Random Simple Explanations Behind Most Ambiguous Movie Endings (12 items)

• 

  (#10) Interstellar

  • Anne Hathaway, Matthew McConaughey, Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine, John Lithgow, Topher Grace, Casey Affleck, Ellen Burstyn, David Oyelowo, Wes Bentley, Mackenzie Foy, Bill Irwin, Elyes Gabel, Timothée Chalamet, David Gyasi

  Almost everyone who has watched Interstellar was perplexed by the messy conclusion. When Cooper travels through the black hole, he ends up in a fourth dimension that allows him to access various points along the timeline of Murph’s bedroom.

  He eventually realizes he can save the human race from extinction by tapping out the quantum data on a watch. Once this is completed, the black hole closes and sends him back to Brand. He blacks out and wakes up in the future, having been rescued by an advanced human colony.
• 

  (#3) Inception

  • Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, Michael Caine, Tom Berenger, Cillian Murphy, Pete Postlethwaite, Ken Watanabe, Talulah Riley, Lukas Haas, Tim Kelleher, Michael Gaston, Andrew Pleavin, Alex Lombard, Yuji Okumoto, Nicole Pulliam, Earl Cameron, Natasha Beaumont, Carl Gilliard, Dileep Rao, Benjamin Riley, Mobin Khan, Silvie Laguna, Taylor Geare, Virgile Bramly, John Ceallach, Alonzo F. Jones, Russ Fega, Shannon Welles, Tohoru Masamune, Seong-hwan Jo, Natalie Nastulczykova, Youlanda Davis, Ken Bhan, Norman Saleet, Tai-Li Lee, Claire Geare, Jean-Michel Dagory, Michael August, Zachary Christopher Fay, Jill Maddrell, Jack Gilroy, Lisa Reynolds, Ryan Hayward, Marc Raducci, Miranda Nolan, Scott Pretty, Magnus Nolan, Shelley Lang, Jack Murray, Helena Cullinan, Adam Cole, Nicolas Clerc, John Lawson, Johnathan Geare, Angela Nathenson, Affan Tareen, Jason Tendell, Andrew Hoagland, Coralie Dedykere, Peter Basham, Felix Scott, Jean-Christophe Leger, Colin Smith, Kraig Thornber, Daniel Girondeaud, Mark Fleischmann

  Right at the end of Inception, Cobb finally returns to his children after spending what felt like lifetimes in the dream world. He spins his totem—the top he uses to determine whether or not he is in the dream world—on a table, but the camera fades to black before it is revealed whether it falls or continues to spin. This has led many fans to believe Cobb is still asleep, and he is stuck in the dream world instead of in reality with his children.

  The ending has polarized fans. Some believe he is awake, while others think he was in too deep and is now stuck in a dream-state psychosis. The film's director, Christopher Nolan, didn't give a clear cut yes or no on the dream status of Cobb, but he did offer this at the 2015 Princeton commencement ceremony:

  The way the end of that film worked, Leonardo DiCaprio's character Cobb—he was off with his kids, he was in his own subjective reality. He didn't really care anymore, and that makes a statement: perhaps all levels of reality are valid. The camera moves over the spinning top just before it appears to be wobbling; it was cut to black.

  In August 2018, Michael Caine, who plays Cobb's father-in-law, offered his take on the infamously ambiguous ending during a screening of the film in London:

  When I got the script of Inception, I was a bit puzzled by it. I said [to Nolan]: "I don’t understand where the dream is." I said: "When is it the dream and when is it reality?" He said: "Well, when you’re in the scene, it’s reality." So get that: if I’m in it, it’s reality. If I’m not in it, it’s a dream.
• 

  (#12) The Matrix Revolutions

  • Monica Bellucci, Keanu Reeves, Jada Pinkett Smith, Hugo Weaving, Carrie-Anne Moss, Laurence Fishburne, Gina Torres, Kevin Michael Richardson, Harry Lennix, Cornel West, Collin Chou, Harold Perrineau, Anthony Zerbe, Lambert Wilson, Nona Gaye, Bruce Spence, Essie Davis, Mary Alice, Anthony Brandon Wong, Robert Mammone, Tanveer K. Atwal, Nathaniel Lees, Bernard White, Lachy Hulme, Clayton Watson, Robyn Nevin, Kate Beahan, Genevieve O'Reilly, Helmut Bakaitis, Rupert Reid, David Roberts, Ian Bliss, Rene Naufahu, Christopher Kirby, Tharini Mudaliar, David Bowers, Peter Lamb, Maurice Morgan, Joe Manning, Craig Walker, Richard Sydenham, Rachel Blackman, Francine Bell, Henry Blasingame, Zeke Castelli, Kittrick Redmond, Dion Horstmans, Che Timmins

  The two sequels to the original Matrix were not as well received as their predecessor. With more confusing plots and mystifying elements, it is no surprise the ending of Revolutions caused some problems. The entire series was built off the idea of man versus machine, but when Neo meets Deus Ex Machina, they suddenly have the same goal: get rid of Smith. 

  There's a lot of fly-fighting between Neo and Smith and confusion abound during the final sequence. Ultimately, Neo sacrifices himself to allow the machines to purge Smith from the Matrix, as his passing gave them an access point to directly interact with him.
• 

  (#4) Birdman

  • Emma Stone, Naomi Watts, Edward Norton, Michael Keaton, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan, Merritt Wever, Joel Garland, Natalie Gold, Bill Camp, Clark Middleton, Anna Hardwick, Teena Byrd, Stefano Villabona

  The very last scene of Birdman sees the main character, Riggan Thomson, climb out an open window. His daughter walks in moments later and eventually looks up to the sky smiling, suggesting that Riggan was able to fly up into the sky just like his alter ego.

  However, this may not be what actually happens, as all the other magical elements from the movie have a serious element of doubt in them. The actions Riggan believes he is doing can always be explained without him having any magical abilities. Meanwhile, the daughter has the same mental issues as her father, meaning she could easily have imagined Riggan was flying away rather than plunging to his final fate.
• 

  (#8) Blade Runner

  • Harrison Ford, Daryl Hannah, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, Joanna Cassidy, James Hong, William Sanderson, Brion James, Joe Turkel, Morgan Paull, Monty Pyke, Kevin Thompson, John Edward Allen

  There has been a huge amount of controversy surrounding the question of whether Rick Deckard is a replicant. Although most people don’t think this is definitively answered in the film, director Ridley Scott believes he made it perfectly clear the Blade Runner protagonist is an android rather than a human.

  The final moments of the movie show Deckard running away with Rachael and finding an origami unicorn left by Eduardo Gaff. He had previously dreamed of a unicorn earlier in the movie. This is something Gaff would only know if he had seen implanted dreams in Deckard’s memory.
• 

  (#6) American Psycho

  • Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe, Jared Leto, Josh Lucas, Chloë Sevigny, Samantha Mathis, Cara Seymour, Justin Theroux, Guinevere Turner. Reese Witherspoon

  The last act of American Psycho reveals everything is not exactly as it may have appeared throughout the movie. Patrick Bateman gets himself into an impossible situation but somehow manages to escape from several police officers by taking out their squad car. The night ends with him confessing to all of the crimes and agreeing to meet his lawyer the next day.

  However, soon comes a revelation that one of the supposed victims is still alive, leaving Bateman in utter bafflement as to what has actually happened. This leads to the conclusion that all of these events seemed unreal because they were; rather, Bateman's visions of the incidents were just the fantasies of a sick mind imagining horrific issues.

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking