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The twists, time loops, and surreal head trips which left viewers wondering "What the..."
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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.
00:2510. 12 Monkeys What was the point of time traveling? Released in 1995, Terry Gilliam's 12
00:31Monkeys may be one of the perpetually studio-stifled former Python's most beloved films. However,
00:36like his equally acclaimed earlier effort Brazil, it's also one of the filmmaker's bleakest hours.
00:41The film follows our potentially insane hero Cole after an epidemic wipes out much of the world.
00:46Sent too far back in time and ending up in an asylum, he attempts to inform himself of the danger in
00:51order to stop the tragedy ever occurring. However, Cole is soon stuck being bounced back and forth
00:56between intersecting timelines in a story which becomes more bizarre and Byzantian the further
01:01it progresses. By the end of the film, our nominal hero is dying in front of his younger self,
01:05embodying a nightmare he's had throughout the whole movie. But why? Why send him back if he was doomed to
01:11repeat this fate? What would have happened if he hadn't gone back? What was the whole point? This complex
01:16film posits that you can change what you take from the past even if you can't alter what happened back then,
01:21through an uncompromisingly bleak and convoluted plot.
01:24Number 9. Coherence. What will M do next?
01:27Coherence's story can technically be followed on first viewing but requires numerous spreadsheets
01:32to successfully untie every knot. This underrated 2013 sci-fi follows a group of friends at a dinner
01:38party who are besieged by odd occurrences only to discover that they are accidentally able to walk
01:42into an alternate simultaneously occurring reality alongside their own. By the time the film's surreal
01:48ending rolls around you may well be lost as the friends have encountered and clashed with so many
01:52versions of themselves that it's impossible to remember which reality the film has settled in.
01:57Not only is the cause of this temporal anomaly never explained beyond one mention of a passing
02:01comet, our heroine is now stuck with a group of people who have no idea about the emerging multiverse
02:06realities. So good luck explaining whatever the mind f that was that viewers just witnessed to these
02:11versions of your friends M. Number 8. The Quiet Earth. Where is the beach?
02:17Released in 1985 this New Zealand sci-fi film is still an underrated slice of post-apocalyptic action.
02:22The 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
02:31love triangle that turns metaphysical fast. At first the film's tense and interesting action is
02:36fairly easy to follow with the unlikely trio attempting to survive as well as trying to understand what
02:40happened to their devastated planet. Then comes the film's infamously strange ending wherein our
02:45hero crashes a truck rigged with explosives and wakes up on a dark beach watching cloud formations
02:51as they emerge from the ocean in front of him. The imagery in this one may feel impossible to
02:55decipher but the director insists it's a pretty easy to uncover metaphor for purgatory. Maybe it helps
03:00if you share his lapped catholicism but luckily said director also conceded that enigmatic is good.
03:06Just as well he thinks so given the fact that almost no viewers understand what's happening here the
03:10first time they see it. Number seven, Stalker was the wish granted. Released in 1979 the deeply
03:17confusing and complex Stalker is often singled out as the finest film from Solaris director Andrei Tarkovsky.
03:23The body of the film's action sees the titular guide bring a heartbroken writer and their
03:27disagreeable professor companion through The Zone, a space which is said to contain a room that grants the
03:32wishes of its visitors. All manner of metaphysical arguments proceeds from here as well as plenty of
03:36stunning scenery and strange surreal imagery and of course an enigmatic ending. It's impossible to
03:42decide for certain whether our young heroine monkey is moving glasses with her mind or the passing
03:46trains soon seen by the viewer are causing them to shake along with the rest of the house. Thus the
03:51viewer is left to decide for themselves whose desire was granted and how real or imaginary The Zone's
03:56supposed power was after all. Thus Stalker leaves viewers no clearer than they were at the beginning.
04:01Number six, A Scanner Darkly. What's the motive? Who would you trust more, a pharmaceutical company
04:07or the feds? No matter your answer the ending of this Philip K Dick adaptation is likely to leave you
04:12heartbroken. A Scanner Darkly is likely the most personal of the many stories mined from the prolific
04:17sci-fi writers back catalogue. Its tale of an undercover cop who falls in with a crowd of drug users and grows to
04:22care for them more than his shadowy superiors was based on Dick's own experience with drugs and the
04:26gradual dissolution of his friend group through the tragedy of addiction. So appropriately enough
04:31the end of this dark 2006 adaptation sees Keanu Reeves's paranoid anti-hero become addicted to
04:36substance 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
04:50addicted, or provide to his friends who the viewer is pretty sure are dead and gone. It's hard to
04:55tell but whatever the answer it's probably better than being stuck farming drugs for your enemies.
05:00Number 5. Life Force. What's going on with the space vampires? Poor Tobe Hooper. The horror genius
05:06behind the Texas Chainsaw Massacre created what is undoubtedly one of the most intense horror films
05:10in cinema history with his 1974 mega hit. However in the decades since he never really reached the same
05:16staggering heights artistically with a string of interesting but flawed films following his
05:20initial blockbuster success. Case in point, 1985 sci-fi vampire horror Life Force has a killer
05:26premise which soon becomes drowned in overly complex plotting. The movie follows a set of
05:30scientists as they attempt to study a trio of astronauts who appear to have transformed into
05:34space vampires, a conceit with plenty of potential provided it doesn't become needlessly convoluted.
