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Those movie moments where the heroes seem totally doomed.
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00:00Though it's generally expected that most movies will send audiences home with a happy ending,
00:06the journey getting there can certainly be a bit fraught, in turn making that final triumph feel
00:12that much more euphoric. Some movies, well, they go more all-in on the whole all-hope-his-lost
00:20schtick than others. With some pushing things so far, you're left to wonder how the good guys can
00:26possibly come back from it. I'm Ewan, this is WhatCulture, and here are the 10 best all-hope-his-lost
00:32moments in movie history. 10. This Ship Can't Sink
00:37Titanic James Cameron's Titanic is virtually peerless in terms of spectacle, but many would
00:44also argue it doesn't get nearly enough credit for some of its terrific writing and performances.
00:49And this is arguably demonstrated no better than during the movie's utterly dread-soaked end-of-second
00:55meeting between the ship's top brass. Not the band, I mean the people in charge.
01:00The scene shows Titanic's architect, Thomas Andrews, explaining how dire the situation is
01:06on board. Namely, that no matter what they do, it's just a matter of time before the vessel goes
01:12sinky. Andrews' grim prognosis is initially ignored by J. Bruce Ismay, played by Jonathan
01:19Hyde, the foppish managing director of Titanic's shipping company, who tells Andrews, quote,
01:25but the ship can't sink. Andrews then immediately fires back with,
01:30She's made of iron, sir. I assure you, she can, and she will. It is a mathematical certainty.
01:36At this point, Captain Smith, played by Bernard Hill, asks how long they've got,
01:40to which Andrews drops the devastating deadline of, quote, an hour, two at most.
01:46After taking stock of the 2,200 souls on board, Smith then chillingly tells Ismay,
01:51well, I believe you may get your headlines. This is one of those all-time great movie moments that
01:57just sucks the air out of any room it's played in, so perfectly teeing up the terrifying destruction
02:03that comes to follow in Act 3.
02:06Number 9, Agent Smith kills Neo, The Matrix.
02:10At the time of recording, The Matrix has just turned 25, so here's to you, The Matrix,
02:15easily in the top 5 action films ever made. With that aside, out of the way, given how much more
02:21Morpheus, Lawrence Fishburne, drills into the audience his steadfast belief that Keanu Reeves'
02:26Neo is the one, not to be confused with the banging Rob Zombie track from the Escape from
02:31LA soundtrack, it's a genuine shock when, in the third act, Neo gets caught short by Agent
02:38Smith, played, of course, by Hugo Weaving. While attempting to escape The Matrix after helping
02:43Morpheus and Carrie-Anne Moss' Trinity, Neo opens a door only to be met by Smith, promptly
02:50shoots him twice. As Neo falls back towards the wall, gravely wounded, we figure he might
02:56now manifest his full potential as the one and fight back. No, Smith simply unloads the
03:02rest of his clip into Neo, killing him in the process. It's a genuinely shocking oh my god
03:08moment, hammered home by even Morpheus expressing disbelief that the man he threw all his faith
03:14behind is now dead diddly-ed. But of course, that's not the end of the story. Trinity reveals
03:20that the Oracle, played by Gloria Foster, told her that she'd fall in love with the one. And so,
03:25when she professes her love for Neo with a good old smooch, he surges back to life, before harnessing
03:32his newfound powers to defeat Smith. For a moment there, though, it was pure despair.
03:378. Deep Impact
03:39Deep Impact's second act concludes with the revelation that the attempt to deflect the two
03:44impending comets with missiles has been a total failure. A devastating fact relayed to the public
03:49with sobering solemnity by US President Tom Beck, played by the always stoic Morgan Freeman.
03:56In an unforgettably matter-of-fact monologue, Beck says, and no, I'm not going to do a Morgan Freeman
04:01impression here because there's no way I can come close to imitating the original, quote,
04:05Our missiles have failed. The comets are still headed for Earth, and there's nothing we can
04:10do to stop them. So, this is it. If the world does go on, it will not go on for
04:15everyone.
04:15He goes on to detail how the comets will cause an extinction-level event on Earth,
04:19with tidal waves thousands of feet high destroying major cities, while the resulting dust will block
04:26out the sun for two years, killing all plants and animal life in short order. And so, all Beck can
04:32do
04:32is urge those with the means to try and avoid the wave's path, signing off with, so that's it,
04:38good luck to us all. To hear the President of the United States basically telling the world
04:43there's little to no hope for survival is as bad as it gets, perfectly setting the stage for the
04:48utter carnage that is to come. Though the larger of the two comets is ultimately destroyed before it
04:54can impact Earth, the smaller one still hits and kills millions. So, yeah, the grim prognosis was
05:00sort of correct still. Number 7. Game over, man! Game over! Aliens. Between Titanic and Aliens,
05:07it's clear that James Cameron is a dab hand at delivering soul-crushingly hopeless moments.
