- 9 hours ago
Pixar played us like a damn fiddle.
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00:00The nature of movies as entertainment dictates that, more often than not, we as audiences fully expect the hero to eventually prevail over the villain,
00:09because people love to witness good triumphing over evil, after all.
00:12And while there are certainly movies that willfully buck that trend and hand the win to the antagonist,
00:18more common is a film which tries to fake viewers out, by getting the villain as close to victory as possible,
00:24before allowing the heroic side to pull things back.
00:26These ten movies, from blood-soaked action flicks to family-friendly animated masterpieces,
00:31all dared to dupe audiences into genuinely believing that the villain was about to come on top,
00:37only to pull the rug out and deliver some major catharsis at the last minute.
00:42In some cases it was clearly the right call, but in others it sure would have been refreshing to see the smart or skillful antagonist actually emerge victorious for all their efforts.
00:51With that in mind, I'm Will for What Culture, and here are ten awesome movie moments where you think the villain might actually win.
00:58Ten, Billy bites the dust, The Departed.
01:01Until its final few moments, Martin Scorsese's remake of the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs
01:06looks like it's going to follow the original's downer ending to the letter.
01:10In the third act, undercover cop Billy is killed while attempting to expose corrupt cop Colin,
01:16seemingly leaving Colin to get away unpunished, as his equivalent does in the original Infernal Affairs.
01:22However, in the interest of a more crowd-pleasing Hollywood ending,
01:25they tack on a final scene where Colin is confronted in his apartment by Sergeant Dingham,
01:30who promptly shoots him in the head as he arrives home.
01:33It really did seem like Colin had his slippery escape all mapped out,
01:37but along came Scorsese with a surprising, happy ending totally out of nowhere.
01:42While undeniably a concession in remaking the bleaker original movie for a more mainstream global market,
01:47it is still an effective ending on its own terms.
01:50Nine, it's going to be biblical.
01:53Law-abiding Citizen.
01:55Law-abiding Citizen is a terrific guilty pleasure movie in which bereaved engineer Clyde Shelton
02:00becomes a vigilante while seeking vengeance for the murder of his wife and daughter.
02:05Shelton strikes back against the corrupt legal system throughout the film,
02:08killing anyone who gets in his way while thoroughly toying with his bureaucratic former attorney, Nick Rice,
02:14in order to demonstrate the hypocrisy of American law.
02:18Shelton's methods are brutal, no question, but he is an extremely easy character to root for,
02:23especially when the only alternative is Jamie Foxx's thoroughly unlikable lawyer.
02:27Yet, dollars to donuts, Shelton is supposed to be the movie's bad guy.
02:31This all culminates in a fantastic end-of-second-act speech where Shelton tells Rice,
02:36quote,
02:37I'm going to bring the whole effing diseased, corrupt temple down on your head.
02:41It's going to be biblical.
02:43It's a delicious, I am death, destroyer of worlds, type speech that perfectly sets the stage for Act 3,
02:50where the audience largely hopes Shelton will indeed burn the entire system to the ground.
02:54Sadly, that's not quite what happens, as his attempt to blow up City Hall ends with Rice sneaking the bomb into Shelton's own prison cell,
03:02instead blowing him to smithereens, which is, frankly, disappointing.
03:07I kind of wanted him to murder all those people.
03:09Eight, Wash dies, Serenity.
03:12Joss Whedon really just loves to play with his fans like a cat playing with a mouse before devouring them,
03:17and that's never been truer than in his Firefly spin-off movie, Serenity.
03:21After Wash successfully pilots his titular ship through a battle between the Reavers and the Alliance,
03:26he's fatally impaled out of nowhere by a Reaver spear,
03:30breaking fans' hearts while setting an anything-goes tone for the remainder of the third act.
03:35According to Whedon himself, he killed Wash in such jarringly abrupt fashion for precisely this reason,
03:41to make audiences think that any of the remaining characters could actually die during the rest of the film.
03:46While all of Wash's crewmates ultimately do survive,
03:49killing a character as beloved as Wash demoralised fans enough to believe that Mal, Zoe, and company could also meet their maker.
03:57Seven, the sad ending, Wayne's World.
