Sci-fi is easily one of the most creative genres, with the potential for some incredible endings, but while some movies hit the mark, there are plenty of others that fail to spark. Science fiction is a genre renowned for pushing boundaries and introducing new concepts and methods into film. While science fiction starts out as far-fetched, spectacular images and stories, the ways these movies are filmed end up influencing the rest of cinema.
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However, the movies also rely on having powerful endings that leave the audience in awe. Plenty of movies bring big twists, or some kind of question mark ending, but not all of them feel quite so inspiring. For every film, like the original Planet of the Apes, where the ending leaves the audience reeling in surprise, there are a dozen that appear to raise more questions than answers, and not in a good way.
10 Great Ending: Ex Machina
AI has become one of the most prevalent themes in modern sci-fi movies, with many of these movies exploring what the future of AI could look like. For Ex Machina, the advances in AI resulted in people struggling to fully separate an artifical intelligence from a natural and human one. In the film, Caleb, a young scientist, finds himself falling into this trap when he meets and gets an opportunity to interact with the highly advanced robot, Ava.
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Ava convinces Caleb that she has genuine feelings for him, which he reciprocates. In a complex ploy, the pair make a plan for Ava and Caleb to escape together, but when it comes time for the pair to make their big break, Ava turns on Caleb. Rather than flying off together into the sunset, Ava leaves Caleb trapped in the cell where she spent most of her life. Whether she feels any pangs of guilt or remorse, her sense of justice and self-preservation win out, as she takes the helicopter and leaves the humans who watched her like a lab rat to fend for themselves, alone, and trapped as she had been.
9 Disappointing Ending: A.I. Artificial Intelligence
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On a very different note, Steven Spielberg also weighed in on the AI movie genre all the way back in 2001 with A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Spielberg’s take is brilliant in many ways, as a young robot, named David, is given to a family in order to help them overcome the grief of their ill son. However, when their biological son recovers, David gets jealous. In this film, David does experience emotion, as he becomes attached to the mother who took him in and treated him like a son, until her own son was home.
David’s journey after being rejected from his home takes him down many dark roads, but for the most part, the movie is extremely intriguing and provocative up until the ending. The movie’s final scenes see David get his wish to be with his mother again, 2000 years into the future, thanks to advanced robots reconstructing his memories. The catch is, this version of his mother lives for just one day, and David then lays down to rest with her. It’s an odd payoff in a movie that offers no real growth or resolution.
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8 Great Ending: Arrival
Several sci-fi films deal with alien invasions, with varying degrees of success. Arrival was a 2016 film directed by Denis Villeneuve in which a group of aliens come to Earth with a mysterious message for the humans. Of course, humans initially perceive the aliens to be a threat, and much of the movie follows their struggles to agree on how to respond.
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The ending, however, sees humans make peace with the aliens, understanding what their message is more comprehensively, and it comes with a clever twist of time travel. While no one physically travels through time in an unconventional way, learning the language of the aliens unlocks their perception of time in a non-linear sense, essentially gaining the ability to see the future. This twist is exciting as it is, but the way it ties the beginning of the film in to the present and future is nothing short of remarkable.
7 Disappointing Ending: War of the Worlds
Another alien-focused film comes from the incredible and innovative mind of the late and great H. G. Wells. The War of the Worlds has been adapted several times, but the 2005 film starring Tom Cruise added one significant change that altered the ending and distracted from the central themes of the film. Amidst an alien invasion, the humans are overwhelmed by the incredibly powerful aliens whose technology is far superior to anything on Earth.
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Ultimately, the aliens are eventually wiped out by humble bacteria, which the aliens were never exposed to and thus become fatally ill. However, the issue with the ending for the 2005 film comes from an odd choice to have one character, Robbie, run towards almost certain death earlier in the film, only to appear again at the end, safe and sound. It’s a happy reunion, but the choice to add this conflict and resolution felt unnecessary and pointless.
6 Great Ending: Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back
The original trilogy of Star Wars films is often praised as being one of the all-time sci-fi greats. Introducing a large complex world, with the backdrop of the newly designated space opera, these movies became incredibly popular and their popularity endures to this day. However, some of that success can be traced back to the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, which came out in 1980.
