There's nothing quite like a good shock at the movies.
And while everyone loves to see their heroes live happily ever after, sometimes audiences
need a reminder that life isn't all sunshine and roses.
Here are a few movies where the villain actually wins.
The Star Wars universe is no stranger to a villainous victory or two, with warring space
factions trading constant blows back and forth across various conflicts.
Rogue One and Revenge of the Sith certainly end on some down notes, for example, but the
series' most iconic Dark Side victory came in the middle chapter of the original trilogy.
Following the first film, which left off on a Death Star-destroying high, The Empire Strikes
Back came crashing back down to reality when it opened with the crushing defeat of the
rebel forces on Hoth.
While the movie splinters at that point, with various characters heading off to do their
own thing, the paths of the protagonists ultimately lead back to Lando Calrissian's floating haven
of Cloud City.
Unfortunately, when Darth Vader and his minions show up in Calrissian's city, things quickly
go south for pretty much everyone.
Han Solo is tortured and used as a test subject for carbon freezing, leaving him in suspended
animation.
Calrissian loses Cloud City to the Empire.
Meanwhile, Luke is lured into a trap and confronted with one cinema's greatest ever twists.
Needless to say, there's no doubt that Empire's final act is a home run for Vader and the
Empire from start to finish.
The 2008 film Valkyrie is inspired by the failed assassination attempt made against
Adolf Hitler in the summer of 1944 by a cabal of German officers aiming to overthrow the
Nazi regime.
Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg joins Major-General Henning von Tresckow and a number of other
conspirators, who set up a plan to kill off the dictator and use the Reserve Army to maintain
order and establish themselves as the new government.
From there, they plan to use their power to negotiate favorable peace terms with the Allies,
who at that point are on the clear path to victory.
The film follows the story just as it actually unfolded, with everything seeming to move
towards victory for von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators.
In fact, the movie does it so well it almost makes you forget that you already know what's
about to go down.
But alas, Valkyrie is ruthlessly tethered to reality.
Initially, the assassination comes tantalizingly close to success, with the planted explosives
going off successfully and Operation Valkyrie being put into action.
But before long, reports surface that Hitler survived the explosion, and from there the
whole plot collapses.
The movie ends with Hitler still alive and the film's heroes executed for treason, which
is about as bad as things possibly could have gone.
Over the years, Marvel comics have seen plenty of tragic endings and grisly cliffhangers,
but the MCU itself has tended to prefer the good guys to come out on top.
But this trend has recently begun to change, having kicked off in earnest when Captain
America: Civil War pitted the Avengers against one another, leaving a host of angry, PTSD-ridden
superheroes behind in the process.
This slide downhill only sped up with Thor: Ragnarok, an otherwise fun movie that ended
with Asgard destroyed and a small handful of survivors setting out in search of a new
home.
But it was only during Avengers: Infinity War that Marvel finally opened up a universe
in which the villains really can win.
This colossal crossover event finds the heroes struggling to rise up and defend the universe
against Thanos and his cronies, only for the Mad Titan to finally pull off his cataclysmic
finger snap and wipe out half the universe in the process.
"I am inevitable."
While much of Thanos' mad destruction was undone in Avengers: Endgame, Infinity War
was nonetheless so focused on Thanos and his story that his victory during the film's closing
moments was never anything but inevitable.
Se7en follows detectives William Somerset and David Mills as they investigate a series
of murders by a mysterious criminal who uses the seven deadly sins as his calling card.
The movie gains speed as the duo uncover the first five sins, but before the last two take
place, the murderer, known as John Doe, turns himself in to the authorities while covered
in the blood of an unknown victim.
As the movie wraps up, the growing sense of impending doom becomes practically unbearable.
Doe directs Mills and Somerset to the desert, where he informs them that the last two victims
will be found.
Of course, they're already present, as Doe confesses to being envious of Mills' idyllic
life with his pregnant wife Tracy before a box arrives on the scene, containing Tracy's
head inside.
Mills then gives in to temptation and kills Doe, who becomes the final victim of wrath.
Aside from being messed up in so many ways, Se7en's plot is never in the hands of the
movie's protagonists, with Doe in total control right up until the credits roll.
Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight delivered more than just an outstanding performance
from a greatly-missed actor since Heath Ledger's Joker was also one of the first superhero
villains to have his way with the hero from beginning to end.
From the moment he enters that dramatic opening heist sequence to his last laugh during the
film's climax, the infamous DC villain easily steals the show.
The Dark Knight revolves almost entirely around the Joker's schemes against Gotham and Batman
many of which are pulled off without a hitch.
As a result, this second film in Nolan's epic trilogy leaves Rachel Dawes dead, Harvey Dent
warped into Two-Face and killed soon after, Batman on the run after taking responsibility
for Dent's crimes, and the Bat-signal destroyed by Commissioner Gordon.
"See madness, as you know is like gravity.
All it takes is a little push."
And sure, the Joker is eventually apprehended and has his nihilistic philosophy thoroughly
disproven by the people of Gotham at the same time — but everything else went off about
as well as he could have hoped.
Christopher Nolan appears to have something of a gift for letting the villains win.