04:00A slightly more light-hearted entry, as Wayne's World seems to end with Wayne being dumped by his girlfriend
04:05after a major record label rejecter, finding out his ex Stacy is pregnant and watching his house burn down,
04:11while Cassandra ends up with sleazy TV producer Benjamin.
04:15But at that moment, Wayne and Garth break the fourth wall to address the audience,
04:19explaining that they'd never end the movie like this,
04:21instead giving the ending a mega happy do-over where everyone, even Benjamin, emerges satisfied.
04:27What makes this rug pull so hilarious is that the dark, original ending is probably the more realistic outcome of the movie's events,
04:34save for the fire, maybe, to the extent where Benjamin actually asked the audience,
04:38you didn't really think she'd end up with Wayne, did you?
04:40It honestly feels like a totally reasonable comment.
04:43Though it would have been a brave and bold dose of realism,
04:46counter to what audiences expect from most coming-of-age comedies,
04:49it really wouldn't have fit the movie's tone at all,
04:51so the alternate happy ending was probably for the best.
04:54Six, Vincent vs. Max.
04:56Collateral.
04:57This incredible neo-noir focuses on a timid cab driver, Max,
05:01who is forced to drive charming, grey-haired assassin Vincent around LA
05:05as he carries out a series of hits.
05:07It's little surprise that the film culminates in a violent showdown
05:10between the twitchy hero and the smooth-as-silk villain,
05:14but given the sheer, unwavering skill of Vincent's gunplay
05:17and the movie's generally nihilistic tone,
05:19it actually seems like Vincent might come out on top.
05:22At the end of the movie, Vincent chases Max onto a subway train,
05:25after which a blind shootout takes place as the train's lights flicker on and off.
05:29Miraculously, despite Vincent's incredible markmanship giving him a massive advantage,
05:34the feckless Max still manages to mortally wound him,
05:37while emerging entirely unscathed himself.
05:40It's the single truly implausible moment in a movie,
05:43otherwise well-regarded for its rigorously grounded brutality,
05:46and though Vincent's corpse taking a ride on the subway is an amusing fate for the character,
05:51it's hardly the outcome you'd expect for a guy with his unbelievable shooting skills.
05:565. The Death of Qui-Gon, Star Wars The Phantom Menace
06:00Even though it was tactlessly spoiled by the movie's soundtrack listing shortly before release,
06:05the death of Qui-Gon Jinn at the hands of Darth Maul in Star Wars Episode I
06:09was a massive shocker to most fans.
06:11Furthermore, it was demoralizing enough to suggest that The Phantom Menace
06:15was about to serve up an Empire Strikes Back-esque downer ending for the ages.
06:19While we knew that Obi-Wan Kenobi had to survive the events of the trilogy per necessity,
06:24killing Qui-Gon truly made Darth Maul seem like an insurmountable threat.
06:29After all, Qui-Gon was the master, Obi-Wan was just his apprentice.
06:32So, audiences were shocked when Darth Maul ends up killed,
06:35or as we now know, not killed, by Obi-Wan mere moments later,
06:39seemingly throwing Maul in the bin just as fans got to see how truly badass he could be.
06:44Having the villains wean in Episode I would have been a fun subversion of the expected,
06:48especially as we were already expecting so much of what would happen in the prequels,
06:52seeing as, you know, they are prequels.
06:54Instead, Maul's iconic murderous act was quickly savored into irrelevance
06:58when Obi-Wan punked him out like a no-named idiot.
07:01You had the high ground, Maul, and you still lost. Idiots!
07:054. The Genesis Countdown, Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan
07:09Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan is an excellent Trek movie
07:13that was largely praised for delivering arguably the franchise's best ever villain
07:17in genetically engineered tyrant Khan, who originally appeared in the show.
07:21Khan is seeking revenge on Captain Kirk for exiling him and causing the death of his wife,
07:25and though he ultimately ends up mortally wounded by the end of the movie,
07:29it also results in Khan's finest moment.
07:32In a last-ditch attempt to annihilate Kirk, Khan activates the Genesis device,
07:37which will ultimately destroy the Enterprise and anything in the vicinity.
07:40With the Enterprise's warp drive damaged and therefore unable to flee from the device,
07:44it truly does feel like Kirk's goose is cut.