05:39The film's problem is epitomized by its bizarre ending, one of which remains a point of contention for
05:43sci-fi and horror fans alike. So one of our heroes was a space vampire the whole time,
05:48unbeknownst to himself due to a hitherto unmentioned psychic bond, and said space vampires arrive and
05:53leave Earth based on the passing of Halley's Comet, and they simply transform our hero included into
05:58a vanishing column of energy to disappear at the end. Of course what could have been clearer,
06:03and here this one seemed confusing for a minute. Number 4. Planet of the Apes 2001. How did the apes
06:09change reality? It's pretty much impossible to overstate the influence of the ending featured in 60s sci-fi
06:14classic Planet of the Apes. The otherwise solid Charlton Heston vehicle became instantly iconic
06:19and spawned an entire franchise thanks to its killer twist. The reveal that, as Troy McClure would put it,
06:25it was Earth all along, was an unheralded and dazzling ending which would still make the
06:30likes of Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamalan proud. So the oddly chosen director Tim Burton's 2001 remake
06:35of the classic had pretty sizable shoes to fill in this regard. The film attempted to outdo the original
06:41bombshell twist, but instead left viewers with a brain-melting, time-twisting paradox of alternate
06:46histories to untangle. By the time this version reaches its close, our hero has returned to his
06:50own time, but the apes have gotten their first somehow. Not only that, they've gone and replaced
06:54the statue of Abraham Lincoln with a villainous future ape. Well, presumably they've done more
06:59than that whilst rewriting history, but good luck working out how they managed it on first viewing.
07:03Number 3. The Black Hole. What's in the Black Hole?
07:07Now, most of the entries on this list do have explanations which can untangle their
07:11initially impossible-to-decipher meanings, but your guess is as good as ours on 1979's
07:16The Black Hole and its strange, surreal closing coda. Your interpretation is also as good as
07:20the director's too, as the film's creators admitted they never had an ending in mind when
07:24working on this Disney flop. All that can be said for sure is that yes, our heroic captain finds
07:29her father's long-lost spaceship near a black hole and decides to board the vessel in order to solve
07:34the mystery behind his disappearance. But from there on out, trippy 70s sci-fi psychedelia takes
07:39over proceedings and maintains a stranglehold on the plot until the infamous ending. No matter
07:44the elasticity of your interpretation, all that appears to be clear is that yes, the characters
07:48enter and later leave what looks like hell through the titular black hole at the film's close. The film
07:54then sees its characters plunging towards a faraway star that might be heaven, might be the way back home
08:00to earth? It might just be a star. Who knows? Number two, Vanilla Sky. What is tech support?
08:06Released in 2001, Vanilla Sky is one of director Cameron Crowe's most underrated cinematic offerings,
08:11as well as being a major tonal departure for the almost famous filmmaker. This Tom Cruise vehicle is
08:17a surprisingly cerebral and dark thriller which sees our hero thrust into a world of mystery and intrigue.
08:22It all starts in the iconic sequence wherein he awakens to an empty New York City, a surreal
08:27sight which serves as a warning that all is not as it seems. And indeed, the viewer eventually learns
08:32that this isn't New York at all. The protagonist has been in an induced coma this entire time,
08:37and the glimpses of his real life have been glitches in the system. Well, don't expect any
08:41answers from the film's ambiguous ending anyway. So-called tech support offers the above explanation,
08:46but there's no way of knowing if they're telling the truth, if this is all a dream,
08:49or if it's a dying hallucination in the moment since his car crash. In the end,
08:53the 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 1. Beyond the Black Rainbow. Everything about it.
09:06Released in 2010, Panos Cosmitos' Beyond the Black Rainbow signalled the arrival of a singular new
09:11talent in the world of psychedelic sci-fi. Garnering understandable comparisons to the work of
09:15Alejandro Jodorowsky, the film saw the visionary director turn the story of a telekinetic girl,
09:20and the shadowy doctor experimenting on her into a total brain melter. How much so? Well,
09:24the movie manages to make a shot of some carpets into a trippy, nightmarish, prolonged sequence.
09:30So its take on telekinesis, mind melding, and new age transcendence are understandably pretty insane
09:35too. But as confusing as the bulk of this film's action is, the ending truly takes the biscuit,
09:39with a wild and impossible to decipher psychedelic odyssey which makes Kubrick's 2001 look easy to
09:45follow in comparison. Suffice it to say that the viewer never learns the mysterious origins or
09:49intentions of the Arborea Institute outside of the eponymous doctor's attempts to achieve
09:54transcendence, a goal which ends with him maybe succeeding? Definitely becoming something more
09:59than human, and very dangerous. As for our heroine, she may be free to roam the earth, but the viewer
10:04still has no idea where she came from, how she acquired her powers, or what's next for her.
10:08And that's the list. Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below. Which of
10:13the sci-fi movie endings blew your mind the most? And of course, let us know of any others that we
10:17missed. Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends, subscribe and hit that notification
10:21bell. Head over to whatculture.com for more content every day. I've been Cy for WhatCulture,
10:26and have a good week.
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