taken advantage of that; in that setup, I think perhaps the idea that we could send someone to the moon and then hear... nothing. Ever again, one way or another...

Yeah, I wonder now if Countdown is a case where art divorced from context has lost something in translation.

And, I don't think ambiguous endings are something to aim for. So I find myself agreeing and disagreeing with Dean, again. Most times, most stories, the well-developed, well defined ending comes out of the story, and should just be allowed to happen.

But then, I've taken my own spin on this kind of thing. I like to think I did the groundwork right, but who knows.

For all I know, my taste-ometer broke on Howard the Duck, and trusting my opinion on matters of art is a dubious business...