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00:00We as audience members often feel like we've seen it all, and for the most part we'd be right,
00:05but every so often a film will do something so totally unexpected that all we can do is sit
00:11there in sheer stunned amazement. And so with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture here
00:17with 10 recent movie moments nobody saw coming. Number 10. Megan sings Titanium in Megan.
00:25The marketing for Megan did an absolutely outstanding job of selling the film's darkly
00:30comedic and surreal nature, focused on the titular android kicking ass and looking damn
00:35slick while doing so. But the trailers had enough restraint not to spoil one of the film's best
00:41moments, a scene that is both terrifying and hilarious, and quickly blew up on social media
00:48following the film's release. At the end of the second act, once Megan has caused the death of
00:52young KD's bully Brandon, KD gets ready for bed and asks Megan about what happened.
00:58Megan cryptically retorts that she'll never let KD come to harm ever again, before launching into a
01:03tender, if fundamentally robotic, lullaby rendition of David Guetta and Sia's 2011 pop hit Titanium.
01:11It's an especially inspired choice given that Megan is herself comprised of Titanium,
01:16but beyond that achieves a mix of being outrageously funny and utterly horrifying.
01:22Number 9. The closing montage of cinema in Babylon.
01:26Damien Chazelle's Babylon is unquestionably one of the most ambitious and unhinged movies of the
01:33past year. A debauched three-hour fever which appears to reach peak insanity when protagonist
01:38Manny is brought to an underground place of revelry called the Arsehole of Los Angeles.
01:43But the most bizarre and unexpected moment comes right at the very end of this film,
01:47when Manny returns to Los Angeles after roughly 20 years away and heads to a local cinema to watch
01:53a screening of the newly released Singing in the Rain. Manny is moved to tears by the musical's
01:57iconic titular sequence, while remembering his own past in Hollywood. And then the scene transitions
02:03into a montage, celebrating the most technologically groundbreaking films in cinema history, spanning all
02:10the way from A Trip to the Moon, to The Jazz Singer, The Wizard of Oz, The Matrix, Tron, Terminator 2,
02:16and perhaps most jarringly of all, Avatar. The montage ends with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it meta-flourish,
02:22a glimpse of a slate from Chazelle's own film, before cutting back to a tearful Manny for a few seconds
02:28and then finally rolling credits. Some found that this montage was a glorious, triumphant celebration
02:35of cinema, while others felt that a world-class filmmaker ending his film on a glorified YouTube
02:42supercut was a tacky and uninspired choice. Either way, though, nobody saw it coming. Nobody expected
02:50to see the Na'vi in Chazelle's period Hollywood epic.
02:54Number 8. Scrooge's Death by Chimney in Violent Night
02:58Though it didn't surprise anyone that holiday-themed action flick Violent Night boasted its fair share of
03:04grizzly gore, I mean, the clue is in the title, nobody could have anticipated quite how brutally
03:10the film's antagonist would meet his maker. Violent Night's big bad is Mr. Scrooge,
03:16the leader of a gang of mercenaries who plot to steal $300 million from the Lightstone family's
03:22fault. Of course, they didn't count on the actual Santa Claus showing up to stop them,
03:26and after he and the family members dismantle most of the mercs, it comes down to Santa taking on
03:31Scrooge. Scrooge manages to get the drop on Santa, and just when old Saint Nick's goose appears to be
03:36cooked, Santa uses his magical powers to force himself up the nearby chimney. And because Santa
03:42grabs hold of Scrooge, he drags him up the chimney too, explosively obliterating his body as it's
03:48forcibly crushed into the chimney's confines. When Santa emerges out the other side, he's left
03:53holding Scrooge's gory, dismembered torso, which he promptly hurls down to the ground with a satisfying
03:58squelch. Even for the violent standards of the film up until this point, this was quite the gnarly
04:05kill to send audiences home with. Number seven, Lydia conducts a Monster Hunter concert in Tarr.
04:12Todd Haynes' Oscar-nominated drama Tarr was one of 2022's most unforgettable films,
04:17centred around a celebrated conductor, Lydia Tarr, who is accused of sexual abuse. At the end of the
04:23film, Lydia's reputation is left in tatters, as she's removed as chief conductor of the Berlin
04:28Philharmonic, and consequently moves to the Philippines in order to keep working.
