Trailer Tuesday: the most mind-blowing movie endings ever
The movie is coming to an end and you think you know what's coming. You've seen many movies, you’re not easily shocked. These movies are sure to teach you better – with an ending that takes you by surprise.
«I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone, and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you.»
Neo hangs up the phone. He looks at the sky. And flies off. Yes, he actually flies. The screen turns black. The credits appear: «Written and directed by the Wachowski Brothers». Millions of viewers want to see part two – straight away.
Twenty-one years have passed since the amazing ending of «The Matrix». I can’t praise it enough. But I’ll try. How? By including it in this week’s edition of Trailer Tuesday, which looks back on five of my favourite movie endings. Reader Masterland provided the idea for this in his comment on the Trailer Tuesdays edition about your favourite movies.
Thank you very much!
Yes, there will be spoilers. I’m not going to mince matters. If you haven’t seen a movie and don’t want to know how it ends, skip the respective paragraph. And if you only skimmed these lines:
SPOILER ALERT: READING AT YOUR OWN RISK!
Alright, that should do it.
The Usual Suspects
In police interrogation, Roger «Verbal» Kint (Kevin Spacey) describes the course of a bomb attack where 27 people died. He protests his innocence. His movement disorder exclude him from being a suspect. The Chief Inspector believes him. Verbal is discharged.
As he limps into freedom along the sidewalk, he loses his limp with every step he takes and we realise that Verbal doesn’t have a movement disorder at all. He tricked everyone. Including the audience. He was behind the bomb attack.
Roger «Verbal» Kint: «The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. And like that... he's gone.»
Release date: 18 August 1995
Total gross: $23.3 million
The Sixth Sense
Dr. Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) is a celebrated child psychologist. Then a patient breaks into his house, who used to be a patient of his and who he’d failed to help. Driven insane by his fears – he claims to see dead people – the patient shoots at Malcolm and then kills himself.
Traumatised by this experience, Malcolm wants to do everything right when, a year later, he’s again faced with a child (Haley Joel Osment) who claims to see dead people. Obsessed with not failing – not again – Malcom and his wife become more and more distant...
...until he finally realises that he’s been dead for a long time. He died that night when his former patient broke into his house. The new kid? Alive. But the only one who’s able to see Malcolm. A shock. For Malcolm and for us viewers.
Cinema release: 6 August 1999
Total gross: $672.8 million
Fight Club
The plan? The plan was to blow up the headquarters of the credit card companies. A terrorist act that was intended to free people from their debts – from life on credit.
The plan was initiated by Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who is everything Jack (Edward Norton) ever wanted to be. Fearless. Confident. Charismatic. What viewers only find out at the end is that Tyler is Jack's alter ego. His inner rage. He’s the one who can do or think all the things that Jack would never dare to do or think.
Jack realises that Tyler is evil. He reaches for his gun and fires a bullet into his own cheek. He scares Tyler away, but it's too late. His plan cannot be stopped. The skyscrapers of the institutes collapse to the melody of «Where is my mind» by the Pixies. Jack's words, which he addresses to Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), who he has a love-hate relationship with, define cinema history:
«You met me at a very strange time in my life.»
Cinema release: 15 October 1999
Total gross: $101.2 million
Saw
A doctor and a photographer wake up. Chained up. In opposite corners of a rundown washroom. Between them lies a man covered in blood: suicide.
They don't remember how they got into this situation. The memory returns only little by little. Apparently, they were kidnapped by the psychopathic serial killer «Jigsaw». Kidnapped and abandoned in this room. Their only way out is to join the killer's sick game. In a game which has one way out: either by hurting themselves or others – sometimes fatally. And Jigsaw? He's notorious for watching the action at all times.
The doctor manages to free himself. With a blunt saw – the only thing the prisoners have been given – he saws off his own leg to free himself from the chains. Bleeding to death, he promises the photographer to get help and return. As soon as he's gone, the man we all thought was dead stands up. It's Jigsaw. He'd been amongst them from the very beginning. Watching. From the front row. The photographer screams. But Jigsaw leaves the room, leaving the man in the dark. Forever. The last words he says to the photographer:
«Game over.»
Cinema release: 1 October 2004
Total gross: $103.9 million
Shutter Island
It's 1954. Edward Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), a US Marshal, and his partner (Mark Ruffalo) investigate the mysterious disappearance of a patient from a special prison for mentally ill criminals. But Edward secretly has a mission of his own: he suspects to find Andrew Laeddis, the murderer of his wife, at the asylum operated on Shutter Island.
From the first moment, it seems that the prison authorities are hiding something. Prohibited experiments on the mentally ill. Or worse. The evidence is mounting. And Laeddis seems to be there, too. Then Edward's partner disappears without a trace. Events are escalating. Edward breaks into the lighthouse where he thinks to find the medical experiments and his captured partner.
Then the surprise: there are no experiments. No Laeddis. Only his partner, who welcomes him together with the head physician of the institution (Sir Ben Kingsley). They reveal to him that he and Andrew Laeddis are one and the same person. The name Edward Daniels? An anagram of Andrew Laeddis. And a pure fantasy figure, invented because Laeddis couldn't process the fact that he'd killed his wife after she'd drowned their three children. All this? The research? A large-scale role play to bring Laeddis back to reality.
Only the institution, they say, is real.
Cinema release: 18 February 2010
Total gross: $294.8 million
Next week? I'll take a break. My colleague Simon Balissat will take over and present his very own edition of Trailer Tuesday. The title? Oh, you'll love it. Just wait and see.
I'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.»