It's been said that you can't please everyone all of the time.
That's especially true for movie endings.
Hollywood history is full of shocking finales that have left people confused, made moviegoers
mad, or sparked fierce debate between critics.
From decades-old films to modern-day blockbusters, here are some of the most controversial movie
endings of all-time.
Major spoilers ahead, obviously.
Monty Python's Life of Brian
Want a surefire way to stir up controversy?
Make a movie about Jesus.
It worked for Mel Gibson, Martin Scorsese, and of course, Monty Python.
Okay, technically Life of Brian isn't about Jesus at all.
It's about a guy named Brian who gets mistaken for a messiah and ends up getting crucified.
And while our reluctant hero dies a painful death, all the guys hanging on crosses around
him launch into an upbeat musical number.
"Always look on the bright side of life!"
Needless to say, Life of Brian made some people pretty upset.
Protesters sang hymns outside movie theaters, and the film was banned in some countries
for decades.
The Catholic Church jumped in and made up their own rating for Life of Brian: a "C"
for Condemned.
Harsh.
But despite the notoriety — or more likely because of it — Life of Brian has since
become a comedy classic.
Titanic
Sure, Titanic is still the second highest-grossing movie of all-time, but those billions of dollars
couldn't save the film from endless scrutiny.
According to countless fans across the world, the ending of Titanic is nothing short of
a disaster.
After the boat goes down, Jack and Rose find themselves stuck in the freezing cold waters
of the Atlantic.
Then, Jack freezes to death.
It's this scene that's sparked most of outrage.
Wasn't there room on that piece of wood for the both of them?
The debate was so intense that in 2012, Mythbusters dedicated an entire episode to discovering
the answer.
With the help of director James Cameron, they determined that if Rose had just tied her
life jacket to the underside of the door, there would've been enough buoyancy to hold
them both.
But Cameron doesn't buy into that argument, saying that, "The script says Jack dies, he
has to die.
Maybe we screwed up.
The board should have been a tiny bit smaller.
But the dude's going down."
In other words, true love is a lie and you should never hope for happiness.
Geez, Cameron...
Blade Runner
By this point, there are seven different versions of Blade Runner available to watch, and thanks
to all that tinkering, sci-fans have spent countless hours discussing whether or not
Rick Deckard is actually a replicant.
So what's the correct answer?
Well, if you go by the original ending, it's a straightforward "no."
The theatrical cut ends on an upbeat note, with Deckard and his robotic lady love escaping
into the mountains to live a long and happy life.
However, that all changed with the Director's Cut.
That's the version in which Scott added Deckard's unicorn dream and cut the happy Hollywood
ending.
This time around, the film ends with our protagonist finding Gaff's origami message, implying the
cop knows what Deckard dreams about — because Deckard's memories are implants, thus making
him a replicant.
Ever since, people have argued about Deckard's true nature.
Even Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford don't agree.
The director firmly believes Deckard is a machine, while the actor fought to keep his
character 100 percent human.
"So I resisted the idea of being a replicant, I suppose, as a replicant would."
That settles it then.
Or does it…
The Mist
The ending of The Mist is one of the bleakest finales ever put to film.
Directed by Frank Darabont, The Mist focuses on a group of New Englanders trapped in a
grocery store by a mysterious fog.
The titular mist is full of horrifying monsters, but things aren't so great inside the store
either.
Once people start getting sacrificed, Thomas Jane's character, David Drayton, makes a break
for freedom with a small band of survivors, but unfortunately, there's no happy ending
here.
Lost in the mist with no hope in sight, David performs a mercy killing to spare his friends
— and his own son — from the oncoming creatures.
And then, just a few painful seconds later, a group of army guys show up to save the day
and look for survivors.
Yeah, it's bleak, grim, and completely different from Stephen King's novella, but the author
loved Darabont's twist, saying, "Frank wrote a new ending that I loved.
It is the most shocking ending ever."
Watchmen
Even though Alan Moore's Watchmen is widely considered the greatest graphic novel ever
written, it took quite awhile to get a movie adaptation up on the silver screen.
At one point, Terry Gilliam took a crack at the material, but when that didn't pan out,
it eventually fell to Zack Snyder to get the thing made.
The result was a film that was pretty faithful to the book…except for one giant, major
change.
In Moore's original story, the villainous Ozymandias destroys New York with a mocked
up alien squid.
The arrival of the monster convinces the world's superpowers that extraterrestrials are going
to attack, forcing the US and the USSR to put aside their differences and band together
in order to face the otherworldly foe.
However, Snyder totally dropped the whole alien sea beast angle.
Instead, Ozymandias blows up New York and frames the omnipotent Dr. Manhattan, tricking
America and the Soviet Union into becoming friends to defeat the naked blue superhero.
