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Sometimes, a happy ending feels earned only after the heroes have been dragged to their lowest point. We're counting down the 10 best "All Hope Is Lost" moments in film history, from the mathematical certainty of the Titanic's demise to the shocking death of Neo in The Matrix.
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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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