Anyone can be a Jedi - especially if you're a Palpatine, right?
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00:00Now, even the least preachy and messagey of movies will ultimately be about something,
00:05no matter how much of an escapist thrill ride that they might otherwise be, and the vast
00:09majority of films make their central themes incredibly obvious, such that the audience
00:13can easily appreciate the point of view and connect emotionally with it.
00:17But sometimes films don't quite get the balance right, and what might seem like an
00:21acceptable enough message ends up getting jumbled, mangled, and straight-up contradicted
00:26by the film's end.
00:27And that's what we're here to talk about today.
00:29Inspired by this fantastic recent Reddit thread, these 10 movies all touted fairly
00:34obvious, simple messages for general audiences, but totally betrayed them by the film's
00:38climax.
00:39So let's take a look at them as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10
00:43Movie Messages Completely Undermined By Their Ending.
00:4610.
00:47It's Important to Trust People – Raya and the Last Dragon
00:51So this film's central theme is all about trust, that the world will only get better
00:55if you're able to cooperate with the people around you.
00:58Now, Sisu straight up tells our cynical protagonist that she can't expect others to trust her
01:03if she herself cannot trust others.
01:05And yet, her open distrust is completely understandable given that her friend from another tribe,
01:10Namari, literally betrays her in an attempt to help her own clan steal the focal magic
01:15gem.
01:16More to the point, Namari betrays her a second time later on in the film, resulting in Sisu's
01:21death.
01:22So to say that the world is a mess because of mutual distrust doesn't quite wash considering
01:26what she's experienced with her supposed friend.
01:28And the ending even straight up criticizes our hero for her distrust apparently playing
01:33a part in Sisu's death before she and Namari finally make peace with one another.
01:37Yeah, sometimes it's completely reasonable not to trust somebody, and in the case of
01:42Namari, nobody could be blamed for giving her the side eye.
01:45Inadvertently, the message that some kids might take away from this movie is, let people
01:48walk all over you time and time again.
01:51Yeah, great.
01:529.
01:53The Death Penalty is Bad – The Life of David Gale
01:56David Gale, played here by Kevin Spacey, is an activist against the death penalty who
02:01ends up on death row himself after being accused of murdering a fellow activist, whose name
02:05was Constance.
02:06It's eventually revealed that Constance was terminally ill and conspired with other
02:10activists to arrange her assisted suicide in order to frame Gale, all in an attempt
02:15to have an innocent man executed and discredit capital punishment in the most ultimate way
02:19possible.
02:20Journalist Bitsy Bloom attempts to get this information to the authorities, but Gale is
02:24executed before she can.
02:26But the big kicker comes at the very end, when a tape reveals that Gale himself also
02:31took part in the frame job, willingly laying down his life in order to turn the tide of
02:35public opinion on the death penalty.
02:38The problem is that this extra twist completely muddies the central thesis of how easy it
02:43is for somebody to get framed for murder and be wrongly executed.
02:47Yes, if you're literally setting yourself up to die and stacking the deck against a
02:51fair capital punishment system, as much as it can be considered fair, then of course
02:55you'll end up dead.
02:56It's a rigged game that completely undermines the overall message.
03:008.
03:01Corporations Ruin Creativity – Free Guy
03:04Free Guy certainly isn't a message movie, but it is nevertheless saying something about
03:08how artists have their efforts completely chopped and changed by cynical, money-grabbing
03:12interests of corporations.
03:14Namely the concept game that Millie and Keys developed, Life itself, had its source code
03:19stolen by Ruthless Video Games' CEO Antoine, who used it to build the hugely successful
03:24MMORPG Free City.
03:26Yet at film's end, the day is only saved because Guy gets a little help from the fine
03:30folks at Disney, Epic Games, and Valve.
03:33While fighting the unfinished, muscled brute known as Dude, Guy uses Captain America's
03:38shield, the Hulk's arm, a lightsaber, Fortnite's llama pickaxe, Half-Life's gravity gun,
03:43and Portal's portal gun.
03:44These weapons collectively allow Guy to subdue Dude and reach the source code, in turn leading
03:49to the downfall of the villain.
03:51For a film that spends so much of its runtime critiquing the soulless nature of corporate
03:54art, it's depressingly ironic that the final action salvo is itself a series of sponsored
04:00plugs.
04:017.
