Tear Jerker / The Stepford Wives

• Joanna in the 1975 movie states her relatives are all dead; she has no one aside from her children and friends.
• When Joanna sees her double, she simply gives up on fighting for her life. She knows that there's no hope for her.
• It's not really touched on, but all the children in town lose their mothers and they don't even know that they have. They might realize something is wrong, but they don't know what. Even worse, their fathers are the kind of people who callously murder their wives for being independent human beings instead of obedient helpmeets.
• In the 2004 version, there's something particularly heartbreaking about Claire's motivation behind the whole Stepford scheme. She found her husband with her research assistant and murdered the two. Broken by the revelation and her reaction, she sought to "turn back the clock" to a time when "men were men and women were cherished and loved", to create a world of "romance and beauty".
  • When Joanna asks how Claire could do this to them, the older woman sadly replies that she used to be just like Joanna: "overstressed, overbooked, underloved." Twisted as it all is, she's been trying to save Joanna and other women from the misery she suffered.