In this case, you've got Memento.
The narrative follows Leonard Shelby, a man who suffers from memory loss every five minutes.
This is a recent affliction that has been occurring ever since two men assaulted and
murdered his wife.
After Shelby killed one of them, the other knocked him on the head and escaped, leaving
him with his new mental handicap.
Shelby is dead-set on hunting down the other man responsible for his wife's death, but
plagued with short-term memory loss, he is forced to use tattoos and Polaroid cameras
in an elaborate system to remind himself of what he discovers.
The movie is filmed in both color and black-and-white sequences, showing different angles of perception
and giving a sense of bizarre confusion that helps the audience relate to the film's hero…
except Shelby isn't the hero.
As the movie concludes, we find that he has been cyclically hunting down and taking "vengeance"
on innocent people for a year.
Repressing this information, Shelby tampers with his own photographic evidence, allowing
his condition to wash all guilt away within the next few minutes and permitting him to
continue his villainous behavior.
While Peter Jackson's film adaptation of J.R.R.
Tolkien's awe-inspiring Lord of the Rings trilogy has many happy moments during its
runtime, the ending of the first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, isn't one of them.
As the film reaches its crescendo, the Fellowship has already gone through the devastating loss
of Gandalf, but things go from bad to worse as the forces of Mordor close in on them.
Boromir kicks things off by falling to the lure of the ring and attempting to take it
from Frodo.
Unsuccessful and repentant, Boromir and the rest of the heroes turn their attention to
a sudden attack of Uruk-Hai soldiers sent by Saruman to find the Ring.
The attack splits the group up, with the villains killing Boromir and successfully carrying
off the hobbits Merry and Pippin.
Frodo, meanwhile, leaves with Sam across the river, and the two begin to work their way
towards Mordor alone.
All in all, this ending is about as chaotic as it gets and doesn't lead to any one of
the protagonists actually getting their way.
Though triumph lies ahead, the truth is that Fellowship is a movie about the power of camaraderie
that nonetheless tears its characters away from each other during its final moments.
And that's about as bleak as it gets.
Though it's outside the canon of the MCU and doesn't have quite as catastrophic an ending
as Infinity War, X-Men: First Class is another Marvel movie that doesn't reward its heroes
with a happy ending.
In this prequel to the original X-Men movies, the storyline jumps back in time to the 1960s
to explore the origin stories of its heroes and villains.
In particular, the film focuses on the development of the relationship between Professor Charles
Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, which is the story of a profound and meaningful friendship…
right up until it isn't.
"We have it in us to be better men.”
“We already are.
We are the next stage of human evolution you said it yourself."
While the movie itself brought a fresh spin to a flagging franchise, its story ended on
a dark note, with the rise of an iconic Marvel villain: Magneto.
As the film enters its final act, the differences between Xavier's and Lehnsherr's views on
mutant activism come to a head, with Lehnsherr dramatically parting ways with the critically-wounded
Xavier and his team.
This sets him on his journey towards becoming the franchise's most notable villain, and
begins a rivalry fated to go down in history.
Like Valkyrie, Life is Beautiful is another story that ends with the Nazis coming out
on top.
This classic Italian film was directed and co-written by the incredibly talented Roberto
Benigni, who also played the lead role alongside Nicoletta Braschi, his wife of nearly thirty
years.
The first half of the film is almost entirely light and comedic as it follows Guido, a Jewish
bookshop owner in Italy who shamelessly pursues the love of his life with a little slapstick
clowning and a lot of Italian charm.
But things take a drastic turn when the narrative jumps forward several years to a Nazi-occupied
Italy, where Guido, his wife, and their son are sent to a concentration camp.
Once in the camp, the bookshop owner uses his incredibly resilient imagination to tirelessly
shield his son from the horrors around them, convincing the young boy that they're on a
strange kind of holiday.
Despite the subject matter, the movie does actually build toward a happy ending… until,
in a gut-wrenching turn, Guido is gunned down by Nazis just as the camp is liberated.
And while Guido's son's innocence is preserved, the loss of the film's lovable protagonist
is nonetheless a shocking note for the film to end on.
Just like the classic 1949 George Orwell novel on which it's based, the movie 1984 is about
as depressing as it gets.
From the infamous "Thought Police" to the near-endless torture, brainwashing, and "doublethink,"
this movie pretty much established all the classic tropes of futuristic, dystopian horror.
The film is set in a world where the single, united super-state of "Oceania" is run like
a well-oiled autocratic machine, in which every move and thought of its inhabitants
is scrutinized for any deviation from government-approved behavior.
The story follows Winston Smith, a supposedly loyal worker at the Ministry of Truth.
Smith "deviates" from the rules when he meets Julia and begins to secretly pursue an affair
with the daring fellow thought-criminal.
Of course, government forces prove much more powerful than two people, and the end of the
movie shows the couple as they're caught and put through a system of "rehabilitation,"
in which they are tortured and forced to face their greatest fears in order to break their
rebellion and ensure their future cooperation with the regime.
And that heart-breaking ending in the cafe, in which Julia and Winston coldly admit they
betrayed each other, leaves no doubt whatsoever that Big Brother has come out on top.
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