CS Daily Archive > The Big Picture > 01/28/05

The Big Picture:
The 7 Best Inevitable Endings
You Never Saw Coming

by dennis sampson

The ending of your script is the last thing the audience will remember before leaving the theater, so it better crackle. The tricky part is giving the crowd what they want without letting them see it coming.

Classically defined, the occurrence known as the Recency Effect is "a psychological cognitive bias that results from disproportionate salience of recent stimuli or observations." In English? We're most likely to be influenced by the last thing we've seen. This could explain why it's so crucial to create a resonating and memorable ending. Everyone knows the good guy's gonna get the girl/stop the bad guy/find the treasure. But what happens when the appropriate closing is not only none of the above, but moreover, the most sensible way to conclude things? For the movie to have stayed absolutely true to its characters and narrative, it had to end this way. And yet, halfway through, this is the least likely manner we would've imagined it going down. Here are seven movies with endings you never saw coming, yet couldn't have -- satisfyingly -- wrapped up any other way.

The Killing
Written by Stanley Kubrick
Additional Dialogue by Jim Thompson
Based on the novel Clean Break by Lionel White
Kubrick's screenplay for The Killing jumps around in time unlike flashbacks and forwards had ever been presented before, twisting and folding back on itself as it chronicles the events of a racetrack heist. At the head of the operation is Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden); surrounded by a crew of antihero misfits, Clay is the calm of the storm. Even when the plan goes horribly awry, it's Clay who constantly thinks himself out of the never-ending chain of messes. Until the end. Arriving at the airport with his wife, he's forced to check his suitcase -- full of the stolen loot -- with the airline. It's a tense moment and we're holding our breath. The suitcase is carted off and Clay and his wife head for the plane. Waiting to board, they watch as the luggage, precariously placed on the skycap's wagon, tumbles off, opens, and releases two million dollars into the wind. As the authorities close in on Clay, his wife asks if he's going to run. Dryly, he responds, "What's the difference?" This single moment, where the protagonist is finally taken down, is pivotal. It ends the movie not only on note of narrative and thematic closure, but on a strong moment of character definition. To run would have been the worst crime Johnny Clay could have committed: claiming incompetence.

Annie Hall
Written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman
The greatest romantic comedy of all time should not be seen as the template for all romantic comedies. If it was, their structures would be haywire, their characters would break the fourth wall, and the two leads would not end up together when it's all over. It's very strange to consider that fact -- at the end of Annie Hall, the two lovebirds we've been tracking the entire film, Alvy Singer (writer/director Allen) and Annie Hall (Diane Keaton), shake hands and go off to live separate lives. And yet, the movie wouldn't have seemed complete any other way. Alvy and Annie are a perfect balance; her carefree spirit contrasted with his incurable neurosis. But time changes people and their relationships, and by the end of the picture, Annie moves on with her life and Alvy is left to epiphanize that despite the heartache and agony love can put us through, it's ultimately what keeps the human race moving. The poignancy of this moment is driven home by the idea that he had to lose the girl to make this realization. It's ironic that a movie that sporadically spins off into the insanity of complete nonconvention (jumping to animation, talking to the camera, shattering structure) ultimately feels more realistic and tangible than any other romantic comedy before or since.

Rocky
Written by Sylvester Stallone
Rocky Balboa (screenwriter Stallone) -- who struggles for an entire film to amount to something not only in his own eyes, but also in Adrian's (Talia Shire) -- is the embodiment of the underdog. The archetypes of the screenplay are all drawn simply, but with great color: the effusive rival, the tough-love manager, the shy girl, and the guileless hero. It seems so obvious what's gonna happen. In fact, it all pieces together that way save for one tiny detail: the hero doesn't win. We watch as Rocky endures a lifetime of rejection and underestimation, only to face a fight where his nose gets broken, he's forced to slice his swollen eyelid open so he can see -- and then he loses the fight. Yet we don't leave the theater unsatisfied. Quite the opposite. By going the distance with the champ, Rocky proves he's not just another bum. But he's not concerned with the fight's results. Breaking through the crowd to find Adrian (who finds him first), who'd have guessed a movie about a guy who dreams of being the heavyweight champion of the world would end with the words, "I love you"?