07:47Even though we, as Trek fans, knew it was unlikely that the entire crew of the Enterprise would be killed,
07:53Khan's sense of vengeance is so strong it's difficult not to get wrapped up in it.
07:57Ultimately, Khan scores something of a pyrrhic victory,
08:00in that the Enterprise only escapes Genesis after Spock sacrifices himself to the warp drive,
08:06but it's still far from the retribution Khan envisioned against his true foe.
08:113. Stansfield shoots Leon
08:13Leon the Professional
08:14The cult classic action thriller Leon, or Leon the Professional in the UK,
08:18is one of the most entertaining films of the 90s,
08:20in large part thanks to Gary Oldman's gloriously scenery-devouring performance
08:24of the pill-popping, murderous, psychopathic, corrupt DEA agent, Norman Stansfield.
08:30And while audiences were certainly rooting for badass assassin Leon to prevail,
08:34Stansfield's plentiful resources and ruthlessly violent methods unsurprisingly
08:38allowed him to get the better of Leon at the end of the movie.
08:41As Leon is mere seconds away from freedom after surviving a brutal siege at his apartment,
08:46he's shot in the back by Stansfield.
08:49As Stansfield smugly presides over his expiring body, it really feels like game over,
08:54but ultimately Stansfield does meet his explosive comeuppance,
08:58as seconds later, Leon reveals himself to be rigged up to a string of soon-to-destinate grenades,
09:03promptly blowing both of them to hell.
09:05Even though Stansfield technically did manage to kill Leon,
09:08getting blown up by your quarry probably doesn't count as a win.
09:122. Lotso leaves the toys for dead.
09:14Toy Story 3.
09:16There's a good reason why there aren't any other family films included on this list,
09:20because they typically leave no room for audiences to consider that something very,
09:24very bad might actually happen to the heroes.
09:27Nobody wants a cinema full of wailing kids, after all.
09:30But Toy Story 3 was something different.
09:31It was the culmination of 15 years of storytelling,
09:35a film made primarily for those who grew up with the series and were now themselves adults.
09:40It also follyed the likes of Wall-E and Up,
09:42two of the studio's most ambitious and daring offerings to date,
09:45so the prospect of Toy Story 3 taking things in a more mature direction didn't seem so far-fetched.
09:51Roughly two-thirds of the way through the threequel,
09:53Woody and the other toys find themselves betrayed by the villainous Lotso,
09:57who leaves them to be killed by a gigantic incinerator.
10:00The sequence is so fraught with genuine peril,
10:03and came at a time in Pixar's tenure where it really felt like they might offer up
10:08the ultimate existential gut punch by having the toys consumed by the furnace.
10:12Thankfully, this ultimately wasn't the case,
10:15with the aliens making the save courtesy of a giant crane claw,
10:18causing every adult watching to breathe a massive, snotty, tear-soaked sigh of relief.
10:23Obviously, they were never going to really die,
10:25but you weren't thinking that in the moment, were you?
10:28In the theatre, the drama of this scene really took over,
10:32and it really felt real.
10:33One, Das Sound Machine's final performance, Pitch Perfect 2.
10:38Pitch Perfect 2 is a prime example of a movie that does such a good job with its villains,
10:42that they're often easier to root for than the actual heroes.
10:45The acapella team we're supposed to be cheering on,
10:47spend most of the movie orally sparring with the infinitely more talented German squad
10:52by the name of Das Sound Machine.
10:54Their moves, their vocals, and the overall polish of their performances
10:57smoke our heroes every single time.
11:00So when Das Sound Machine are finally defeated at the Climactic Worlds Tournament,
11:04it's completely deflating and unbelievable.
11:07It truly seemed like DSM were set for the win,
11:09while our heroes would learn something about the sheer joy of competing,
11:13or some kind of moral like that.
11:14But instead, the movie handed them a hilariously unconvincing,
11:18and totally undeserved win.
11:20They honestly could have taken it in an interesting direction,
11:23but they didn't.
11:24Am I demanding too much from a Pitch Perfect film?
11:26Almost definitely yes.
11:28But come on, it would have been interesting.
Recommended
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