04:02Normal People Would Suck at Being Superheroes
04:05The big hilarious hook of Kick-Ass is that it's an irreverent, expectation-defying superhero
04:09movie which shows just how terrible the average person, let alone average teenage boy, would
04:14be at playing superhero.
04:15ECR Dave here is a comic book fan who decides to become a vigilante superhero, assuming
04:20the alter ego Kick-Ass.
04:22Much of the film focuses on how hilariously pathetic he is, summarily getting his ass
04:26kicked and ultimately having to be bailed out by two real superheroes, Big Daddy and
04:30Hit Girl.
04:31Dave even considers quitting the crime-fighting life for good, but ultimately decides to help
04:35take down crime boss Frank D'Amico.
04:37Yet the film's finale sees Kick-Ass don a frickin' jetpack with miniguns to wipe
04:42out Frank's men, before blowing Frank up with a bazooka.
04:45Kick-Ass then flies away to safety with his jetpack and even gets the girl, Katie.
04:50This is quite different to Mark Millar and John Romita Jr.'s original comic, which
04:54offers a far more cynical, caustic version of this story, where Dave doesn't become
04:59a genuinely awesome superhero, and Katie brutally rejects him for lying about being
05:03gay.
05:04Instead, the movie becomes a bit too much like the very thing that it's satirizing,
05:08while delivering a pretty conventional superhero origin story at the end of the day.
05:126.
05:13The Criminal Justice System Needs Burning Down – Law-Abiding Citizen
05:17You won't find a movie ending more infuriating than Law-Abiding Citizen.
05:22The film follows Clyde Shelton, a man whose wife and daughter are murdered during a home
05:26invasion, and when the legal system refuses to grant him justice, he takes matters into
05:30his own brutal hands.
05:31But Shelton doesn't stop at killing those directly responsible, though.
05:35His wider scheme also involves targeting those within America's criminal justice system
05:39who he feels continue to enable and benefit from it.
05:42At film's end, he attempts to make the ultimate demonstration of this by blowing up City Hall
05:47with a bomb, but cynical lawyer Nick Rice turns the tables by moving the bomb to Shelton's
05:52own jail cell, resulting in his death.
05:54It's a rather sour ending, because most of the audience is firmly on Shelton's side,
05:58despite his extreme and excessive methods.
06:01Seeing the vigilante killed by a detestable instrument of the law, who goes outside of
06:05the law to do so and then returns to lawyering within an unjust system, is bafflingly framed
06:10as a happy ending, despite most audience members seeing it as frustrating and tragic.
06:155.
06:16Hope and Teamwork Will Save the World – Tomorrowland
06:20Brad Bird's Tomorrowland is consumed with the notion that hope and teamwork will build
06:24a better future for humanity, and the film's primary antagonist, David Nix, is a man who
06:28categorically has lost all hope.
06:31David wants to inspire humanity to do better by using the Tachyon Machine to show them
06:35images of an impending apocalypse, but when people responded with indifference and basically
06:40accepted it, David also gave up and similarly accepted his impending catastrophe.
06:45The final clash sees the heroes Frank and Casey attempting to destroy the Tachyon Machine
06:49while David tries to stop them, but rather than merely subdue David, they end up killing
06:53him by pinning him underneath some rubble and destroying the machine, which crushes
06:57David to death.
06:58This isn't to say that David was ever going to be fully redeemed, but when you meet a
07:02person who has been drained of all of their hope, there's got to be a better solution
07:05than brutally killing them.
07:06I mean, it's not much of a plea for hope and cooperation, is it?
07:094.
07:10The Great Depression Was an Eternal Struggle – The Grapes of Wrath
07:14John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath certainly doesn't paint the Great Depression as a
07:17picnic, but the central family's desperate struggle to survive does feel a little sanitized
07:22by the film's ending, which deviates from the bleaker finale of the original legendary
07:26novel.
07:27The movie concludes when the central family end up at the USDA weed patch camp, where
07:31they're fed, clothed, and have access to indoor toilets and showers, all while Tom,
07:35played here by Henry Fonda, vows to keep fighting for workers' rights.
07:39It's certainly not a squeaky clean happy ending, but it paints a picture of hope that
07:43the family will end up in a much better situation than when we first met them.
07:46But the novel offers up no such respite, ending on a more fittingly bleak note where we see
07:51the birth of a stillborn.
07:52Plus the family suffers through a horrific flood, and there's even a scene in which
07:56the mother breastfeeds a starving man in order to save his life.
