A great movie ending has the power to completely pull the rug out from underneath us.
Beyond unexpected cinematic bombshells such as the hero finds out he’s been a ghost all along, or the disappointment that two lovers don’t stay together, or the final reveal of who is Keyser Söze, some movies floor us with a disturbing ending that haunts us long after the credits have rolled.
Such total-bummer endings sometimes pay off with a cosmic cataclysm that truly ends the world as we know it.
Others arrive at an ambiguous and unsettling non-ending, fading out on a note so bleak it feels like the world has stopped spinning.
The entire subgenre of film noir is based on the notion of unhappy consequences, and I’d argue many enduring geek favorites are, more often than not, heavily noir-ish in their own right. Whether we’re shown all-out global Armageddon or we merely end on a notably bad day for our hero, some popular and influential geek favorites contain some of the darkest and most troubling endings you’ll ever see at the movies.
Fair warning: spoilers abound, because we’re talking earth-shattering revelations like when Darth Vader taunts recent southpaw Luke that he’s his father at the cliffhanger of The Empire Strikes Back, tragic outcomes such as watching the Million Dollar Baby get paralyzed and then euthanized, and conflicting resolutions like the end of Thelma & Louise, we cheer their indomitable spirit while watching them drive off a tall cliff.
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