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00:00Some sci-fi movies are almost impossible to understand. Sure, there are plenty of Star Wars
00:04and Star Treks to go around, but outside of the genre's more approachable side, there are always
00:09more strange, thoughtful and downright surreal offerings which defy all explanation. With that
00:14in mind then, despite the fact that we don't know what's going on, spoiler warnings are in full
00:18effect because I'm SciForWhatCulture.com and these are 10 Sci-Fi Movie Endings No One Understands.
00:25Number 10, 12 Monkeys. What was the point of time traveling? Released in 1995, Terry Gilliam's
00:3112 Monkeys may be one of the perpetually studio-stifled former Python's most beloved films.
00:36However, like his equally acclaimed earlier Effort Brazil, it's also one of the filmmaker's
00:40bleakest hours. The film follows our potentially insane hero Cole after an epidemic wipes out
00:45much of the world. Sent too far back in time and ending up in an asylum, he attempts to inform
00:50himself of the danger in order to stop the tragedy ever occurring. However, Cole is soon stuck being
00:55bounced back and forth between intersecting timelines in a story which becomes more bizarre
00:59and Byzantian the further it progresses. By the end of the film, our nominal hero is dying in front
01:04of his younger self, embodying a nightmare he's had throughout the whole movie. But why? Why send him
01:10back if he was doomed to repeat this fate? What would have happened if he hadn't gone back? What was the
01:14whole point? This complex film posits that you can change what you take from the past even if you can't
01:19alter what happened back then through an uncompromisingly bleak and convoluted plot.
01:24Number 9. Coherence. What will M do next? Coherence's story can technically be followed on first
01:30viewing but requires numerous spreadsheets to successfully untie every knot. This underrated
01:352013 sci-fi follows a group of friends at a dinner party who are besieged by odd occurrences only to
01:40discover that they are accidentally able to walk into an alternate simultaneously occurring reality
01:45alongside their own. By the time the film's surreal ending rolls around you may well be lost as the
01:50friends have encountered and clashed with so many versions of themselves that it's impossible to
01:54remember which reality the film has settled in. Not only is the cause of this temporal anomaly never
01:59explained beyond one mention of a passing comet, our heroine is now stuck with a group of people who
02:04have no idea about the emerging multiverse realities. So good luck explaining whatever the mind f that
02:09was that viewers just witnessed to these versions of your friends M. Number 8. The Quiet Earth. Where
02:16is the beach? Released in 1985 this New Zealand sci-fi film is still an underrated slice of post-apocalyptic
02:22action. The Quiet Earth follows the fate of three survivors after the end of the world, a scientist,
02:26an aboriginal man and the love interest who the pair are soon competing for the affections of in a love
02:31triangle that turns metaphysical fast. At first the film's tense and interesting action is fairly easy to
02:36follow with the unlikely trio attempting to survive as well as trying to understand what happened to
02:41their devastated planet. Then comes the film's infamously strange ending wherein our hero crashes
02:46a truck rigged with explosives and wakes up on a dark beach watching cloud formations as they emerge
02:51from the ocean in front of him. The imagery in this one may feel impossible to decipher but the
02:56director insists it's a pretty easy to uncover metaphor for purgatory. Maybe it helps if you share his
03:01lapped catholicism but luckily said director also conceded that enigmatic is good. Just as well he
03:06thinks so given the fact that almost no viewers understand what's happening here the first time
03:10they see it. Number seven, Stalker was the wish granted. Released in 1979 the deeply confusing and
03:17complex Stalker is often singled out as the finest film from Solaris director Andrei Tarkovsky. The body
03:23of the film's action sees the titular guide bring a heartbroken writer and their disagreeable professor
03:28companion through The Zone, a space which is said to contain a room that grants the wishes of its visitors.
03:33All manner of metaphysical arguments proceeds from here as well as plenty of stunning scenery and
03:38strange surreal imagery and of course an enigmatic ending. It's impossible to decide for certain
03:42whether our young heroine monkey is moving glasses with her mind or the passing trains soon seen by
03:47the viewer are causing them to shake along with the rest of the house. Thus the viewer is left to
03:51decide for themselves whose desire was granted and how real or imaginary The Zone's supposed power was
03:57after all. Thus Stalker leaves viewers no clearer than they were at the beginning. Number six, A Scanner Darkly.
04:04What's the motive? Who would you trust more? A pharmaceutical company or the feds? No matter your answer
04:09the ending of this Philip K Dick adaptation is likely to leave you heartbroken. A Scanner Darkly is likely the most
04:14personal of the many stories mined from the prolific sci-fi writers back catalogue. Its tale of an undercover cop
04:20who falls in with a crowd of drug users and grows to care for them more than his shadowy superiors was based on Dick's
04:25own experience with drugs and the gradual dissolution of his friend group through the tragedy of addiction.
04:30So appropriately enough the end of this dark 2006 adaptation sees Keanu Reeves's paranoid anti-hero become
04:36addicted to substance D. He appears to be blissfully ignorant of the fact that he's farming the flowers used to
04:41synthesize the drug for the mysterious and dangerous company who produce it. But then he steals a sample to
04:46provide his superiors meaning he's still undercover, provide for himself since he's still addicted, or provide to his
04:52friends who the viewer is pretty sure are dead and gone. It's hard to tell but whatever the answer
04:56it's probably better than being stuck farming drugs for your enemies. 5. Life Force
05:01What's going on with the space vampires? Poor Toby Hooper. The horror genius behind the Texas Chainsaw
05:07Massacre created what is undoubtedly one of the most intense horror films in cinema history with his 1974
05:12mega hit. However in the decades since he never really reached the same staggering heights artistically
05:17with a string of interesting but flawed films following his initial blockbuster success.
05:22Case in point, 1985 sci-fi vampire horror Life Force has a killer premise which soon becomes drowned
05:27in overly complex plotting. The movie follows a set of scientists as they attempt to study a trio of
05:32astronauts who appear to have transformed into space vampires, a conceit with plenty of potential
05:36provided it doesn't become needlessly convoluted. The film's problem is epitomized by its bizarre ending,
05:41one of which remains a point of contention for sci-fi and horror fans alike.
05:45So one of our heroes was a space vampire the whole time unbeknownst to himself due to a
05:50hitherto unmentioned psychic bond and said space vampires arrive and leave Earth based on the
05:54passing of Halley's Comet and they simply transform our hero included into a vanishing column of energy
05:59to disappear at the end. Of course what could have been clearer and here this one seemed confusing for
06:04a minute. 4. Planet of the Apes 2001
06:08How did the apes change reality? It's pretty much impossible to overstate the influence of the
06:13ending featured in 60s sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes. The otherwise solid Charlton Heston vehicle
06:18became instantly iconic and spawned an entire franchise thanks to its killer twist. The reveal
06:23that, as Troy McClure would put it, it was Earth all along was an unheralded and dazzling ending which
06:29would still make the likes of Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan proud. So the oddly chosen director
06:34Tim Burton's 2001 remake of the classic had pretty sizable shoes to fill in this regard. The film
06:39attempted to outdo the original bombshell twist but instead left viewers with a brain-melting
06:44time-twisting paradox of alternate histories to untangle. By the time this version reaches its close
06:49our hero has returned to his own time but the apes have gotten their first somehow. Not only that,
06:53they've gone and replaced the statue of Abraham Lincoln with a villainous future ape. Well presumably
06:58they've done more than that whilst rewriting history but good luck working out how they managed
07:02it on first viewing. Number three, The Black Hole. What's in The Black Hole? Now most of the entries
07:08on this list do have explanations which can untangle their initially impossible to decipher meanings
07:13but your guess is as good as ours on 1979's The Black Hole and its strange surreal closing coda.
07:19Your interpretation is also as good as the director's too as the film's creators admitted they never had
07:23an ending in mind when working on this Disney flop. All that can be said for sure is that yes,
07:28our heroic captain finds her father's long lost spaceship near a black hole and decides to board
07:33the vessel in order to solve the mystery behind his disappearance. But from there on out trippy
07:3770s sci-fi psychedelia takes over proceedings and maintains a stranglehold on the plot until the
07:42infamous ending. No matter the elasticity of your interpretation all that appears to be clear is
07:47that yes, the characters enter and later leave what looks like hell through the titular black hole at
07:52the film's close. The film then sees its characters plunging towards a far away star that might
07:58be heaven? Might be the way back home to earth? It might just be a star? Who knows?
08:022. Vanilla Sky What is tech support? Released in 2001, Vanilla Sky is one of director
08:09Cameron Crowe's most underrated cinematic offerings as well as being a major tonal departure for the
08:14almost famous filmmaker. This Tom Cruise vehicle is a surprisingly cerebral and dark thriller which
08:19sees our hero thrust into a world of mystery and intrigue. It all starts in the iconic sequence
08:24where he awakens to an empty New York City, a surreal sight which serves as a warning that
08:29all is not as it seems. And indeed the viewer eventually learns that this isn't New York at all.
08:34The protagonist has been in an induced coma this entire time and the glimpses of his real life have
08:39been glitches in the system. Well don't expect any answers from the film's ambiguous ending anyway.
08:43So-called tech support offers the above explanation but there's no way of knowing if they're telling the
08:47truth, if this is all a dream or if it's a dying hallucination in the moment since his car crash.
08:52In the end the viewer knows our hero is choosing to wake up but whether he's dead, alive, in heaven,
08:58in purgatory, in a coma or anywhere else is very unclear.
09:02Number one, Beyond the Black Rainbow. Everything about it. Released in 2010,
09:07Panos Cosmitos' Beyond the Black Rainbow signalled the arrival of a singular new talent in the world
09:12of psychedelic sci-fi. Garnering understandable comparisons to the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky,
09:16the film saw the visionary director turn the story of a telekinetic girl and the shadowy doctor
09:21experimenting on her into a total brain melter. How much so? Well the movie manages to make a shot
09:26of some carpets into a trippy nightmarish prolonged sequence. So its take on telekinesis,
09:31mind melding and new age transcendence are understandably pretty insane too. But as confusing
09:36as the bulk of this film's action is, the ending truly takes the biscuit with a wild and impossible
09:41to decipher psychedelic odyssey which makes Kubrick's 2001 look easy to follow in comparison.
09:46Suffice it to say that the viewer never learns the mysterious origins or intentions of the Arborea
09:51Institute outside of the eponymous doctor's attempts to achieve transcendence, a goal which
09:55ends with him maybe succeeding? Definitely becoming something more than human and very dangerous.
10:01As for our heroine, she may be free to roam the earth but the viewer still has no idea where she
10:05came from, how she acquired her powers or what's next for her. And that's the list! Let us know what
10:10you thought of this video down in the comments below. Which of the sci-fi movie endings blew your mind the
10:15most and of course let us know of any others that we missed. Make sure you like this video,
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10:22whatculture.com for more content every day. I've been Cy for WhatCulture and have a good week!
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