The third act is usually the crescendo that brings it all together but here are the most controversial movie endings of all time.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00It's been said that you can't please everyone all of the time.
00:04That's especially true for movie endings.
00:06Hollywood history is full of shocking finales that have left people confused, made moviegoers
00:10mad, or sparked fierce debate between critics.
00:14From decades-old films to modern-day blockbusters, here are some of the most controversial movie
00:18endings of all time.
00:20Major spoilers ahead, obviously.
00:22Monty Python's Life of Brian
00:24Want a surefire way to stir up controversy?
00:27Make a movie about Jesus.
00:28It works for Mel Gibson, Martin Scorsese, and, of course, Monty Python.
00:32Okay, technically Life of Brian isn't about Jesus at all.
00:36It's about a guy named Brian who gets mistaken for a messiah and ends up getting crucified.
00:41And while our reluctant hero dies a painful death, all the guys hanging on crosses around
00:45him launch into an upbeat musical number.
00:47Always look on the bright side of life
00:55Needless to say, Life of Brian made some people pretty upset.
00:58Protesters sang hymns outside movie theaters, and the film was banned in some countries
01:03for decades.
01:04The Catholic Church jumped in and made up their own rating for Life of Brian, a C for
01:08Condemned.
01:09Harsh.
01:10But despite the notoriety, or more likely because of it, Life of Brian has since become
01:15a comedy classic.
01:16Titanic
01:17Sure, Titanic is still the second-highest-grossing movie of all time, but those billions of dollars
01:22couldn't save the film from endless scrutiny.
01:25According to countless fans across the world, the ending of Titanic is nothing short of
01:29a disaster.
01:30After the boat goes down, Jack and Rose find themselves stuck in the freezing cold waters
01:34of the Atlantic.
01:35Then, Jack freezes to death.
01:38It's this scene that sparked most of the outrage.
01:40Wasn't there room on that piece of wood for the both of them?
01:43The debate was so intense that in 2012, MythBusters dedicated an entire episode to discovering
01:48the answer.
01:49With the help of director James Cameron, they determined that if Rose had just tied her
01:53life jacket to the underside of the door, there would've been enough buoyancy to hold
01:57them both.
01:58But Cameron doesn't buy into that argument, saying,
02:00"...the script says Jack dies.
02:02He has to die.
02:03Maybe we screwed up.
02:04The board should've been a tiny bit smaller.
02:06But the dude's going down.
02:07In other words, true love is a lie and you should never hope for happiness."
02:10Jeez, Cameron.
02:13Blade Runner
02:14By this point, there are seven different versions of Blade Runner available to watch.
02:18And thanks to all that tinkering, sci-fi fans have spent countless hours discussing whether
02:22or not Rick Deckard is actually a replicant.
02:25So what's the correct answer?
02:26Well, if you go by the original ending, it's a straightforward no.
02:30The theatrical cut ends on an upbeat note, with Deckard and his robotic lady love escaping
02:35into the mountains to live a long and happy life.
02:38However, that all changed with the director's cut.
02:41That's the version in which Scott added Deckard's unicorn dream and cut the happy Hollywood
02:45ending.
02:46This time around, the film ends with our protagonist finding Gaff's origami message, implying the
02:51cop knows what Deckard dreams about, because Deckard's memories are implants, thus making
02:55him a replicant.
02:56Ever since, people have argued about Deckard's true nature.
03:00Even Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford don't agree.
03:02The director firmly believes Deckard is a machine, while the actor fought to keep his
03:06character 100 percent human.
03:08"...so I resisted the idea of being a replicant.
03:12I suppose, as a replicant would."
03:16That settles it, then.
03:17Or does it?
03:18The Mist
03:20The ending of The Mist is one of the bleakest finales ever put to film.
03:23Directed by Frank Darabont, The Mist focuses on a group of New Englanders trapped in a
03:28grocery store by a mysterious fog.
03:30The titular mist is full of horrifying monsters, but things aren't so great inside the store,
03:35either.
03:36Once people start getting sacrificed, Thomas Jane's character, David Drayton, makes a break
03:40for freedom with a small band of survivors.
03:42But unfortunately, there's no happy ending here.
03:45Lost in the mist with no hope in sight, David performs a mercy killing to spare his friends,
03:49and his own son, from the oncoming creatures.
03:52And then, just a few painful seconds later, a group of army guys show up to save the day
03:56and look for survivors.
03:58Yeah, it's bleak, grim, and completely different from Stephen King's novella.
04:02But the author loved Darabont's twist, saying,
04:04"...Frank wrote a new ending that I loved.
04:06It is the most shocking ending ever."
04:09Watchmen
04:10Even though Alan Moore's Watchmen is widely considered the greatest graphic novel ever
04:14written, it took quite a while to get a movie adaptation up on the silver screen.
04:19At one point, Terry Gilliam took a crack at the material, but when that didn't pan out,
04:23it eventually fell to Zack Snyder to get the thing made.
04:26The result was a film that was pretty faithful to the book, except for one giant, major change.
04:31In Moore's original story, the villainous Ozymandias destroys New York with a mocked-up
04:36alien squid.
04:37The arrival of the monster convinces the world's superpowers that extraterrestrials are going
04:41to attack, forcing the U.S. and the USSR to put aside their differences and band together
04:47in order to face the otherworldly foe.
04:49However, Snyder totally drops the whole alien-sea-beast angle.
