What Film Has the Worst Ending?

Not the worst ending the but end of gone girl was kinda eh. The first two acts were amazing and then she's like I'm going to stay with you again even though neither of us trust each other. I feel like Ben affleck should have jus stabbed her in her sleep and gotten the fuck outta dodge.

Also you can let criticize terminator Genesys because everything after the first 20 minutes was awful. I loved the call backs to the first movie almost shot for shot. Except they casted thy as in guy to be the new liquid metal terminator when they could have found someone who looked like Patrick from t2. Not to be racist it's just a continuity thing for me.

The people who say the ending of T3 is the best in the series need to watch terminator 2. Not only does the bad guy get blown to shit but the cybernetic organism known as Arnold Schwarzenegger finally realizes the depth and important of human emotion with "I know now why you cry but it is something I can never do" is fucking brilliant!!

However the quip he says about "I need a vacation" is not very well placed. Almost like someone from marvel wrote that part.

@paulmako said:

Fuuuuuuuuuck, I visibly cringed in the theater when that happened. I was willing to meet that movie half-way, and I was almost convinced that it was great, and then that shot knocked the fanboy-glasses off of me immediately.

Like, just why? Who thought it was a good idea? How about, instead of that, we just have a wide shot of the two character's sillhouettes standing together on the cliff against a sunset backdrop? That's all we need.

I know it's pedantic, but sometimes the small details can affect the greater picture like that.

@lead_dispencer: I think it was more impactful because the movie that proceeded it was such by numbers action flick that the ending subverted any expectations you had. T2s ending is incredible but the T3 ending had my jaw dropped to the floor when I saw it in the cinema, again this probably could be because it was so much better than the movie deserved that it's impact was probably amplified a tad

Hahaha. Woof. At least I wasn't manipulated into killing my father who was trying to protect me?

I didn't realize a young Chris Pratt was in that film.

A friend of mine would argue the Departed has a terrible ending. I don't agree, but I can understand his argument. Me personally, I think Cloverfield's end is fucking terrible.

Jurassic Park III.

@natetodamax: yeah, that's just kind of a non-ending. Also makes zero since given that not one of the military personnel is at the ready to defend them from the carnivorous dinosaurs that literally just left the preceding scene while making a shitton of noise. Bad ending all around, not that the movie was much better.

Threads and it's stupid deformed baby bit. In fact, the whole Sheffield becoming Mad Max after the bombs drop.

Hancock was pretty cool, until the final 3rd, but then it almost had an awesome dark ending.... That machinad it's way into one of the most nauseatingly worst endings I've ever seen

Sucker Punch had a lot of potential, but the film felt like somebody was just farting in your face the entire time and at the ending you were hit with big soggy turd. Granted, I did not see the "complete" non-theatrical version but what I saw was enough.

@redbullet685: Not sure if you know this, but the first two thirds of High Tension are basically ripped directly out of Dean Koontz's Intensity. I actually like that book a great deal, and when I saw that film I was able to tell folks what the next scene coming was. Excluding the lesbian subplot and the terrible twist, they spend much of their times identical.

It's almost surreal.

@mmmslash: Yeah, a friend of mine actually told me that after I'd watched it. That's crazy.

Lawyer jokes aside, The Devil’s Advocate managed to not only offer a demonic/supernatural drama that was actually grounded in real world New York, but one bolstered by a strong cast – Al Pacino as the aforementioned Devil at the top of the list. It also packs one heck of a twist: after Pacino’s ‘John Milton’ has welcomed young defense attorney Kevin Lomax (Keanu Reeves) to the top of his field – costing him his wife and soul in the process – he reveals that he is Lucifer himself, and Kevin is his son.

Asked to father the Antichrist with his half-sister, Kevin destroys his father’s plan in an act of free will: killing himself. Instead of the movie ending with the Devil once again thwarted, the story rewinds, returning Lomax to the film’s first scenes. No explanation is offered for exactly how (did Satan return him to try again? Was it all in his head? Does Satan have mastery over the universe?), but Kevin takes the chance to do the right thing. That would have been a slightly sappy ending itself, but the final shot of a laughing Pacino clearly still set on corrupting his son turns the movie into a confusing morality tale, instead of the dark, depressing descent into immorality that it had been to that point.

I guess, this ending is the worst one.

This thread just makes me think of the tendency that some Hong Kong thrillers etc tend to have to throw way dark right at the end in a hilariously unearned attempt at some shock gut punch swerve ending. Sha Po Lang comes to mind, in which the hero seemingly defeats the villian in a fight in an office building, but the villain then gets back up and throws the hero out the window, who dies when he lands on a car in which the villain's pregnant wife is waiting, who is then also killed instantly. It's a total Mario Party ending.