Body Heat
Written by Lawrence Kasdan
Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) meets not-too-bright attorney Ned Racine (William Hurt) in a bar, begins a torrid affair, and then somehow convinces him to kill her rich husband and get away with the loot. The scheme works. For one of them, anyway. Ned murders the guy and winds up in jail, while Matty goes off to fulfill her high school fantasy: "To be rich and live in an exotic land." The idea of the femme fatale is nothing new to cinema (and wasn't in 1981 when this film came out, either). But this time, we're not privy to this until it's too late. And yet, after the final twist is revealed, we see the signs were present all along. "You're not too smart, are you? I like that in a man" is one of the first things Matty says to Ned. It's almost comical, the way she unabashedly reveals the whole design behind her character in that declaration. But it doesn't matter, because even if Ned did know, she uses every instrument of seduction and we see that the poor guy couldn't have stopped himself if he'd wanted to. The twist ending, predicated on the idea that the audience will review the movie from a different perspective once new information about the characters or plot comes to light is also found in (among others) Planet of the Apes, the director's cut of Blade Runner, Angel Heart, Jacob's Ladder, Primal Fear, Fight Club, Saw and every film made by M. Night Shymalan.

John Carpenter's The Thing
Written by Bill Lancaster
The Thing of the film's title refers to an alien creature of horrendously grotesque proportions that wreaks havoc on a group of men stationed at an Antarctic research station. What differentiates The Thing from a normal monster movie is the creature's ability to take the form of anything, man or animal. This allows an escalation of not only plot (and fear) but theme. The Thing becomes a horror film about the loss of identity. Paranoia rages through the men as they try to guess which one of them is no longer "himself." MacReady (Kurt Russell) leads his crew into a frozen hell as one by one, each is killed off in increasingly ghastly, I'd-really-hate-to-go-that-way manners. By the end, even after the climactic MacReady vs. the Monster showdown, the paranoia still has not dissipated. MacReady finds Childs (Keith David), the only other living crewmember. Beaten and spent, the two have a quietly suspicious exchange: neither is sure the other is not the creature. MacReady guesses they'll have to "Wait here for a little while. See what happens," and the film fades out, leaving us on an intimation that's far more bleak and terrifying than anything the story's given us yet.

Thelma & Louise
Written by Callie Khouri
Like any great American road picture, Thelma & Louise celebrates a rite of passage and sense of self-discovery. But this time, our protagonists are women (Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis), two uncannily dissimilar best friends. Their adventures range from tragic (an attempted rape followed by the killing of the assailant) to comic (for the first time in her life, one of them finally has an orgasm). As the police close in, Thelma and Louise become freer than they've ever known. As an audience, we spend so much time growing not just to understand, but to love these characters, that we - like they -- can't see them surviving in a cage. In the film's final, and most cathartic, scene, Thelma and Louise realize that they're not the same women who embarked on this journey and it's impossible to return to the life they knew. Thelma floors their 1956 T-Bird over the edge of the Grand Canyon and the moment is poetic -- simultaneously unimaginable and unavoidable. Freeze frame.

Se7en
Written by Andrew Kevin Walker
Se7en ends less on a twist than a note of perfect (albeit horrifyingly dark) synchronicity. The story centers on Detectives Somserset (Morgan Freeman) and Mills (Brad Pitt), tracking a serial killer who models his murders on the seven deadly sins. Eventually it becomes clear that the killer, John Doe (Kevin Spacey), is sending a personal message to the detectives hunting him -- then it really gets creepy. After five of the crimes have been discovered, with all of the detectives' leads dead ends, the murderer turns himself in. The last moments of the story are a shattering finish, with the pieces fitting together like a gruesome jigsaw puzzle. Staring down the barrel of Mills' gun, Doe offers a calm and articulate explanation as his plan comes together: Doe must die because he is guilty of Envy (of Mills' life), and Mills must become an instrument of Wrath in order to complete Doe's masterpiece (by avenging his dead wife). For an ending that no one saw coming, the clues were right in front of us the entire time. A great example of Andrew Kevin Walker thinking… out of the box.


Dennis Sampson is a commercial production coordinator and unproduced screenwriter. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his better half, Susan, and their dog Tripp.

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