Movies with the best endings in movie history
A good story can be completely ruined by a bad ending. That is not the case with these legendary movies.
The films with the best final will forever be etched in the minds and hearts of film fans, and for good reason. Not only do they have the perfect ending for great stories, but their endings become that moment of revelation, surprise and closure (lateral and emotional) that leaves us disarmed and ready to never think about anything else.
What makes a great movie ? Are they the characters? Is it photography? The script? The truth is that many things come into play for a film to be good , you need the best actors, a director who knows how to carry and handle the story, good photography and an exceptional script, but none of that works or it makes sense if the ending is bad and many movies have proven it. The new Star Wars saga, for example.
The ending lasts only a moment, it is a small piece of the great puzzle that has been built throughout history, but it is the way to dismiss it, it is the opportunity to plant the last idea in the minds of the audience so that they continue to give it laps when leaving the cinema or finishing the film in streaming and leaving them with exactly the feeling and feeling you were looking for. Achieving that is not easy and for that reason, there are many disappointing endings, but we have great examples of it being not impossible throughout the history of cinema.
From Hitchcock to David Fincher , the best directors have found a way to close their films with great scenes that we never go to and should never forget.
Movies with the best endings:
Psycho, 1960
The film Alfred Hitchcock began with an unexpected twist in which the protagonist dies, but that is surpassed later by another major turning point in history. After finding the hotel where Marion disappeared, Lila and Sam manage to enter the home of Norman Bates and his mother, convinced that she can reveal the truth to them. To his surprise, she has been dead for years and the murderer is none other than her lonely and submissive son.
The Graduate, 1967
Who hasn’t wanted to win back the woman they love in such a risky way as Dustin Hoffman in this Mike Nichols classic? Ben ruins his relationship with Elaine over an affair with his sexy older neighbor, but he eventually realizes that she is the woman of his life and must win her back, so he runs to church and takes her out of his own wedding, to then get into a truck where the two of them realize that they now have to deal with what they just did and what that means.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004
One of the great films of Michel Gondry. Eternal Sunshine follows Jim Carrey as he tries to erase all of Kate Winslet’s memories from his mind, after she erased him first. The movie later shows Joel (Carrey) attempts to stop the decision he just made, but it’s too late and there’s nothing he can do, but there’s a glimmer of hope in the finale, where they show us the two protagonists at the same point where their story began, sitting like two strangers, but this time with the feeling of the familiar and the desire to give themselves a chance.
Se7en, 1995
The film of David Fincher is a circle that closes completely to the end. It all starts with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman hunting down a serial killer who kills his victims according to the 7 Deadly Sins, but they themselves are part of the game without knowing them and at a defining moment in the end, Pitt receives a “package” that helps the murderer to finish the mission that seemed to be left incomplete when arrested.
Inception, 2010
Christopher Nolan gave us one of the craziest movies of all time and in the end it’s the best part. Inception is full of symbols that are there to let us know if what we are seeing is real or not, but that itself ends up being what leads us to an ending in which nothing is clear and everything is possible. Is Leonardo DiCaprio in a dream? Maybe we’ll never know.
ET, 1982
Steven Spielberg fulfilled every child’s dream with this story in which a little boy named Elliott befriends an alien who needs his help to return home. Throughout the film we see the strong connection between these two and how much it will hurt to say goodbye, and it all ends with an adventure that takes us to that inevitable moment when ET must leave, but not before helping Elliot to realize that his friendship is not going to go away and that someone may love him even if he is not always present (like his dad after the divorce).
The Social Network, 2010
Only David Fincher could make a movie about Facebook and end up building a metaphor about loneliness, ambition and power. The story is simple, yet powerful, it shows us how Mark Zuckerberg created the social network that changed the world, that made him a millionaire and beat a few enemies, and at the end of the movie we can see a very successful Zuckerberg refreshing the His ex-girlfriend’s page on the same network that he created after they ended their relationship. That ending tells us about the price he had to pay to build his empire.
Les Diaboliques, 1955
We can’t talk about movies with great endings and unexpected twists without mentioning this Henri-Georges Clouzot film. The story follows Christina and Nicole, the wife and lover of a professor named Paul who decide to make a plan to kill him. But Paul’s body disappears, the two women start to worry and we soon discover that Paul was never dead, it was all part of a side plan with which he and his lover were thinking of getting rid of the wife. It may not sound so surprising to you today, but at the time it was something never seen before and it became the basis for many other stories.
The Sixth Sense, 1999
This was the movie that put M. Night Shyamalan on the map. Haley Joel Osment plays a lonely boy who can see the dead, but his mother thinks he has psychological problems and needs help, so soon Bruce Willis comes into play and decides to help the boy solve his problems, without knowing that he himself is part of what is happening to him and that his relationship with him is not exactly as he perceives it. The movie is full of little signs that show the truth, but Shyamalan hides them very well so that you cannot notice them until he repeats them all to you at the end.
Whiplash, 2014
The film Damien Chazelle has one of the most cathartic end of the story. Miles Teller and JK Simmons spend their time fighting each other as a student and teacher at a prestigious music school. Simmons’ character is cruel and abusive, so his student decides to report him to lose his job, thinking that he will never know the truth. Years later the two meet again and Simmons invites him to play with his band at a concert, preparing everything to make him look ridiculous, but just when he thinks he beat him, his former student performs a brutal drum solo in which they let them go all the time. tension between them.
Other great film endings:
- There Will Be Blood, 2008
- Vertigo, 1958
- Lost in Translation, 2003
- Almost Famous, 2000
- Casablanca, 1942
- Scream, 1996
- The Usual Suspects, 1995
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, 1980
- Before Sunset, 2004
- Fargo, 1996
- The Godfather, 1972
- Sunset Boulevard, 1950
- Thelma and Louise, 1991
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003