- 5 minutes ago
These devastating cliffhangers were eventually resolved - one way or another.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00As viewers, who among us doesn't love being taken on a wild ride where we eventually learn
00:05what we held to be true was in fact total bull? When the writing is smart enough and boasts the
00:09execution to match, it can result in a mesmerizing, jaw-dropping movie moment. And that's what we're
00:14here to look at today. This is WhatCulture.com, and these are the best everything-you-know-is-a-lie
00:18moments in movies. Neo takes the red pill, The Matrix.
00:23Now, The Matrix is an especially interesting example, given that, unlike most movies on
00:27this list, the big relevatory moment for the protagonist comes not at the conclusion of
00:31the entire story, but the end of the first act. Neo's life changes forever when he's taken
00:35to meet the legendary Morpheus, who proceeds to offer him a choice, take the red pill and
00:40learn the truth, or take the blue pill and go back to normality. Neo takes the red pill,
00:45of course, at which point his reality begins to dissolve, and he wakes up in a gooey pod
00:49alongside countless other pods. He's then rescued by Morpheus and brought aboard his ship, where
00:54Morpheus reveals that Neo has been living inside a simulation known as The Matrix, where humankind
00:58is enslaved by machines who use them as batteries. Oh, and it's also 200 years further into the
01:03future than Neo believes. The it-was-a-simulation-all-this-whole-time twist has never been done better, and
01:09it's
01:09largely because it isn't saved for a climactic rug pull, but effectively serves as the instigating
01:14shock that tees up the rest of the movie, and indeed, the franchise.
01:17Quentin Beck's heroism is all an illusion, Spider-Man Far From Home. After seemingly taking
01:23down a bunch of elemental beings on Earth, this Mysterio bloke from another corner of the newly
01:28introduced multiverse is recruited by Nick Fury and Maria Hill, before eventually joining forces
01:34with an Edith-boasting Peter Parker. But our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man eventually deciding that
01:39Quentin Beck was more worthy of the all-powerful artificial intelligence kit than him, suddenly brought
01:44with it the reveal that this affable hero was anything but. In a masterfully performed swerve,
01:50Jake Gyllenhaal's Mysterio is soon seen celebrating with his fellow scheming, one-time Stark industry
01:55employees, as it's revealed that his apparent elemental victories, and even the location of
01:59his recent conversation with Parker, were all made possible thanks to advanced projectors
02:04creating this virtual lie. And with Beck ultimately combining his supreme holograms with Edith's
02:09orbital weaponized drones, in his quest to present himself as Earth's new mightiest hero,
02:14Spidey's world was never really the same.
02:17There Was Never An Arran
02:18Primal Fear
02:19Primal fear revolves around star defense attorney Martin, who agrees to defend teenage altar boy
02:25Arran when he's accused of murdering an archbishop. It's later revealed that Arran did,
02:29in fact, kill the archbishop in revenge for being sexually abused, but appears to be suffering
02:33from dissociative identity disorder and committed the killing whilst assuming a sociopathic alternate
02:38persona known as Roy. Ultimately, Arran is found not guilty by reason of insanity and remanded to
02:43a psychiatric hospital, but during his final meeting with Martin, he reveals that he faked
02:47the identity disorder and that he's been gaming the system the entire time. To put a disturbing
02:52capper on it, when Martin asks him if Roy ever existed, Arran chillingly replies,
02:56There Was Never An Arran. Arran had, in fact, been pretending to be shy and retiring when the
03:02violent Roy was his true self all along. At this point, all a shell-shocked Martin can do is walk
03:07away in disbelief while Arran continues to taunt him.
03:10Zurg isn't Buzz's father after all, Lightyear. The reveal of Big Bad Zurg being present in the
03:16Toy Story spin-off known as Lightyear surely meant only one thing. At some point in the action,
03:21this terrifying purple robot commander would reveal himself as Buzz's father,
03:25much like he was in Toy Story 2 all those years ago. But director Angus McLean had a different idea.
03:31After trying to fit that father angle into his Chris Evans starring creation,
03:35he soon realized that folks would simply be sat there waiting for the inevitable reveal.
