A memorable last scene can make a good movie great.
But which Marvel movie really broke the mold? What exactly was Nic Cage doing in The Wicker
Man? How did one British comedy inspire a thousand funerals? Keep watching to find out.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for all the movies discussed.
Fight Club, David Fincher's 1999 adaptation of the 1996 Chuck Palahniuk novel,
is one of those movies where the big twist ending forces you to reassess
everything you've just seen. The reveal that Tyler Durden is the Narrator's alternate personality
might raise a little confusion about specific plot mechanics, but it immediately brings the story's
themes into focus. Tyler is the unhealthy projection of the Narrator's own rage,
self-loathing, and toxic masculinity, an internal antagonist who needs to be defeated.
The climactic twist comes straight from the book, but the movie offers its own spin on the ultimate
resolution. Though the Narrator kills Tyler, Project Mayhem actually succeeds, and Tyler's
carefully planted bombs are detonated. In the darkly hilarious finale, the Narrator tells Marla:
"You met me at a very strange time in my life."
Buildings explode around them as The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind"
leads into the credits. This ending was actually censored in China,
although, ironically, the censored version is closer to Palahniuk's novel.
In many ways, Doctor Strange is one of the more formulaic Marvel origin stories,
with Stephen Strange's character arc having a lot in common with that of Tony Stark's in the first
Iron Man movie. What a relief it is, then, when the climax of the movie
breaks significantly from the standard MCU formula. Whereas most Marvel movies build
up to giant fight scenes between the heroes and villains, Scott Derrickson's 2016 film finds a
more clever method for the Sorcerer Supreme to save Earth from the cosmic terror of Dormammu.
Strange's strategy initially appears to be an attempt at diplomacy — he announces his
intention to "bargain" with Dormammu, at which point the Dark Dimension ruler promptly kills him.
It soon becomes clear, however, that Strange's true plan is to annoy Dormammu into submission,
as he has trapped both himself and Dormammu in a time loop in
which Strange keeps coming back to be killed again and again and again.
"Dormammu, I've come to bargain." Eventually, Dormammu gets so sick
of the loop that he agrees to Strange's terms to leave Earth alone. No doubt, more superhero
movies could benefit from the inventive use of superpowers displayed in this unique showdown.
Director Adam McKay's Don't Look Up was one of the most divisive films of 2021.
It was one of Netflix's most watched movies ever and accrued many award nominations,
including one for Best Picture at the Oscars, but reviews were mixed.
Even those who generally disliked the apocalyptic satire, however, have acknowledged that the film
is at its best when it finds genuine pathos in the characters' final night on Earth.
With the ultra-rich escaping to outer space and the comet about to deliver the extinction of
mankind, Dr. Randall Mindy decides to spend one last dinner together with friends and family.
Yule, the Christian anarchist skater played by Timothée Chalamet,
leads the group in prayer before dinner, and everyone expresses the things they're grateful for
even as the world is literally ending around them. Critics may have disagreed
about the movie as a whole, but there's no denying the power of its final moments.
Many of Pixar's movies save their most emotional moments for the end.
The ending of Monsters University, the 2013 prequel to Monsters Inc.,
stands out by elevating what is otherwise a cute but unexceptional parody of college
movies into something that genuinely lives up to Pixar's high standard of quality.
There are many family movies about following your dreams,
but Monsters University is one of the few to acknowledge that dreams can fail and change. No
matter how hard he tries, Mike Wazowski realizes he's never going to be scary. That's okay, though,
because he finds there are other things he's good at — such as working as a scare assistant.
"Mike, you're not scary. Not even a little. But you are fearless."
Both Mike and Sully end up expelled for all the trouble they cause, but they find they
don't need to follow the set path of academia to succeed. Instead, they apply for jobs in the
mailroom at Monsters Inc., and the credits sequence shows them gradually working their
way up the corporate ladder. It's an unusual but positive message of flexibility and compromise.
Writer-director Céline Sciamma is talented at many things, but her greatest talent might be found in
the endings to her movies. Portrait of a Lady on Fire, her 2019 historical lesbian romance, is a
slow burn with a powerful conclusion. Romantic tensions gradually build up between the painter
Marianne and her aristocratic subject Héloïse, but their affair is brief, and Marianne only sees
Héloïse twice after it's over. The first time is at an art exhibit; the second time is at the
orchestra, and it's this ending which turns the film into one of the all-time great tearjerkers.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire uses music extremely sparingly — only in scenes where the characters
are actually performing or singing. As a result, when music is heard in the film, its effect is
extremely powerful. The orchestra in the final scene is playing the Presto from "Summer" in
Vivaldi's [vih-VAHL-dee] Four Seasons, the same piece of music Marianne once played for Héloïse.
Héloïse doesn't know Marianne is observing her in the audience for this concert, but when she
hears this music, she appears overwhelmed with the memories of their love. It's an
incredible piece of filmmaking on Sciamma's part, supported by a superb performance by Adèle Haenel.
At the start of 1973's F for Fake, filmmaker Orson Welles assures the audience:
"During the next hour, everything you hear from us is really true, and based on solid fact."
He spends the next hour talking about various real life hoaxes, from art forgeries to the
fictional news broadcasts in his own 1938 War of the Worlds radio drama.