07:59While you can reason that the haze code of the time prevented the movie from depicting
08:03things like dead babies and breastfeeding, its more optimistic ending doesn't feel
08:07quite as true a depiction of the Great Depression's grim realities as a result.
08:113.
08:12Snooping is Bad – The Burbs
08:14Well, at least this one's pretty funny, right?
08:17The cult favourite 1989 black comedy The Burbs stars Tom Hanks as a suburbanite named Ray
08:22Peterson, who along with his neighbours comes to believe that the new reclusive family on
08:26the block, the Klopeks, are actually part of a satanic cult.
08:29The bulk of the movie serves as a pretty hilarious commentary on suburban boredom, with the expected
08:34outcome being that the paranoid neighbourhood is absolutely positively wrong about the Klopeks.
08:39But the ending pulls an insane 180 by revealing that, indeed, the Klopeks murdered the previous
08:44residents of the house that they'd moved into, effectively justifying the neighbourhood's
08:48deranged snooping.
08:49It's a fun twist while you're watching it, though does rather contradict with what
08:52the movie appears to be shooting for about 90% of its runtime, that is, critiquing the
08:57fancies of judgmental curtain twitchers who won't just mind their own damn business.
09:01Apparently one of the several endings conceived for The Burbs actually saw the Klopeks be
09:05innocent, yet this was scrapped in favour of a punchier double twist.
09:08As such, it's perhaps little surprise that the film proved majorly divisive with critics.
09:132.
09:14Anyone Can Be A Jedi – Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker
09:17It's fair to say that Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker was ultimately a victim of the
09:21wildly mixed messaging and uneven plotting across the entire sequel trilogy, but it nevertheless
09:26contradicted one of the more appealing messages established in the previous film, The Last
09:30Jedi.
09:31Brian Johnson's divisive middle chapter revealed that Rey's parents were just some
09:34junkie nobodies, while ending with one of the young, stable hands on Canto Bight using
09:39the Force to move a broom.
09:41These two plot points teed up the notion that anyone could be a Jedi regardless of
09:45their humble origins, a slam dunk of an idea which surely appealed to audiences both young
09:49and old.
09:50But The Rise of Skywalker flatly betrayed this by ultimately revealing that Rey is the
09:54granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, and then having her adopt the honorary Skywalker name
09:59at the end of the film.
10:00For many, the appeal of Rey was precisely that she was a nobody without direct links
10:04to the existing Force users, but by making her grandpa one of the most powerful Sith
10:08in history, and then having her continue the Skywalker lineage, aggressively undermined
10:13that.
10:141.
10:15Accept People for Who They Are – Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
10:18The 1964 holiday classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer follows the escapades of Rudolph
10:23as he attempts to fit in with the other reindeer despite his glowing red nose.
10:27Rudolph's nose causes him to be bullied by the other reindeer, and the film's overall
10:31message is very clearly about accepting people with differences.
10:34But ultimately the ending, where Rudolph is welcomed into the reindeer clan once they
10:38realise his nose can be used to navigate Santa's sleigh through a snowstorm, only
10:41sees Rudolph accepted once they appreciate that his difference is advantageous.
10:46If Rudolph had another physical oddity or something which couldn't save Christmas,
10:50it's tough to picture him being so enthusiastically embraced, even if the clan did admittedly
10:55apologise to him before he saved the day.
10:58The fact that Rudolph seems oddly unbothered by being shunned, and that the reindeer basically
11:02brush their terrible behaviour under the carpet in record time, only makes it that much worse.
11:07And there we go my friends, those were 10 movie messages completely undermined by their
11:11ending.
11:12Hope you enjoyed that and please let me know what you thought about it down in the comment
11:14section below.
11:15As always I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Instagram where it's at RetroJ
11:19but the O is a zero.
11:21Hope to see you over there and you can come check out all the Warhammer miniatures that
11:23I've been painting.
11:24But before I go I just want to say one thing, this will be an ending that will not undermine
11:28the messages of the video overall and that is just going to be a message of positivity
11:32because I've always stayed true to that fact and I hope that you're doing well my friend.
11:35I hope you're treating yourself with love and respect because you deserve all the best
11:39things in life alright?
11:40And do not let anything or anyone else tell you otherwise, you are a massive ledge.
11:44Now go out there and utterly smash it today, I believe in you.
11:48As always I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that and I'll speak to you soon.
11:52Bye.