03:40So the call was made to instead have Zurg eventually be revealed as none other than the
03:44main man himself from the future. This shocking move was designed to highlight how Lightyear's
03:49biggest enemy was actually himself. With the driven older alternate timeline version being willing to
03:55sacrifice younger Buzz's friends in order to go back in time and ensure his colony ship never crash
04:00landed on Takani Prime. Just when Toy Story fans thought they had all the answers, this strange
04:05prequel-slash-spinoff-slash-origin story went and blasted one hell of a swerve into theatres.
04:11Now what is your favourite Pixar entry so far?
04:13Mido is Desu's daughter, Old Boy.
04:16Park Chan-wook's masterful thriller Old Boy centres around Desu, a man who was kidnapped and kept
04:21prisoner inside a room for 15 years before being released. Desu eventually identifies his captor as
04:26Wu Jin, a former classmate who Desu caught committing incest with his sister. Desu told
04:31his friend about this and after word spread throughout the school, Wu Jin's sister killed
04:34herself. But the kicker comes during their final confrontation, when Wu Jin gives Desu a photo
04:39album revealing that his young love interest throughout the film Mido is in fact his own
04:43daughter. Basically, Wu Jin used hypnosis to make Desu and Mido fall in love, ensuring that he
04:47would feel the same anguished incest that Wu Jin himself did years earlier. To rub salt in the wound,
04:53Wu Jin then sets up a speaker to loudly broadcast an audio recording of our lead having sex with his
04:58daughter, ensuring that his entire reality has basically been flipped on its head in the most
05:02viscerously nauseating fashion possible. This news ultimately proves so traumatic that Desu attempts
05:07to have his information wiped from his mind via hypnosis, though the ending leaves it ambiguous as
05:11to whether or not it succeeded. Adelaide was a tethered the whole time. Us. It's established early
05:17into Jordan Peele's Us that a young Adelaide was involved in a rather frightening doppelganger
05:22incident. Fast forward a few years, and Adi and her family eventually once again come face to face
05:28with that same doppelganger and her family. But things take an even more unsettling turn after
05:33Adi's son Jason is kidnapped by Red late on. With Red explaining how the rest of the cloned humans
05:39felt she was different from the others, Adelaide proceeds to battle with her counterpart before
05:44viciously killing Red in front of her baby boy. And it was the way his mother savagely took down
05:49the red suit wearing apparent copy that seemingly planted a seed in young Jason's mind as he watched
05:54on, or even just heard the moment from a locker nearby. Sure enough, his supposed mother is soon
05:59seen remembering how she was actually the tethered who showed up in that funhouse all those years
06:04earlier. With Red dragging Adi down into the depths, and leaving her there, she assumed the role
06:09of Adelaide. And right when we realise Adi was actually a tethered in disguise all along,
06:15a suspicious Jason appears to do the very same while sat beside his ambulance driving mum.
06:20He'd kill us if he got the chance. The Conversation
06:23Francis Ford Coppola's masterful 1974 thriller The Conversation follows surveillance expert Harry,
06:30who whilst spying on a woman as part of his latest assignment, comes to believe that she's
06:33being targeted for murder by the client, her husband. While recording the woman speaking with
06:38her extramarital lover, the man can be heard telling her he'd kill us if he got the chance.
06:42This convinces Harry that the woman's husband is plotting to kill her, and after seemingly
06:46witnessing her murder, he finally decides to confront the husband. But as it turns out,
06:50it was the husband who died, not the wife, in an alleged accident. And so Harry realises that
06:56the wife and her lover were in fact plotting to kill the husband all along, and that the muddy
07:00recording actually said he'd kill us if he got the chance. The emphasis on us changes the entire
07:05context of the conversation, from fear of being killed to determined rationalisation to carry
07:10out a killing themselves. For Harry, a deeply obsessive individual who wrestled with his
07:14duty to intervene at all, it was an earth-shattering revelation.