"Millions of lives were suddenly ended, in an act of evil perpetrated by Dr. Manhattan
himself."
Snyder has since said that the squid was cut out so more time could be spent building the
characters of Manhattan and Rorschach.
For his part, he's also acknowledged that the altered ending was "the biggest knock
against the movie."
So there's that.
The Dark Knight Rises
Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy was a game-changer for superhero movies, and,
as the final film in the series,The Dark Knight Rises had a lot to live up to.
But instead of diving headfirst into the darkness, the third Nolan film ended on a much happier
note, with the Caped Crusader saving Gotham from a nuclear bomb before giving up his vigilante
ways to travel the world with Selina Kyle.
As a result, many fans wondered if this was some sort of Inception-style dream sequence.
After all, the scene plays out exactly like a fantasy described by Alfred earlier in the
film.
"I had this fantasy that would look across the tables and I'd see you there with a wife."
Christian Bale, on the other hand, insist Batman's happy ending is completely real:
"My personal opinion is no, it was not a dream, that that was for real."
Some people thought the movie should've gone in a more depressing direction by killing
the superhero, while others were glad that Bruce Wayne finally got a happy ending.
And really, we shouldn't have been surprised by the film's upbeat finale because, as Harvey
Dent once explained it:
"The night is darkest just before the dawn."
This was the dawn audiences had been promised.
The Grey
Set in Alaska, The Grey follows a hunter named John Ottway, played by Liam Neeson, who's
stranded in the wilderness with a group of oil workers.
While he starts the movie suicidal, Ottway slowly regains the will to live — which
is too bad since he winds up in the middle of a wolf den.
Ready to fight, Ottway tapes a knife and broken bottles to his hand, but before the final
confrontation can start, the screen cuts to black.
Movie over.
"WHAT?!"
"Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…."
Audiences were sharply divided.
Some people though the ending was perfect, while others felt cheated.
As for director Joe Carnahan, he cut the wolf-fighting finale because the film had already reached
its "emotional conclusion," and he also worried that the sight of CG canines might ruin the
scene.
However, Carnahan admits the promotional material "was the enemy of the film in a lot of ways.
I guess it created a promise that people felt the movie didn't live up to."
Snowpiercer
Directed by Bong Joon-ho, Snowpiercer is set in the middle of a wintry post-apocalypse
with the last of humanity on a train that travels around the world.
Unfortunately, living conditions aren't a picture of equality.
Folks in the tail end are treated like prisoners, while the people in the front live like kings.
So a group of rebels, led by Curtis, played by Chris Evans, fights their way up to the
front of the train, hoping to overthrow the head honchos.
But when Curtis makes his way into the engine, he learns the train operates using child slave
labor.
Realizing the entire system is corrupt and impossible to save, Curtis destroys the train,
possibly killing everyone on board, except for two kids.
Emerging from the rubble, a teenage girl and a young boy find themselves Adam and Eve of
a frozen world.
And as they step into the snow, they see a polar bear, a sign the world is thawing out
and that maybe there's hope after all.
Well, that's what Bong Joon-ho intended anyway, saying, "It's a very hopeful ending...those
two kids will spread the human race."
But many people had trouble getting past certain plot issues.
As plenty of critics have pointed out, those two kids have lived their entire lives on
the train, so they'd have no hope of surviving the frigid wasteland.
That is, if that big ol' bear didn't eat them.
He's gotta be pretty hungry.
Passengers
On paper, Passengers should've been one of the biggest blockbusters of 2016.
It starred Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence — two of the biggest stars in the business
— and it was based on a screenplay that many hailed as one of the best scripts in
Hollywood.
But the sci-fi flick was a flop, grossing $100 million domestically on a $110 million
budget.
So what went so terribly wrong aboard Passengers?
Well, moviegoers were expecting to see a story about two beautiful people who accidentally
wake up from suspended animation while traveling to a new planet.
Unable to return to their pods, the two are fated to spend their lives together on the
spaceship.
But the trailers were more than slightly misleading.
As it turns out, Chris Pratt's character, Jim, wakes up after his pod malfunctions.
Unwilling to spend his life alone, he selfishly releases Jennifer Lawrence's character, Aurora,
against her will.
Even the robot bartender was surprised.
"Who's the lucky lady?"
"This is Aurora."
"Aurora…"
Admittedly, the movie could've done something interesting with this premise.
But instead of dealing with Jim's decision in a mature, complex way, the filmmakers have
Aurora fall in love with the guy and decide to spend her life with him…even though he's
essentially kidnapped and murdered her.
When the rest of the passengers wake up nearly 90 years later, they find that Jim and Aurora
lived a long, happy life and grew a bunch of trees on their spaceship.
As a result, critics hit the movie hard, and audiences decided to stay away from theaters.
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