But F for Fake runs longer than an hour, and in its final 28 minutes,
it becomes one of the very "fakes" the first hour was documenting.
Welles is honest about his fakery, of course. All his assurances of truth at
the beginning were clearly stated to last just one hour, and at the end of the film,
he openly admits to "lying [his] head off" during the 17-minute story about
his partner and co-writer Oja Kodar modeling for and swindling Picasso. In an era of "fake
news," Welles' trolling deconstruction of the documentary format is more relevant than ever.
Christopher Nolan's 2006 film The Prestige concludes with several
mind-blowing twists. Each of the magicians is hiding secrets: For Hugh Jackman's Robert Angier,
the secret is that he's able to pull off the "Transported Man" magic trick through
actual magic of sorts, cloning himself with a machine built by Nikola Tesla.
Christian Bale's Alfred Borden performs the trick using a very different secret:
He's not actually one person, but twin brothers sharing a single identity.
One Borden is hanged after being framed for killing Angier,
who's secretly still alive under the identity of Lord Caldlow. The other Borden gets his revenge
and kills the last remaining Angier, whose theater burns down with all his dead clones inside.
Great twist endings are hard to pull off, but The Prestige is a movie designed around
its many revelations, meticulously following the steps that make a great magic trick work.
Set in a motel outside of Disney World, The Florida Project centers around Moonee,
a six-year-old girl having fun with her friends while her loving but neglectful single mother,
Halley, struggles to make ends meet. It's a movie that's repetitive by design
to best get across the reality of life in poverty,
but the ending shakes up this repetition in a manner both heartbreaking and absolutely stunning.
Eventually, things get bad enough that child services come to take Moonee away from Halley.
In this moment of deep pain, Moonee and her friend Jancey escape and run
away to the Magic Kingdom. People have debated whether the Disney World scene
is meant to be real or the children's fantasy — but however you interpret it,
the conclusion makes the film as a whole even more memorable and affecting.
Fans might argue over which Monty Python movie is the funniest, but Monty Python's Life of Brian
is definitely the one with the strongest story — one which leads to the strongest ending by far.
This irreverent, often-censored 1979 comedy follows Brian, a "very naughty boy" living
in proximity to Jesus who is accidentally mistaken for the Messiah. At the end of the film,
Brian has been sentenced to death by crucifixion, and all attempts to save him go horribly awry.
"Rej, what are you going to—"
"Goodbye, Brian. And thanks."
Unable to do anything to escape his slow and painful death, the other crucified men cheer
Brian up by singing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." Optimistic, nihilistic, absurdist,
extremely British — there are lots of ways you can describe the comedic juxtaposition of Eric Idle's
silly, upbeat song with the direness of its context. Whatever you want to call it,
though, it clearly struck a chord. In 2014, "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"
was revealed to have been the most frequently requested funeral song in the United Kingdom.
Neil LaBute's 2006 remake of The Wicker Man is not considered a good horror movie by most people's
standards. In the final moments of its unrated cut, however, it certainly becomes memorable.
Though there are several amusing displays of overacting from Nicolas Cage throughout the film,
none compare to the scene where the villagers torture him with bees,
resulting in the now-legendary line:
"Not the bees! Oh, they're in my eyes, my eyes!"
In a 2022 interview with IndieWire, Cage claimed the comedy of this scene was intentional,
and that he and LaBute actually wanted the film to go further with the ridiculousness. He said:
"It probably would've been more clear how funny it was if [producer] Avi Lerner let me have the
handlebar mustache that I wanted to wear and be burned in the bear suit. That would've been so
horrifying, but they didn't go for that because all the comedy would've emerged from this horror."
He pointed to the horrifying yet also darkly comedic conclusion of Midsommar
as a more successful example of what The Wicker Man remake was aiming for.
Michael Curtiz's 1942 drama Casablanca is a movie so beloved as a classic that basically
every line has become a cliché — and yet it's still a delight to watch 80 years later.
From beginning to end, Casablanca is a brilliantly entertaining movie,
with clever writing and captivating romantic chemistry between Humphrey Bogart's Rick Blane
and Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa Lund. It's the story's conclusion,
however, that truly seals this as one of the greatest American films ever made.
Rick, a character who was once a celebrated freedom fighter but has since become cynical
and disillusioned, regains his heroism at a time when the world truly needs it. He sacrifices his
change to stay with Ilsa in order to help her and her husband escape from the Nazis.
"Here's looking at you, kid."
Indeed, Casablanca is a work of wartime propaganda made with such moral heft
and great storytelling that it elevates itself to become a powerful work of art.
George Romero's Night of the Living Dead shocked moviegoers in 1968 with its groundbreaking gore
and fresh take on the zombie mythos. For all the terror of its flesh-eating undead, though,
the ending of the film shows how ordinary humans can be the scariest monsters of all. Ben,
the movie's Black hero, has done his best to survive throughout the film, but in the end,
he's killed by some white men with guns who seemingly mistake him for a zombie.
Romero didn't intentionally write Night of the Living Dead with race in mind, but regardless of
what the filmmaker initially intended, the ending has widely been viewed as a subversive commentary
on racism. Its implications are, unfortunately, no less scary today than they were when the movie was
first released. You can credit Night of the Living Dead, and particularly its ending, for helping
lead the way for such racially-conscious horror films as Candyman and Get Out.
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