07:18Teddy Daniels is actually an inmate, Shutter Island. As Shutter Island's investigation unfolds,
07:23it becomes clear that US Marshal Teddy Daniels specifically took this particular case as a way
07:28of getting closer to Andrew Laidus, the person responsible for killing his wife in a house fire,
07:33who he believes is actually on the island too. But everything you thought you knew about this
07:38tale is shattered to pieces during a jaw-dropping final act. It's eventually revealed that this
07:43entire investigation was little more than an elaborate roleplay created by Dr. John Corley.
07:48The aim of the fake investigation was to help Teddy realise that he was actually Laidus.
07:53Andrew, also a US Marshal, had killed his depressed wife after she murdered their three children,
07:58creating the Edward Daniels fantasy as a way of coping with his horrific crime.
08:02Laidus had actually been living this life for two years as the events of the flick got underway,
08:07with his apparent relapse again at movie's end finally resulting in him being lobotomised.
08:12Leonard accidentally killed his wife.
08:15Memento
08:15Christopher Nolan's masterful Memento is an especially interesting case,
08:19because the character in question actually deceives themselves, and does so totally intentionally.
08:24Protagonist Leonard is suffering from amnesia after a home invasion which apparently caused the
08:28death of his wife. Leonard is unable to create new memories since the attack,
08:32and so uses Polaroid photos and tattoos to keep investigating despite this. But at story's
08:37end, we learn that Leonard's wife actually survived the attack, and only died after Leonard,
08:41whilst suffering from amnesia, accidentally gave her an insolent overdose. Leonard has repressed
08:45this memory, and despite killing the real attacker before the film's events, has effectively
08:49concocted a cyclical revenge narrative in which he kills various shady figures, duping himself into
08:54believing that they are the assailant in order to avoid facing his own reality.
08:58It's perhaps cinema's finest example of self-deception, as even when acquaintance Teddy
09:03reveals the truth to Leonard, it's information he's soon enough destined to forget.
09:07Quill learns how his mother really died. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
09:11After his mother had tragically died of brain cancer, a distraught eventual Star-Lord fled
09:16the hospital, only to be zapped up into space by the Ravagers. So it wasn't difficult to understand
09:21why the orphan jumped at the chance to get to know his celestial father, Ego, in Volume 2.
09:26But it was during that father-son bonding that an absolutely horrendous truth changed everything
09:31Peter Quill thought he knew about his poor mother's demise back in 1988. It turns out that Ego actually
09:37planted the deadly tumour in Meredith's brain, due to him fearing that she'd distract him from his
09:42precious expansion mission. What an a-hole! As expected, it wasn't long before this mother-killing
09:47long-lost pops was finally taken down by the Guardians. But at the cost of Quill's real daddy's
09:53life, K isn't the chosen one. Blade Runner 2049
09:56Perhaps the single best thing about Blade Runner 2049 is how aggressively it rejects the cliché
10:02chosen one narrative that's so common in blockbuster cinema these days. For much of the film,
10:07replicant protagonist K is led to believe that he is the miraculous child of replicant Rachel
10:11and human Deckard. But later in the story, K is picked up by the replicant resistance movement,
10:15whose leader reveals that Rachel and Deckard's child was in fact a girl. The daughter turns out
10:20to be Dr. Anna, a replicant memory designer briefly introduced earlier on in the story. For K,
10:25who truly felt like he was special and a significant being, it's a crushing revelation that entirely
10:29changes how he views himself and the world around him. But on a storytelling level, it's a refreshing
10:34subversion of a played-out narrative trope, while ultimately allowing K to make a difference
10:38regardless by helping reunite Deckard with his child in his dying act.
10:42Your name is Arthur, right? Joker. A troubled Arthur Fleck is seen bonding and eventually
10:47spending a decent amount of time with his neighbour Sophie Dumont throughout Joker.
10:52After learning he was adopted, and eventually abused by his mother's boyfriend as a child,
10:56viewers still had every reason to believe the pair's relationship was legit.
11:00However, the moments that follow Arthur's unexpected arrival, with Sophie finding him on
11:04the couch and asking the person she'd only really met in passing to leave her home,
11:09soon revealed that the two's time together had been nothing more than a figment of Fleck's
11:13imagination. As Arthur takes in Sophie pleading for him to not harm her sleeping daughter,
11:18the audience, and seemingly Arthur himself, are left to deal with a chilling bombshell that proves
11:23everything you thought you knew about the apparent lovebirds was a somewhat disturbing lie.
11:27It was Earth all along. Planet of the Apes
11:30In Planet of the Apes, astronaut George crash lands on an unknown planet several thousand years in the
11:35future, where apes are unexpectedly the dominant species and the remaining humans are largely
11:39primitive mutes. But the film's iconic plot twist sees George eventually reach the planet's shoreline
11:44and find the Statue of Liberty, confirming that this apparently alien planet is actually a future
11:49Earth, having been decimated by a nuclear war in the past. As George comes to terms with the fact
11:54that humanity destroyed themselves and allowed the apes to rise up in their place, he exclaims in
11:58despair, you finally did it, you maniacs, you blew it all up, damn you, damn you all to hell.
12:04Even for the standards of this list, that's quite the traumatic news to take in,
12:07that humanity's inherent penchant for war and self-destruction led them to ultimately nuke
12:12themselves out of existence. Ava was manipulating Caleb all along, ex machina. In an attempt to test
12:18whether or not his artificially intelligent robot possessed true consciousness, Bluebug CEO Nathan
12:24Bateman deliberately brought in one of his company's programmers, Caleb, to secretly see if Ava could
12:29convince him to fall in love with her and help her escape. And as 2014's consistently mesmerizing
12:34ex machina reaches its climax, it revealed that Caleb actually realized Nathan had been studying
12:39the two secret chats and had still found a way to successfully aid Ava in her attempts to flee
12:44Bateman's secluded home. From here, the highly intelligent android was finally able to get out
12:50of her room and kill her creator. However, just when you thought you had this whole thing worked
12:54out, Ava goes and pulls the biggest swerve of all shortly after her great escape. Ava had actually
13:00masterfully manipulated Caleb into falling in love with her, using the lonely soul to help her break
13:05out of her prison, before not thinking twice about leaving him locked inside of Nathan's home as she
13:10embarked on her new life in the real world. Rowan isn't missing. The Wicker Man. The Wicker Man sees
13:16Sergeant Neil Howey visiting the remote island Summer Isle to investigate the disappearance of
13:21a young girl, Rowan Morrison. Howey is instantly suspicious when the villagers deny Rowan's existence
13:26and so appear to be covering up her disappearance. He later comes to believe that Rowan is in fact
13:30alive and will be sacrificed to ensure the island's successful crop harvest. And while he's right about
13:35Rowan being alive, he's totally wrong as to why. Rowan is indeed alive, but merely part of the
13:40villagers' ruse to sacrifice Howey instead, who at film's end is placed inside a giant Wicker Man
13:46which is then set alight, killing him as a pagan Celtic sacrifice. As a policeman, Howey had all the
13:51confidence that he was personally safe on Summer Isle, when in fact his status as representing the
13:55law, or as the pagans say, possessing the power of the king, made him oh so ripe for their nefarious
14:01purposes. The ancient truth is revealed, the cabin in the woods. The cabin in the woods begins with
14:06a scene involving a few lab engineers discussing a mysterious operation in Stockholm before alluding
14:12to an employee betting pool. And as this horrific comedy unfolds, it soon becomes clear that these
14:17lab coats were actually all in on what appeared to be a very peculiar experiment. One that involved
14:23the team unleashing various different monsters on a group of random teens during a weekend break.
14:28It was only after the final two survivors, Dana and Marty, discovered said underground facility,
14:33and unleashed the many horrifying creatures within though, that the truth behind this operation was
14:37revealed. In a hilariously shocking final few minutes, the leader of this facility informs
14:42the pair that they were actually part of a sacred ritual. Fancy that. And with all the other rituals
14:47failing this time around, if this particular bunch of slasher movie archetypes weren't killed,
14:51the world would be reclaimed by the ancient ones below who once ruled the planet. These two oblivious
14:57American students along with the majority of the planet had absolutely no clue they were only ever
15:01a few failed rituals away from extinction each and every year. But not even the director's late
15:07bombshell could keep Dana and Marty from deciding that the human race likely deserved this ancient fate,
15:12as they enjoyed one last joint in the moment's pre-Giant Hand Arrival.
15:16Verbal is Kaiser Soze, the usual suspects. Has there ever been a climactic mic drop twist more
15:22stunningly game-changing than that of the usual suspects? Agent Dave spends most of the movie
15:28investigating a massacre on board a ship, where one of the two survivors, Verbal Kint, tells a long,
15:33convoluted story centered around the mysterious crime lord known as Kaiser Soze. Eventually,
15:38Kint confesses that fellow criminal Keaton was indeed Soze, at which point he's released on bail.
15:43Moments later, though, Agent Dave finds that Kint fabricated the entire winding story using
15:48objects around the office as inspiration to buy time until his bail was posted. After leaving the
15:53office, Kint then sheds his prominent limp, confirming it to be an act, before a police sketch
15:57of Soze is faxed through to the office that precisely resembles him. The film ends with the
16:01agent in utter disbelief, desperately looking outside the police station for any sign of Kint slash Soze.
16:07It's a great example of how placing the central character in the same position as the audience,
16:11and then having them come to a devastating realization at the exact same time, can be
16:15so, so effective.
16:17Hans isn't Prince Charming after all, Frozen. The only thing to keep Anna from dying after
16:22accidentally having her heart frozen by her sister in Frozen, was an act of true love.
16:27And just when it looks like the film's Prince Charming himself, Hans, is about to plant one on
16:32his beloved, the animated a-hole delivers the coldest of all Disney twists.
16:36If only there was someone out there who loved you were the words that cemented the fact that
16:40Hans and Anna's love had actually been little more than a lie created by the former to ensure
16:45he ended up on the Arendelle throne in the end. And while this shocking turn of events initially
16:50looked to spell doom for the Arendelle siblings, that despicable Hans wasn't counting on the power
16:55of sisterly love, was he? Who needs true love's kiss when you've got a Snow Queen sister backing you up,
17:00we have just lost cabin pressure. Fight Club. David Fincher's Fight Club so brilliantly pulled
17:06off the he-was-in-your-head-the-whole-time twist as to basically ruin it for every other filmmaker.
17:11You see, early on in the story, the film's unnamed insomniac narrator crosses paths with
17:15charismatic soap salesman Tyler Durden, and together they form a fight club which eventually snowballs
17:20into an outright anarchist movement called Project Mayhem. But in the third act, the narrator is
17:25referred to as Mr. Durden, and Tyler's casual lover Marla even calls him Tyler. Upon confronting
17:30Tyler, the narrator learns the truth. They are both disassociated personalities within the same body.
17:35The narrator has been assuming the persona of Tyler primarily whilst sleeping, and their
17:39interactions throughout the film have effectively been the narrator's unreliable projections. And even
17:44after the narrator learns what's going on, he basically spends the rest of the movie wrestling
17:48Tyler for control before killing his alternate personality by shooting himself in the mouth.
17:53Miles wasn't supposed to be Spider-Man, Spider-Man across the Spider-Verse.
17:57Early on in Into the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales is suddenly chomped on by a glitching radioactive
18:02spider with the number 42 on it. That moment set the soon-to-be hero on the path to becoming
18:08his
18:08universe's second Spider-Man, in the wake of Peter Parker's sudden death. But little did Miles know,
18:14he was never actually supposed to be bitten by that particular spider. It was revealed in the
18:18sequel that this creepy crawly was sent to his universe by Jonathan Owen, after the eventual
18:23spot brought it here whilst testing the collider. That biting event then resulted in Miles becoming
18:28an anomaly, with Earth-42's spider popping up in Miles' universe, leading to the destabilizing of
18:34the entire multiverse. It also meant that Earth-42 was left Spider-Man-less. And not long after having
18:40his universe turned upside down by Miguel O'Hara's shocking revelation, Miles then unexpectedly came face to
18:46face with the prowling consequences of that particular spider being sucked into Earth-1610.
Comments