04:32The closing moments show Lydia preparing to play with her new orchestra, the message seemingly
04:37being that cancel culture doesn't exist, and Lydia will continue to make a solid living regardless
04:42of her acts, until the final seconds reveal precisely what she's conducting. As Lydia begins
04:48conducting, Haynes cuts to an audience full of Monster Hunter cosplayers, revealing that she's
04:54conducting the score for one of the iconic video games. Now the ending is in no way a slight against
04:59Monster Hunter fans, but rather that for Lydia, conducting a video game score to an audience full
05:04of people dressed as its characters is a colossal fall from grace from her prior glory. Some eagle-eyed
05:10viewers may have spotted that Monster Hunters was credited in the film's lengthy opening title
05:16sequence, but it would have been safe to assume that the video game would just appear on a TV screen at some
05:21point in the film, rather than actually being a major plot point to the film's ending. But at the same
05:27time, it made for a hilarious and totally unexpected conclusion to the story.
05:32Number 6. Human S'mores in the Menu
05:35The menu boasts one of the strongest and most brilliantly enigmatic first acts of any movie
05:41released last year, until it becomes clear that celebrity chef Julian Stoick has a major bone
05:46to pick with pretty much everybody assembled in his restaurant that evening. Julian's entire ploy has
05:52been to end the night with everyone in the restaurant, including his guests, his staff,
05:56and himself, dying, serving as an ultimate statement of his psychotic disillusionment with the fancies of
06:03fine dining. And so, Julian's final dish is a dessert like no other, the most effed up version of
06:11s'mores ever made. Julian, clearly no fan of the childhood classic, has his staff cover the floor
06:17in crushed crackers and adorn the diners with cloaks made of marshmallows and chocolate hats.
06:22Julian then sets himself and the restaurant on fire, with the diners helplessly watching as their
06:27chocolate hats melt, and eventually, an explosive barrel blows the entire restaurant to smithereens.
06:33The only one who manages to escape, of course, is Margot, who, in addition to being an unexpected
06:39guest at the restaurant that night, had the presence of mind to ask for a cheeseburger to go.
06:43Given that many expected the menu to take the cannibalism route, this was a rather surprising
06:50and hilariously messed up narrative turn indeed. Number five, Shyamalan sells an air fryer in Knock
06:57at the Cabin. M. Night Shyamalan has appeared in the vast majority of his movies, often in surprisingly
07:03large roles. Yet, in his latest film, Knock at the Cabin, he opted to appear in a fleeting cameo,
07:09so as not to distract from the confined apocalyptic scenario. If you're wondering how he managed to
07:14insert himself into a film that is singularly focused on seven people facing off inside a cabin,
07:21he appears, for a few seconds, on a TV inside the cabin. Midway through the movie, as the intruders are
07:28cycling through the TV channels, an infomercial shows a host, played by Shyamalan, peddling an
07:33air fryer that's apparently really, really good for cooking chicken. Considering that so many of
07:39Shyamalan's cameos often have some sort of impact on the plot, usually in distracting ways, it was
07:46really fun to just see him playing such a gleefully dumb and unnecessary role for a change. According to
07:52the filmmaker himself, he almost didn't appear in the film at all. He said,
07:57Sometimes I'm not in the films, because I just can't, it doesn't seem right, and this one I thought
08:01for sure I'm not going to be in. That's what I thought for sure. And then in pre-production,
08:06I was like, you know what? I have a funny idea. And then everybody enjoyed the concept so much,
08:11I was like, alright, let's go shoot. It was the first thing we shot, this thing that's in Knock at
08:15the Cabin. And I was like, this is never going to end up in the movie. And it did. And the editor was
08:21like, I love it, it's so funny. And I was like, you sure?
