the.com/anticlimax
The build-up signs checks the ending can't cash.
means A letdown that follows a big buildup — when the ending turns out far less dramatic or important than everything leading to it promised.
from Built from Greek 'anti-' (against, opposite of) plus 'climax,' which itself came into English from the Greek 'klimax,' meaning 'ladder' or 'staircase' — the same image behind rhetorical climax, a rising scale of ideas climbing to a peak. An anticlimax is literally the opposite of that climb: the ladder that, instead of reaching a height, ends abruptly on a low step.
- rhetoric term
- ancient Greeks named it on purpose
- comedy's best friend
- punchlines are engineered anticlimaxes
- sequels often
- deliver exactly this, expensively
- opposite of
- catharsis, its more satisfying cousin