10 Movies That Made You Work Out The Answer Yourself
Ambiguity at its most brilliantly annoying.
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00:00Though it may feel like ambiguous, non-committal endings are becoming increasingly common in cinema nowadays,
00:05there is a reason for it.
00:07The good ones get the discussion going, and it never really stops being interesting,
00:12no matter how long it's gone on for.
00:14The following 10 movies, then, all surefire classics in one way or another,
00:19ask the viewer to do all of the mental legwork by figuring things out for themselves,
00:24and we love them for it.
00:26So, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 movies that made you work out the answer yourself.
00:31Number 10, Blade Runner.
00:33The question, is Deckard a human or a replicant?
00:37This question has tortured Blade Runner fans ever since the film's original 1982 theatrical release,
00:43and Ridley Scott's subsequent director's cut and final cut only further fuelled the debate.
00:48The main evidence pointing to Deckard himself being a replicant
00:52is the fact that Gaff leaves him an origami unicorn at the end of the movie.
00:56Considering that Deckard had a dream involving a unicorn earlier on in the film,
01:00it implies that this character is aware of Deckard's dreams due to him being a replicant.
01:06Opponents of this theory, though, argue that it could merely mean that humans and replicants share the same dreams,
01:12further blurring the line between what is and isn't human.
01:15Plus, Deckard being saved and spared by Batty at the very end of the movie
01:19is robbed of so much of its emotional impact if he is, indeed, just another replicant.
01:25Somewhat predictably and aptly, though, Blade Runner 2049, the sequel,
01:29refused to shed further light on Deckard's identity,
01:32though the fact that he didn't run through walls as K did has been interpreted as further evidence that he is, in fact, human.
01:39Number 9, American Psycho.
01:41The question, how much of Patrick Bateman's killing spree, if any, actually happened,
01:46and how much of it was merely imagined by him?
01:49American Psycho concludes with murderer Patrick Bateman going on a hilariously over-the-top killing spree
01:55as the police chase him down and he eventually makes a desperate final confession for all of his murderous misdeeds.
02:01Then, the following reveal shows that there's actually no physical proof of Bateman's acts,
02:07and that his secretary, Gene, discovered profane scribblings in his journal,
02:11which seemed to suggest that his rampage was pure fantasy.
02:14There's even the suggestion that Bateman isn't even who he says he is,
02:18as the film ends on a chillingly non-committal note.
02:21Some believe that Bateman's rampage happened mostly as depicted,
02:25but his delusional mind exaggerated some of the sillier aspects.
02:29Others feel that he killed everyone minus Paul Allen, who was said to be alive at the end of the movie,
02:34and some suspect that he didn't even kill a single person.
02:38The film's slippery logic and unreliable protagonist make all three theories valid in their own way,
02:44though the filmmakers and actors have stated conflicting theories as to which one they think is legit.
03:03Director Stanley Kubrick has suggested that this scene was meant to imply
03:06that Jack was the reincarnation of a previous hotel caretaker,
03:10which lines up with the spectral butler Grady creepily telling him,
03:14you've always been the caretaker.
03:16Some fans, however, have theorized that the picture represents Jack's soul being absorbed by the hotel,
03:22and the other party guests in the picture are perhaps even other people claimed by the Overlook itself.
03:28This would also fit well with Grady's line,
03:30that Jack is trapped in that single moment in the photograph forevermore,
03:34destined to always be there now.
03:37So, whether you take Kubrick at his word,
03:39or accept that a creator's work no longer explicitly belongs to them once it's out in the wild,
03:43it's a tantalizing mystery that's baffled fans for almost 40 years.
03:54There are a bunch of theories here, so let's run them down.
03:57Some believe that the character died from shooting himself on stage,
04:01and the film's final scenes are nothing more than his dying hallucination,
04:05which would explain why it's almost comically idyllic.
04:09Conversely, there's the rather out there theory that suggests that Riggan can actually fly,
04:14which at least makes a little more sense, as we do see his daughter Sam
04:18looking up to the sky after clearly not seeing his corpse at the foot of the hospital.
04:22Perhaps the most plausible suggestion, though, is that the character really did jump out the window and die,
04:28and Sam's reaction is merely her entering a fantasy world where her father flies away,
04:32rather than splats violently on the pavement below.
04:35Unlike Kubrick, director Alejandro Iñárritu has refused to offer his own interpretation of the finale,
04:41and given the film's generally surreal quality, it's hard to fully commit to one defining theory.
04:48The question, was Douglas Quaid actually a secret agent,
04:51or was his trip to Mars merely an implanted memory?
04:54Total Recall giddily plays with reality throughout its runtime,
04:58goading the audience to consider whether the events they're watching are actually playing out at all,
05:03or merely the result of a fabricated memory within Quaid's mind.
05:07After all, when Quaid goes to Recall, the shell plot of the movie is basically laid out to him,
05:12and a technician even mentions the blue sky from the very end of the film,
05:16suggesting that we are experiencing this false memory all the way to the credits.
05:21Some fans believe, though, that the schizoid embolism Quaid appears to suffer
05:25is merely part of the fantasy, to better convince the recipient that the secret agent adventure is legit.