08:254. Keith dies at the end of the first act in Barbarian
08:29The pre-release buzz surrounding Zack Greger's mesmerising horror debut, Barbarian, relentlessly
08:35implored audiences to know as little about it as possible going in, because it massively subverted
08:40expectations. And even if you concluded from those hints that Bill Skarsgård's male lead,
08:45Keith, wasn't a total creeper, with malevolent designs on protagonist Tess, you probably still
08:52didn't see his abrupt, brutal demise coming. Keith and Tess end up sharing the Airbnb that they were
08:58double booked into. And after Tess discovers a hidden corridor in the house's basement,
09:03Keith goes down to investigate. He doesn't return, and so Tess follows him downstairs,
09:08where she discovers a secret underground tunnel and eventually stumbles across a deeply alarmed
09:13Keith. A confused Keith tries to get Tess to follow him out of the tunnel in the wrong direction,
09:18but amid their scuffle, Keith is suddenly attacked by the gigantic mutated woman living down there,
09:23who smashes his head to a bloody pulp by slamming it against the tunnel's wall.
09:27Again, even if you predicted that Keith was just a nice, slightly awkward guy,
09:32the jolting quality of his death is something nobody saw coming.
09:38Number 3. David Lynch cameos as John Ford in The Fablemans
09:43Steven Spielberg's new movie, The Fablemans, doesn't really offer up much in terms of surprises,
09:48and that's absolutely fine. It's a well-made quasi-dramatisation of Spielberg's own life,
09:55and it doesn't really need to shock the audience. But the legendary filmmaker did,
09:59nevertheless, serve up one jaw-dropper of a cameo in the film's final moments,
10:04when young filmmaker Sammy does some work on the sitcom Hogan's Heroes, and is by chance
10:09introduced to director John Ford, who happens to be working in a nearby office.
10:14The kicker? Ford is played by none other than David Lynch, who sports an eye patch and makes a
10:20meal of lighting a cigar before dispensing some wise filmmaking advice to Sammy. Given the larger-than-life
10:26quality of Ford himself, it was a fitting yet wildly shocking choice to have him played by such an
10:34eccentric and unique director. Number 2. The Mona Lisa gets destroyed in Glass Onion, A Knives Out Mystery.
10:41Glass Onion is a tremendous murder mystery, where the true ruin of the movie's villain isn't their
10:47death or incarceration, but the total destruction of their reputation.
10:52Tech-bro hyper-douche Miles Bronn is ultimately foiled at film's end when Helen Brand uses Bronn's
10:58alternate fuel clear against him. Helen uses the unstable fuel to spark an explosion in Bronn's home,
11:04before unlocking the protective casing keeping the Mona Lisa, which Bronn had on loan from the Louvre, safe.
11:10As such, the Mona Lisa is shockingly burned to a crisp along with Bronn's house, ensuring that,
11:15just as he wished, his name would be forever mentioned in the same sentence as the Mona Lisa,
11:20given that he will be credited with the $870 million painting's destruction.
11:25Even though Rian Johnson's film plays a bit of a Chekhov's painting with the Mona Lisa by
11:29introducing it and its protective casing early on, Johnson also does a great job shifting the audience's
11:35focus away from it, enough that when Helen finally dies for the control switch, it's a genuine
11:41oh no moment. Though we don't get to see the public reaction to the Mona Lisa's destruction,
11:47it's safe to assume that Bronn will be a laughing stock for the rest of his life,
11:51regardless as to whether any criminal charges actually stuck or not.
11:55Number 1. Colin Firth's pathetic handjob in Empire of Light
11:59Empire of Light may have scored mixed reviews from critics and failed to make much of a dent with
12:05Oscar voters, but this otherwise modest, sedate drama does feature one unforgettably toe-curling scene.
12:13At the start of the movie, we're quickly introduced to protagonist Hilary Small,
12:17and her humdrum life working as the duty manager at Margates Empire Cinema.
12:22Shortly after arriving at work, she's called into the office of her boss Donald Ellis,
12:26at which point Sam Mendes cuts to Hilary administering the world's most depressing handjob to Donald.
12:32Even ignoring the massive impropriety of the power dynamics at play, the seedy low lighting combined
12:38with Donald's desperate attempts to convince Hilary to give him oral sex instead make it an excruciating
12:44scene to sit through. Thankfully, Mendes doesn't force it upon us for too long, but as part of a
12:50card-carrying, Oscar-bait movie that marketed itself as a classy drama about the power of cinema,
12:57this was the last thing anybody expected to see.
13:00And that concludes our list. If you think we missed any, then do let us know in the comments below,
13:05and while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe, and tap that notification bell.
13:09Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there, and I can be found across various social medias
13:14just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhatCulture,
13:17I hope you have a magical day, and I'll see you real soon.
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