Another good example is Overheard, which starts out with a solid premise. A couple of cops are working on a surveillance detail of a company suspected of stock manipulation when they witness evidence of insider trading. They realise that they are the only witnesses and decide to purge the evidence and use the information for their own gain, buying stock in the company. Could have been really good, just ends up trying so hard to be impactful that it becomes comical.

Apparently, the original ending of Salvation was basically supposed to be what you wanted. Instead of the cyborg sacrificing his life so John Conner can have his heart and live on, John Conner dies, but they graft his skin onto cyborg man so that the ideal can live on.

Ha, yes both those movies are like they were filmed and written in real time, the reveals are so wobbly, the retro active character writing is bizarre! They are kind of enjoyable though, and the premise of 'Magician Heist' is still cool.

I'd be surprised if it wasn’t mentioned already, but I hated the ending to kingdom of the crystal skull. I didn't end up hating that movie as much as others did, but man that stuff with the aliens (sorry for not having spoiler blocks, on mobile) was just terrible! It also doesn't help that the CGI in that scene it pretty bad, I can appreciate some B level effects, but it was just too much for me O.o

Yeah, I agree. That's mostly why I find the ending so frustrating. The movie, as ridiculous as it is, is really fun at times and the premise is neat, but then when it stumbles in the the end, it kinda just ruined the whole thing for me because large chunks of that movie are suddenly rendered completely nonsensical.

Also I just realized I said James Franco instead of Dave Franco.

As I recall the endings of the last two Matrix movies were terrible.

Then there was a John Travolta movie( I think) where he seems blessed with mental powers but TWIST- it's some kind of fatal brain thing. I'm nor spoile ring it because the movie must be 18 years old.

@dovah: Thank you for reminding me of Phenomenon. Also, fuck you for reminding me of Phenomenon.

I liked phenomenon. It's a better ending that if that mysterious light he saw was aliens and then the movie turns to kingdom of crystal skulls.

I know this isn't a movie. But fuck the end of sopranos. That's the type of ending where the writers were so far up their own pretentious asses that they made the most ambiguous ending ever. And they directed the scene to a song I love and now associate with that show from now on

Looper starts off pretty cool with a great premise but then just does one of the most epic fumbles I've ever seen. I was really excited to finally watch it but by the end I was literally yelling at the screen

@yesiamaduck said:

I'm with you on Hancock ultimately being bad, but I think honestly only the first maybe 20 or 30 minutes of that movie is any good. As soon as it starts hinting that the wife character knows something, and then dives into that plotline, it was just kinda silly.

I was all in on the idea of a superhero movie where he's drunk and irresponsible and bad at being a super hero, and then some PR guy tries to improve his image and whatever, and just make the whole movie a character study about dealing with the weird personal burden of being this crazy powerful person in a world of normal people. MAKE THE INTERESTING SUPERMAN MOVIE THAT EVERYONE ELSE HAS FAILED TO MAKE. The actual Hancock movie blasts through that part in about 20-30 minutes, then it's all about him wearing a suit and being the hero kinda, and then all the revelations related to the wife character, which I just didn't care for at all.

Time travel movies always have gaping plot holes in them, some worse than others, such as Looper. I like to think that the scene in the diner when Bruce Willis describes why he is back is the screenwriter telling the audience not to think about it too much or it all falls apart. "I don't want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws."

Other bad endings: Planet of the Apes, the 2001 version with Mark Wahlberg and Tim Roth. Tim Burton wanted a shocking ending, but it was only shocking in how nonsensical it was. Tim Roth's ape got to Earth first and replaced Abraham Lincoln?!

Also, Heaven Can Wait, the 1978 remake starring Warren Beatty. He is a football player, but his soul is accidentally taken to heaven too soon, and then the angels try to fix things by putting him in the body of a millionaire who was just fatally poisoned by his wife. He tries to get back into football, but then his wife and accountant shoot and kill him. The angels try to fix things by putting his soul in the body of a football player who died on the field. After they win the game, the angel then decides to tell him what the actual conditions are for the switch: Warren Beatty's character will lose all of his memories and personality and become the football player. His mind is annihilated by the switch and replaced. Surprise!

So the football player who died on the field now has a soul in heaven and an autonomous body on Earth with a trapped soul in it.

Let's go all the way back. Citizen Kane.

A sled? Really?! I have to sit through two hours of a crappy biography of a fictional but less interesting William Randolph Hearst and the answer is a fucking sled? Screw that movie.

@damodar: GDI they should have just gone with that. Also I love all you people praising T3's ending. That movie might not be great but that ending is so fucking good.

