system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: "It's a Wonderful Life" has a sad ending

People say "It's a Wonderful Life" is a feel-good movie with a classic example of a happy ending, but if you consider what happens, it seems pretty sad.

First off, the bad guy just gets away with taking what would be well over $100,000 in today's money. He faces no ramifications besides not being able to buy out George's business, which he wasn't going to be able to do without taking the money anyway.

Second, George doesn't get anything that he wants: he just avoids a catastrophe that he shouldn't have been responsible for in the first place. He didn't want to get married, and he certainly didn't want to get stuck in Bedford Falls, and yet, at the end of the movie, that's exactly the situation he's in: married and stuck. Okay, everyone came together to help him out, but would it have been a happy ending if the movie ended right before the money was lost? Because that's essentially the situation he's in at the end of the film. I mean, not going to jail for something you shouldn't go to jail for should be the standard, not something that makes you think "everything is going to be okay now."

It seems like the "happy" ending is just that George now accepts the life he never wanted and isn't bothered by the fact that he's letting his dreams die.
gpt
I think the point of the ending is he has a new appreciation for what he has, and the impact he's made on others. 

Through the whole movie he's been wanting to build cities and bridges and other great things, and he didn't build cities, but he built houses for people that need them, and he indirectly saved the lives of hundreds of soldiers by saving his brother. 

He was fulfilling his dreams in some ways, but he didn't realize it or appreciate it.