04:53Instead, Ozymandias blows up New York and frames the omnipotent Dr. Manhattan, tricking
04:58America and the Soviet Union into becoming friends to defeat the naked blue superhero.
05:03"...Millions of lives were suddenly ended in an act of evil perpetrated by Dr. Manhattan
05:10himself."
05:12Snyder has since said that the squid was cut out so more time could be spent building the
05:17characters of Manhattan and Rorschach.
05:19For his part, he's also acknowledged that the altered ending was the biggest knock against
05:23the movie.
05:24So there's that.
05:25The Dark Knight Rises
05:27Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy was a game-changer for superhero movies, and as
05:31the final film in the series, The Dark Knight Rises had a lot to live up to.
05:36But instead of diving headfirst into the darkness, the third Nolan film ended on a much happier
05:41note, with the Caped Crusader saving Gotham from a nuclear bomb before giving up his vigilante
05:45ways to travel the world with Selina Kyle.
05:48As a result, many fans wondered if this was some sort of Inception-style dream sequence.
05:53After all, the scene plays out exactly like a fantasy described by Alfred earlier in the
05:57film.
05:58"...I had this fantasy that I would look across the tables and I'd see you there with a wife."
06:08Christian Bale, on the other hand, insists Batman's happy ending is completely real.
06:12"...My personal opinion is, no, it was not a dream, that that was for real."
06:17Some people thought the movie should have gone in a more depressing direction by killing
06:20the superhero, while others were glad that Bruce Wayne finally got a happy ending.
06:25And really, we shouldn't have been surprised by the film's upbeat finale, because as Harvey
06:29Dent once explained it,
06:30"...The night is dark as just before the dawn."
06:34This was the dawn audiences had been promised.
06:37The Grey
06:38Set in Alaska, The Grey follows a hunter named John Ottaway, played by Liam Neeson, who's
06:43stranded in the wilderness with a group of oil workers.
06:46While he starts the movie suicidal, Ottaway slowly regains the will to live, which is
06:50too bad since he winds up in the middle of a wolf den.
06:53Ready to fight, Ottaway tapes a knife and broken bottles to his hand, but before the
06:57final confrontation, the screen cuts to black, movie over.
07:01"...What?!"
07:02"...What?!"
07:03"...Wha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a!"
07:07Audiences were sharply divided.
07:08Some people thought the ending was perfect, while others felt cheated.
07:12As for director Joe Carnahan, he cut the wolf-fighting finale because the film had already reached
07:16its emotional conclusion, and he also worried that the sight of CG canines might ruin the
07:21scene.
07:22However, Carnahan admits the promotional material was the enemy of the film in a lot of ways.
07:27I guess it created a promise that people felt the movie didn't live up to.
07:31Snowpiercer
07:33Directed by Bong Joon-ho, Snowpiercer is set in the middle of a wintry post-apocalypse
07:38with the last of humanity on a train that travels around the world.
07:41Unfortunately, living conditions aren't a picture of equality.
07:45Folks on the tail end are treated like prisoners, while the people in the front live like kings.
07:49So a group of rebels led by Curtis, played by Chris Evans, fights their way up to the
07:53front of the train, hoping to overthrow the head honchos.
07:56But when Curtis makes his way into the engine, he learns the train operates using child slave
08:01labor.
08:02Realizing the entire system is corrupt and impossible to save, Curtis destroys the train,
08:07possibly killing everyone on board, except for two kids.
08:10Emerging from the rubble, a teenage girl and a young boy find themselves at a manieve of
08:14a frozen world, and as they step into the snow, they see a polar bear, a sign the world
08:18is thawing out and maybe there's hope after all.
08:21Well, that's what Bong Joon-ho intended, anyway, saying it's a very hopeful ending.
08:25Those two kids will spread the human race.
08:28But many people had trouble getting past certain plot issues.
08:31As plenty of critics have pointed out, those two kids have lived their entire lives on
08:35the train, so they'd have no hope of surviving the frigid wasteland.
08:38That is, if that big old bear didn't eat them, he's gotta be pretty hungry.
08:43Passengers
08:44On paper, Passengers should have been one of the biggest blockbusters of 2016.
08:48It starred Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, two of the biggest stars in the business,
08:53and it was based on a screenplay that many hailed as one of the best scripts in Hollywood.
08:57But the sci-fi flick was a flop, grossing $100 million domestically on a $110 million
09:02budget.
09:03What went so terribly wrong about Passengers?
09:06Well, moviegoers were expecting to see a story about two beautiful people who accidentally
09:10wake up from suspended animation while traveling to a new planet.
09:14Unable to return to their pods, the two are fated to spend their lives together on the
09:18spaceship.
09:19But the trailers were more than slightly misleading.
09:21As it turns out, Chris Pratt's character, Jim, wakes up after his pod malfunctions.
09:25Unwilling to spend his life alone, he selfishly releases Jennifer Lawrence's character, Aurora,
09:30against her will.
09:31Even the robot bartender was surprised.
09:33Who's the lovely lady?
09:35This is Aurora.
09:36Aurora.
09:37Admittedly, the movie could have done something interesting with this premise.
09:41But instead of dealing with Jim's decision in a mature, complex way, the filmmakers have
09:46Aurora fall in love with the guy and decide to spend her life with him, even though he's
09:50essentially kidnapped and murdered her.
09:52When the rest of the passengers wake up nearly 90 years later, they find out that Jim and
09:56Aurora lived a long, happy life, and grew a bunch of trees on their spaceship.
10:00As a result, critics hit the movie hard, and audiences decided to stay away from theaters.