05:13But, at least in the case of Aliens, it also happens to be pretty amusing, courtesy of the late,
05:20great Bill Paxton, who, goddammit, we all missed the pieces. Once Sigourney Weaver's Ripley and the
05:26Marines get a first-hand glimpse of how dire the xenomorph infestation is on the colony of Hadley's
05:31Hope, Hicks, played by Michael Bean, calls a dropship to pick them up. But it turns out that a xenomorph
05:37managed to stow away on board, killing the ship's crew in midair and causing the ship to crash to the
05:43ground, exploding in a great, big, depressing fireball of doom. It's a completely defeating moment for the
05:50embattled heroes, prompting Hudson to indelibly quip, that's it, man! Game over, man! Game over!
05:57Seeing the typically gung-ho, hyper-masculine Hudson become near instantly panic-stricken is a perfect
06:03summation of how bleak the situation on LV-426 truly is. And, in turn, Cameron and Paxton also gave
06:11us one of the most memorable one-liners in movie history. Number 6. Fly, you fools! The Lord of the
06:17Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring. You can probably fill this list with moments from the Lord of the
06:22Rings franchise, but the best of the lot comes at the end of The Fellowship of the Ring, when the
06:27Fellowship treks through the minds of Moria and Ian McKellen's Gandalf ends up facing off against
06:32the terrifying Balrog. Though Gandalf's you-shall-not-pass moment is undeniably badass, if not a little
06:40digitally funky-oh god please don't screw me Tolkien heads, the Balrog does go down quite literally
06:46swinging, as it grabs hold of Gandalf and pulls him down to the mind's depths with it. All Gandalf
06:52has time to tell his party is, fly, you fools, before he disappears into the void. It's a completely
06:59hope-abliterating moment for The Fellowship, crystallized perfectly by Elijah Wood's pained cries of
07:05GANDALF! Though Gandalf of course makes his return in the Two Towers in one of the trilogy's warmest
07:10moments, it's still totally nerve-wracking to see him temporarily taken out of the frame so early on
07:17in the overall adventure. Number 5. The Green Place is Gone, Mad Max Fury Road. The entire motivation
07:25of Charlize Theron's Furiosa throughout Mad Max Fury Road is to return to the Green Place, a rare,
07:31fertile area amid the wasteland which she remembers from her childhood. Plants and veggies could freely
07:38grow, and human life could actually be supported. But when Furiosa and company meet up with her clan
07:44mid-film, they inform her that the blue-tinted bog she encountered the Bullet Farmer in the night before
07:50was actually the Green Place. It's now a blue place, because Michael Mann got there. Over time,
07:57the idyllic locale has been turned into a swampland, making it impossible for anything to grow there,
08:04and in turn causing the clan's few surviving members to abandon it. It's a completely heart-rending revelation for
08:11Furiosa, who promptly strolls over to a nearby patch of desert and falls to her knees in visceral anguish,
08:19letting out a primal scream, which I think we could all benefit from doing every now and then.
08:244. Shelley Can't Help Himself
08:28Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross
08:30If you wanted an example of why David Mamet was the guy for so long in the 80s and 90s,
08:36you need look no further than Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. Initially penned during the economic recession
08:42of the early 1980s, Mamet's story focuses on several struggling real estate salesmen who face an impossible
08:50task to keep their jobs, a group rounded out in the film by Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, and Ed Harris.
08:56It's a real gut-puncher of a film, with Lemmon delivering a truly heartbreaking turn opposite
09:02a never-swearier Al Pacino, ultimately concluding with a moment of pure soul-crushing devastation,
09:10genuinely still keeps me up at night thinking about it. With the cards stacked against them to close
09:14some sales before they get fired, a scheme quickly develops where the embittered salesman attempt to
09:19steal the coveted Glenn Gary leads and sell them to a competitor. However, we never find out for
09:25certain who among the group has pulled off the ruse until the very end, at which point the police have
09:31borne down on the office and the tensions have completely boiled over. It transpires that Lemmon
09:37Shelley, who is fighting not just to keep his job but to look after his sick daughter in hospital,
09:43stole and sold the leads. However, we only learn this after Shelley has bragged about pulling off
09:50a big sale, rolling back the years to his glory days as Levine the Machine, who could close deals,
09:56no questions asked. Before the reveal, it's a relief to see Shelley back on the big time. His confidence
10:02is brimming, he's working with Pacino's Rick Roma, everything is, as they say, coming up Milhouse.
10:09Uuuuntil it doesn't. After Williamson, played by Kevin Spacey, blows a deal Shelley was helping
10:17Pacino's Roma with, the old-timer just can't help but rub it in the nose. A bit of gloating at
10:22this
10:23point is well deserved given the treatment he suffered over the course of the film, but he just
10:28doesn't know when to stop, eventually letting it slip by accident that he'd been the one to break
10:33into Williamson's office and steal the leads. Shelley desperately attempts to bribe his boss to make
10:39it out safe, but spite ends up winning the day. As Shelley asks why Williamson is about to ruin him,
10:46the latter replies with, because I don't like you, with Director Foley leaving us with a crushing shot
10:51of Shelley in the estate offices, looking like the loneliest man in the world. Goddamn.