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Today, this film’s ending has become one of the most iconic endings of any film ever, when Luke Skywalker finally comes face to face with the terrifying leader of the Empire, Darth Vader. Luke’s training has prepared him to fight this monster, but when Darth Vader reveals his true identity, as the father of Luke Skywalker, it completely shatters the young man’s world. Having been convinced this was the man who killed his father, Luke despairs when he learns that Vader was his father all along.
5 Disappointing Ending: Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker
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However, later entries in the incredible saga have not handled these big reveals nearly so neatly. In the sequel trilogy, Rey becomes a central protagonist, whose fate appears to be tied to the future of the Jedi in some significant way. Rey experiences a powerful connection to the Force, and even a psychic link to her supposed rival, Kylo Ren, but all of this happens without Rey fully understanding who she is. For this reason, Rey’s heritage became a central mystery that demanded to be solved.
However, when it was revealed that Rey was actually the granddaughter of the emperor himself, Palpatine, it came with the unexpected return of Palpatine. This ending is disappointing in two ways, with Palpatine’s return coming out of nowhere, and feeling pointless, and Rey’s heritage ultimately reinforcing the message that she had to be someone. It would have been better to simply make Rey a nobody, but the world of Star Wars chose to instead push a chosen one narrative that feels hollow and overused.
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4 Great Ending: Inception
Christopher Nolan has often been praised for his incredible directing and storytelling abilities. In 2010, he delivered one of his most enduring and powerful projects, Inception, which became one of his most elaborate and mind-bending films up to that point. Much of the film explores the world of dreams, with a concept of how deep people can go into these imagined realities, and when the reality fades and blurs together with the dream world.
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The movie pushes this powerful narrative and concept of what is real, and what is simply a dream throughout, but it isn’t until the final moments that the movie decides to leave the audience in a sense of limbo. After exploring levels of dreams, the movie concludes with the protagonist, Cobb, reuniting with his children. However, in the moments before this happens, he uses his totem, a tool to help discern when one is dreaming, but he leaves it spinning without regarding what the true outcome is. With a sharp cut to black, the audience is also left unsure of what is true, but ultimately, the answer is less important than the journey.
3 Disappointing Ending: Lucy
Lucy follows a very different route when exploring how humans interact with reality. This film explores what happens when a young woman is able to gain access to increasingly more of her brain. The premise comes from a flawed myth about how humans only use 10% of their brains, but the action and exploration is intriguing throughout.
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However, once Lucy gets to the point where 100% of her brain is available to her, she transcends her physical body, disappears into the ether, and becomes some sort of god-level being. This ending is underwhelming, and feels like a cop out as Lucy goes from being an advanced human, to essentially an idea and some digital information floating out in space.
2 Great Ending: The Matrix
The Matrix completely redefined sci-fi movies and provided an incredible look at perceived reality that remains prescient today. Over the course of the film, the digital world is explored, and revealed to be a hoax set up by machines who harvest humans and feed on their life force. Meanwhile, one man is given the opportunity to see the truth for himself, while the other rebels around him seem to believe he is some mysterious individual known as The One.
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After denying this and struggling to come to terms with his perceived destiny, Neo eventually becomes a competent soldier, but it isn’t until his beloved Trinity reveals her prophecy that he embraces his identity as The One. From this moment forward, Neo changes the game, and finds new ways to engage with the Matrix, and challenge the robot overlords who threaten the future of all humankind. A powerful ending which ticks all the boxes for action, romance, and self-actualization.
1 Disappointing Ending: Signs
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M. Night Shyamalan is well known for creating movies with big twists, but not all of those movies land in quite the same way. When it comes to Signs, it sits roughly in the middle of the pack in terms of Shyamalan’s best movies, but it did receive some negative attention for the films ending. While the movie is set up as a film about an alien invasion, the resolution brings the story home to a narrative about faith.
This isn’t inherently bad, and the twist was well laid out in the film, which helped to make it feel like a natural conclusion, but it’s also just underwhelming for a movie about aliens. In a way, it kind of reframed the entire film as one about faith rather than a sci-fi flick, and that can be appreciated on a rewatch, but initially, it feels like a bait and switch. Overall, it’s one of the more disappointing endings for a sci-fi film, which fails to make the film stand out in the genre.
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