05:31Others, of course, are dead set on Quaid's adventure being real,
05:35while director Paul Verhoeven won't give one side credence over the other,
05:39as suits the film's reality-warping core theme wonderfully.
05:48When asked about the famously ambiguous ending to her film,
05:51writer-director Sofia Coppola stated that the line was improvised by Bill Murray himself,
05:56and only he and Scarlett Johansson know exactly what was said between their characters.
06:02However, a video emerged online in 2007, which claimed to reveal the whisper through post-processing techniques,
06:09with Murray apparently saying, quote,
06:11"'I have to be leaving, but I won't let that come between us, okay?' End quote.
06:16Yet, the muddy quality of this audio means that it's hardly definitive proof.
06:21While there have been countless other attempts by internet sleuths to decode the source audio,
06:26not one of them has been especially convincing.
06:29We know he says something poignant and meaningful, but beyond that, it's forever destined to be a mystery."
06:35Number four, The Thing.
06:36The question, at the end of the film, who is infected by the extraterrestrial life form?
06:41MacReady or Childs?
06:43John Carpenter's ferocious sci-fi horror film ends on an all-timer classic cliffhanger,
06:49reinforcing the movie's overarching theme of paranoia by having the two remaining men committed to freezing to death
06:55to ensure that the alien doesn't escape out into the world.
06:58Most of the prominent fan theories out there seem to point towards Childs probably being The Thing, though,
07:03as his breath isn't really visible in the low temperatures, which could suggest that he's not human.
07:09Also, a more adventurous suggestion is that MacReady placed gasoline in the bottle of the alcohol,
07:14and when Childs drank it without spitting it out, it indicated that he was indeed The Thing,
07:19which wouldn't know the difference in taste between the two substances.
07:23Some believe this is why MacReady laughs after Childs takes a sip, as he finally knows the truth.
07:28The mutually assured destruction on the basis of distrust is pivotal to the ending's bleak power, though,
07:34so while it's fun to try and figure it out, the lack of a concrete answer is kind of the entire point.
07:39Number three, Inception.
07:41The question, was Cobb still dreaming or not?
07:44Christopher Nolan's ingenious sci-fi thriller had just about everyone debating its agonisingly ambiguous final image,
07:50where the spinning top totem is either still spinning or beginning to wobble, depending on your interpretation.
07:56The important thing to remember, of course, is that this was Mal's totem, not Cobb's,
08:02which has been theorised to, in fact, be his wedding ring.
08:05Nolan suspiciously obscures the ring from view during several pivotal scenes,
08:10presumably to keep the film's mystery keenly intact.
08:13Likewise, the director himself has refused to confirm the truth,
08:16but he has noted that viewers need to recognise that, in those final moments,
08:20Cobb has just accepted whatever reality has been presented in front of him.
08:24At this point, he doesn't care, he just wants to be with his kids, whatever form that takes.
08:29And, dream or not, he has embraced this wholeheartedly,
08:32and that's seemingly more crucial than what the nature of his reality actually is.
08:37Number two, Under the Skin.
08:39The question, where did the alien creature come from, and what's she doing on Earth?
08:43Jonathan Glazer's 2013 masterpiece is one of the greatest sci-fi films of the 21st century so far,
08:50and a big reason for that is how terrifically, ominously vague it is.
08:54Scarlett Johansson's otherworldly entity shows up out of nowhere,
08:57resembles a human, and spends her time in Glasgow trying to figure out humanity.
09:03Where she came from, how she arrived on Earth, and her intentions are never even remotely explained,
09:08giving the audience an awful amount of leeway to cobble together their own theories.
09:13Though Michelle Faber's book has its own set of answers, given how unfaithful the movie generally is to it,
09:19it's not really reasonable to expect any meaningful parity between the two sources.
09:24In the book, the alien is sent to Earth by a corporation on her home planet to farm humans for food,
09:29which would explain how much screen time is devoted to her feeding process in the film.
09:34However, the film also makes no indication whatsoever that she's stockpiling any of the human romance.
09:44Akira Kurosawa's 1950 drama is the ultimate cinematic statement about the flimsy reliability of eyewitness testimony,
09:51and the fleeting quality of truth.
09:53In regard to the central case of the murdered samurai, the stories of the bandit, the wife, the samurai,
09:59as told through a medium, and the woodcutter are all subject to their own fair share of scrutiny.
10:04And the entire point seems to be that, due to their own agendas,
10:08none of the witnesses can bring themselves to deliver a proper, truthful rendition of events.
10:13The fun of the movie is in trying to figure out whose story is the correct one, or the most correct at least.
10:20But if Kurosawa had concluded the film with a concrete answer,
10:23it would have torpedoed the movie's brilliant meditation on the elusiveness of the supposed truth.
10:29If nothing else, it provokes a fascinating discussion afterwards,
10:32and remains fiercely provocative so many decades later.
10:37So, that's our list. I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
10:39Where do you come down on these movie endings?
10:42And are there any other hotly debated ones I missed off here?
10:46While you're down there as well, can you please give us a like, share, subscribe,
10:48and head over to WhatCulture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
10:52Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.