Sometimes movies have the fans in the palm of their hands, and then the ending comes, and the filmmakers lose the audience. At least, they lose a portion of the audience. There are times where the unique twist that shocks everyone works, with a perfect example being M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, where audiences scrambled to go back and watch it again to discover the clues.
However, many other movies were great, leading up to that surprise finale, and then fans chose never to watch the film again. The ending completely ruined it for them, and no clues they could discover in future viewings would ever save it in their eyes. Here is a look at 10 great movies that were ruined by their ending, according to fans.
THE VILLAGE (2004)
M. Night Shyamalan had two of the best twists in movie history, first with the revelation that turned The Sixth Sense on its head and the second coming when he uncovered the mastermind behind the tragedies in Unbreakable. However, soon, all his movies had a twist ending. The one fans hated more than any other was The Village.
In The Village, viewers believe that the film takes place in a 19th-century village where something dark is hunting the people there. When Ivy (Bryce Dallas Howard) is on the run from the “monster” (Joaquin Phoenix), she learns the truth — it is present-day, and the village elders made all the residents believe nothing had ever modernized in their world.
THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE (2003)
Released in 2003, The Life of David Gale presented a movie that was a confessional from a professor on death row waiting for the day of his execution. Kevin Spacey was David Gale, a professor on death row who agreed to speak to a reporter (Kate Winslet) under the promise of confidentiality that she would not reveal his story until after his death.
The movie played out in flashbacks, telling bits and pieces of his story to the audience while leaving out one key piece of information. The murder Gale died for was a suicide. Gale touched the body of his former lover to taint the evidence and show, through his death as an innocent man, that the capital punishment system was flawed. What it showed was that Gale gamed the system to make it look bad.
SIGNS (2002)
The second M. Night Shyamalan movie on this list is one that was a great film up until the ending that made many people throw up their hands in frustration. Signs is an alien invasion movie that has some genuinely creepy scenes and great acting by Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix.
However, everything falls apart when the heroes learn the weakness of the aliens, and Earth is saved. See, the aliens’ weakness, and what kills them, is water. Why would aliens who are technologically advanced enough for space travel head to a planet that is 80% water if that is their weakness?
ORPHAN (2009)
In 2009, Orphan was the latest in a string of movies at that time to feature a child in a horror movie. This film starred 12-year-old Isabelle Fuhrman as an orphaned girl adopted by a couple who just suffered through their third stillborn pregnancy. The idea was that by adopting, they could avoid any more heartbreak.
That didn’t happen. See, the end of this otherwise effective horror movie showed that the girl was actually a 33-year-old woman with proportional dwarfism. Many fans found this revelation to be flat.
NOW YOU SEE ME (2013)
Now You See Me was an entertaining heist movie with a great cast, all turning in fantastic performances. The plot was complex, as are the best heist movies, as a group of stage magicians with different talents teamed up to pull off major heists, and took on the role of Robin Hood, as they gave the money they stole to their audiences.
As fun as the movie was, the ending made no sense at all and ruined it for many people. See, the FBI agent tracking them down was in on it from the start and planned this out to get revenge on a man responsible for his father’s death. So, this FBI agent went through years of training to become an FBI agent in an elaborate scheme to take down the debunker.
IRON MAN 3 (2013)
Of all the movies on this list, the one that polarized fans the most was the big twist in Iron Man 3. Everyone knows about this twist, as the villain Mandarin tried to kill and ruin Iron Man, something that excited many fans of the source material. However, it turned out Mandarin was a fake and was just an actor hired to portray the face of the terrorist organization.
Many fans called this a brilliant twist, crediting the performance of Ben Kingsley, especially after he admits he is a fraud. Many other fans, very vocally on social media, called it the worst comic book movie ever because they wanted Mandarin as the main villain.
MAN OF STEEL (2013)
Man of Steel was a movie that fits in perfectly in the DCEU that Zack Snyder’s fans prefer to follow and is a movie that many other fans felt was a betrayal of the character of Superman. Honestly, it isn’t as terrible as many fans make it sound when it comes to the depiction of Superman.
However, there is one point that those fans who ended up hating the ending circle back to. See, Superman is the brightness in a world of dark heroes, someone who always does the right thing. However, at the end of Man of Steel, Superman murders General Zod to save innocent people, and many fans will never forgive the movie for making Superman a killer.
A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (2001)
When it comes to A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, it should have ended up as a fantastic movie. However, the problem lies in the fact that the two brilliant filmmakers that made it was polar opposites in their visions of the world. Stanley Kubrick was the man who started the film’s development. He gave the film to Steven Spielberg, who then finally made it.
Most fans of Kubrick saw a movie that was brilliant until the ending, which most fans agree is pure Spielberg. That ending saw the child humanoid robot brought back to existence by aliens and allowed to live one more day with his human mother before falling asleep with her forever. It was a happy ending and one that Kubrick’s fans felt betrayed the story.
I AM LEGEND (2007)
I am Legend was a fantastic novel by author Richard Matheson that came to life as an apocalyptic horror movie directed by Francis Lawrence. Will Smith starred as Dr. Robert Neville, one of the last remaining human survivors as vampire-styled monsters slowly take over the world. However, one thing that Matheson fans will never forgive is the effective and great ending from the story changing in the movie.
In the book, the vampires all fear Neville because he takes them when they sleep to experiment on them to find a cure. He is forced to take suicide pills because he has become a horrific legend to the vampires and is one thing keeping peace from ever happening. In the movie, they are just monsters, and he commits suicide to help the survivors get the cure, destroying the novel’s message.
WAR OF THE WORLDS (2005)
Steven Spielberg is on here twice, which is unusual since his movies almost always stick the ending. However, the reason this one is so tough for fans to take is very different than the problems with A.I. In War of the Worlds, Spielberg remade the classic H.G. Wells story that terrorized a world that still feared the unknown.
In Spielberg’s film, that fear no longer existed when it came to alien attacks. Instead, Spielberg focused on the family trying to survive. With that in mind, he made a mistake with his ending. When the father and daughter reach Boston, the alien invasion suddenly ends with a closing narration saying the microbes on Earth destroyed them. It was an ending that came as a whimper to movie fans.