I feel like the ending of the Village was done well enough, it's just that the build up to it is so horrendous that by the time you get to it, you don't care (and you probably guessed the twist half a movie back).

I haven't seen it in a while, though.

@lv4monk: I don't know. The last 20 minutes or so of Jurassic World sure were something. The movie turned into a parody of itself... but a good one, where you could see the T-Rex and the Velociraptors being one beer away from bonding. It was so dumb I couldn't stop laughing the entire time. So, yes, I enjoyed it (quite a bit), but likely not the reaction the creators were waiting for in the final scenes.

Berserk: The Golden Age Arc III - The Advent

Citizen Kane is less about the story and more of the technical side of things. It was sort of the spawn of the modern era of acting compared to the over the top dialogue most movies had before Kane came out. Also on the directing aspect. The established shots and transitions and things like that. Learned that in my film media class so don't take my word on it. Just an easy 3 credit for college

Sinister 2 is at the top of my list. Especially for horror movies I feel like there needs to be a moment of redemption / self-realization at the end and there's neither in this movie.

@lawgamer: Dude, there are books dedicated to what that sled represented to Cane, and why it's an almost perfect movie. Me, I like to believe the story that Orsen Wells found out William Randolph Hearst's pet name for his wife was Rosebud, and put it in the film as another "Fuck you". I love that movie.

I love the movie John Wick, but man that dude should have died in the end.

@aethelred: They also go back on the entire concept of Looper at some point too. The movie flat out says that loopers exist because you can't just murder people in the future without getting caught but then later in one of Bruce Willis's flashbacks they just straight up shoot his wife like it's no big deal at all.

I quite like most of the endings being slammed here.
Sunshine, Looper, The Grey, Signs, The Departed,
I fucking love the ending of Gone Girl (although I think the book sells why Ben Affleck does what he does so much better than the movie).
I always interpreted the ending to AI being that roboboy eventually ran out of power and died, so I quite like that.

I hate all of Interstellar but especially the ending and the ending to Knowing retroactively makes the entire movie fucking insufferable.

Also, I agree with the people complaining in this thread about No Country for Old Men. I have read and heard many explanations for why the ending fits the plot perfectly, and maybe it does in some cerebral way, but emotionally, I felt cheated of a real conclusion.

If they wanted their cake and eat it too they should've had Superman sacrifice himself by pulling Doomsday into space while the military launches a nuke at them. Doomsday is destroyed and Superman "dies". A token funeral is held, just like in the movie. The last shot would be of Superman's floating body in space as his face is slowly enveloped by sunlight and his skin cells regenerates for a brief moment and BAM cut to black, cue Man of Steel theme.

It's hard for it to stand out as especially bad because the whole film is total garbage, but the final Twilight movie ending sticks in the memory as being completely moronic:

Turns out the whole fight where all the core characters die was a premonition of Alice which she shares with the main antagonist, and after seeing it and knowing he would die he decides not to fight after all, so he just leaves and everyone goes home. This is the height of "it was all a dream" bullshit. And yes, I watched all the Twilight films. Come at me.

There are a few other films which probably should have ended way sooner than they did. In the Dark Night Rises they should have ended when Alfred is in the restaurant for the final time, he looks up, and then smiles - CUT TO BLACK. That would have been much better.

Oh, and in The Martian, the whole lecture at the end was pointless. Have him sitting on the bench, then he bends down to touch the plant, then walks towards the building across the lawn. "Day 01" flashes on the screen. Then cut to black. That's way more classy than having him make a bunch of jokes to some fresh cadets. In the book it didn't even include him getting back to Earth, so the whole thing is overkill anyway.

@bernard_bernoulli: I managed to guess the twist (and indeed a lot of the plot) of The Village from the trailer. Sure, I didn't get all the steps on the way up there but starting from the concept of Ye Olden Times village and M Night's love of twist endings, it was just a matter of working backwards from the twist and working out what was needed to get there. Probably not the worst ending ever but it really does fail as a twist ending because I think it is almost impossible not to see coming.

Also, all these people defending the end of Terminator 3. No. It was terrible. If you are going to undercut the entire point of your previous installments then you should at least strive to be better than them. They went from "No Fate But What We Make" to "Judgement Day Was Inevitable" and the whole thing is the worst on multiple levels. Damn that movie to celluloid hell.

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin has got a great leadup, training scenes and all. But then the final fight abruptly cuts mid-headbutt to a totally different scene, presumably much later, and the movie just ends.

I realize nobody comes to kung fu movies for the plot but for something so highly regarded this was a real puzzler

The Road. Maybe the book ends the same way, I wouldn't know. Didn't read it. I thought the film was great but the ending terrible and didn't fit the rest of the film.