10:563. Bo accepts his fate. Bo is afraid. Ari Aster's delirious horror comedy Bo is Afraid
11:04concludes with a closing scene which sees Joaquin Phoenix's paranoia adult protagonist finally giving
11:10up all hope and accepting his fate. Bo's surreal quote-unquote adventure concludes with them being
11:17put on trial for alleged misdeeds against his mother, Mona, played by Patti LuPone. In short order,
11:23his lawyer is killed and Bo, who is trapped on a boat inside a massive water-filled arena, begs his
11:29mother to spare him. But after realizing that his mother won't help him and the assembled crowd
11:36won't intervene, Bo's demeanor changes. He realizes there's nothing that can be done to affect his
11:42situation and so simply stands in place, waiting for the inevitable to happen. A few seconds later,
11:48the boat's motor explodes, capsizing the vessel and leaving Bo to drown, moments before the end credits
11:55roll. After all, would it really be an Ari Aster movie without an ending that makes you feel like
12:01total crap? I'm gonna go with no. 2. Frank obliterates his life. Thief.
12:07Who doesn't love a bit of patented Michael Man Blue? Let me bask in that for a second.
12:15Arguably the bluest of the Man Blue is his directorial debut. Thief, a gloriously confident
12:22first offering starring the immortal James Kahn in one of his most iconic roles. A gritty,
12:29atmospheric film that serves as both a character study of a criminal desperate for a normal life
12:34and as a giant middle finger to capitalist exploitation, Thief is full of brilliant
12:40tangerine dream composed moments. But arguably its most memorable comes when Kahn's character Frank
12:45is at his lowest. Portrayed by his one-time employer, portrayed by the friendly yet menacing face of Bob
12:52Prosky as Leo, and realizing that the new life he's built means he'll never be free from his control,
12:58Frank makes the conscious decision to burn it all down, abandon all pretensions of hoping for a better
13:03future and fade like a shadow into the darkness. He forces his partner to leave with their adopted
13:09child, blows up the house he'd bought, destroys the bar he owned, and sets ablaze his own car dealership.
13:15Frank and us, the viewer, are too fired up at this point to really bask in how crushing
13:21these losses are, as you know he's on his way to take down Leo and his goons. But make no
13:26mistake,
13:27each moment of destruction here is essentially Frank destroying his own hope.
13:31Oh man, go watch Thief if you haven't already. Beautiful movie. And while you're here,
13:35actually, which Michael Mann moment, not movie, moment, is your favorite? And are you a fiend for
13:41mojitos? A fan of talking to empty telephones? Let me know down in the comments below.
13:46And number one, Walsh loses the Duke, Midnight Run. Oh, I love Midnight Run. Like, I adore this movie.
13:54Deserves to be spoken about in the same breath as Planes, Trains and Automobiles as a true
13:58road movie classic. It's that near perfect, and without oversharing, just personally,
14:04kind of means a lot to me as a movie guy. Oh no, whatever, watch it if you haven't,
14:07because it's one of those beautifully, fun, life-affirming movies that you won't grow tired of.
14:12A bit of context first though. Directed by Martin Bress, the same fella who helmed
14:16Weatherly Hills Cop, Midnight Run revolves around a bounty hunter called Jack Walsh, played by Robert
14:22De Niro, who has to deliver a fugitive who skipped bail to his employer. The fugitive in question
14:27is an accountant called Jonathan the Duke Mardukas, played by Charles Grodin, who stole money from the
14:32mob and gave it to charity when he realized who his true employers actually were. While things initially
14:39go according to plan for Walsh, it doesn't take long for his fortunes to change. Their plans to travel
14:44by plane are scuppered very quickly when the Duke has a panic attack, so he has to take the trade
14:50instead.
14:50Those plans are also scuppered when a rival bounty hunter, Dorfler, played by John Ashton,
14:56crashes the party. Dorfler, the mob, and the FBI on Walsh's trail, he's forced to fight tooth and
15:02limb to hold onto his bounty and make it to the finishing line. Things very nearly end in catastrophe
15:08though. Dorfler catches up with Walsh and the Duke after a huge police chase, taking Walsh's payday and
15:14dooming the Duke to certain doom at the hands of the mob. This is, by far, the lowest point of
15:20Midnight Run. Our heroes are separated, Walsh hasn't had his big life-changing moment of epiphany,
15:26it's a bummer. But, and I did think it was important to end this list on a happy note,
15:31because I love ya, the loss is punctuated by one of the most touching moments of the movie,
15:35where Walsh, battered, bruised, dirty, and just pretty knackered, wanders into a nearby diner,
15:43and is greeted by the nicest guy behind the counter ever. See, the Walsh we meet in Midnight Run has
15:49been morphed into an ugly shape. He's mean, cynical, totally stuck in limbo, something the Duke tries
15:56to change. To that, Walsh replies something to the effect of, there's a lot of bad in the world. Good,
16:01I don't know about. Here, at his lowest moment, he's proven wrong, all with just a fresh pot of coffee
16:07and a kind ear. Things don't immediately improve after this sequence, but I've always seen it as
16:13the straw breaking the camel's back moment for Walsh, who can no longer keep living in denial of
16:18his own humanity. Beautiful exchange, in a beautiful movie.
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