15 Movies That Spoiled Their Own Endings In The Opening Seconds Of Screen Time
WARNING: THERE ARE SPOILERS BELOW (AND IN THESE MOVIES THEMSELVES). PLEASE PROCEED WITH CAUTION.
Most moviegoers hate it when a film gets spoiled — but sometimes, it's the movie itself that does the spoiling!
NBC
Sometimes a movie explicitly spells out its ending right at the beginning, and sometimes it just hints at its ending with clues that eagle-eyed viewers can find. Either way, the fun is in seeing how the movie eventually gets to that ending.
Lionsgate
So with that in mind, here are 15 movies that spell out how they'll end right at the beginning — but that makes them all the more interesting to watch:
1.Midsommar (2019)
How it starts:
The beginning of Midsommar features a mural of various Swedish rituals.
How it ends:
By the end of the movie, all of the rituals featured on the mural have occurred — including the maypole dance and the shocking cliff-jumping scene — revealing that the mural in the first shot is actually the full story of the film in the form of a simple painting.
2.Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
How it starts:
In the first scene, Joel (Jim Carrey) seems to make a spur-of-the-moment decision to hop on a train from Queens, NY to Montauk without any explanation. While on the train, he meets a friendly and quirky stranger named Clementine (Kate Winslet).
How it ends:
As it turns out, Joel and Clementine are not by any means strangers. They have not only met before, but dated, and they've each had a special treatment to erase the memories of their relationship from their brains. However, one little memory remained despite the treatment: Joel and Clementine's promise to meet each other in Montauk, accounting for Joel's seemingly spur-of-the-moment decision.
3.Fight Club (1999)
How it starts:
The movie opens with Edward Norton's unnamed Narrator in a pretty precarious position: seated with a mysterious person holding a gun in his mouth.
How it ends:
Right from the start of Fight Club, you know that the Narrator is going to wind up in a life-or-death situation, but the true shocker comes when the end of the movie reveals that it's the Narrator holding the gun on himself, as Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden — the man holding the gun in the beginning — is the actually the Narrator all along.
4.Skyfall (2012)
How it starts:
Skyfall opens with a dreamy credits sequence that includes Judi Dench's credit and character name in front of a cemetery backdrop.
How it ends:
As it turns out, that cemetery backdrop is actually a major moment of brilliant foreshadowing, as M meets her maker in this James Bond flick. M is introduced to the audience in the credits sequence in a cemetery, and that's exactly where she ends up.
5.Memento (2001)
How it starts:
Memento opens with a shot of a Polaroid photo of an unspecified dead man that slowly fades away, as time moves backward.
How it ends:
That simple first shot basically sets up the entire rest of the movie, which is told partly in reverse chronological order (just like the backward time-lapse of the Polaroid photo). The fading of the photo also mimics the fading memory of the movie's protagonist, Leonard (Guy Pearce), and lets the audience know right away that a dead body is a major part of the plot.
6.Pulp Fiction (1994)
How it starts:
While the story in Pulp Fiction is famously told out of order, its first scene shows a couple of robbers planning a heist at a diner before they jump into action and actually begin to rob the place.
How it ends:
And the very same diner robbery from the first scene ends up being the final scene and climax of the movie. Only in this portion of the scene, Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) calmly handles the whole situation.
7.Sunset Boulevard (1950)
How it starts:
At the very beginning of Sunset Boulevard, a body floats in a swimming pool while police officers and reporters investigate the situation.
How it ends:
Those same police officers and reporters surround the body, and only by the end, the audience knows that the body is Joe Gillis (William Holden) who has spent the course of the film narrating his own demise at the hands of Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson).
8.The Sixth Sense (1999)
How it starts:
The Sixth Sense opens with therapist Malcolm Crowe (Bruce Willis) finding that a former patient, Vincent Gray (Donnie Wahlberg) has broken into his home. Distraught about something yet unsaid, Vincent shoots Malcolm and himself. Malcolm appears to survive the situation, though shaken, and the movie continues on.
How it ends:
Even though the audience follows Malcolm throughout the whole movie, the conclusion brings one of the biggest twists in cinema history: that shot that Vincent fired at Malcolm in the very first scene was fatal, Malcolm has been dead all along, and Vincent was one of Malcom's patients who could converse with the dead.
9.Shutter Island (2010)
How it starts:
When Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) go to investigate a mental health asylum located on a remote island, Chuck has to de-holster his gun, but he fumbles it a bit.
How it ends:
That firearm fumble is actually a major hint that Chuck isn't an investigator at all. By the end, it's revealed that Teddy is a patient at the institution named Andrew Laeddis, and Chuck is his doctor. The entire investigation was an elaborate treatment plan for Andrew. Since "Chuck" wasn't truly an investigator, that's why he didn't know how to handle his firearm.
10.Tangled (2010)
How it starts:
The very first line of Tangled is Flynn Rider himself telling the audience that "This is the story of how [he] died."
How it ends:
Sure enough, by the end of Tangled, Mother Gothel stabs Flynn, nearly killing him, and when Rapunzel attempts to heal him with her hair's powers, he cuts her hair off in order to save her from a life of servitude to her step-mother. Luckily, Rapunzel's healing powers are still able to save him through her tears, and they get to live happily ever after.
11.Citizen Kane
How it starts:
The classic film opens with the titular main character's last word as he dies: "Rosebud" — a mystery that becomes the crux of the film. As he takes his last breath, he drops a snow globe with a snowy cabin inside.
How it ends:
That last word and the cabin in the snow globe tell the audience everything they need to know about the end of Citizen Kane without them even realizing it, since, at the end of the movie, the audience learns that "Rosebud" was the name of his childhood sled, the only memento that brings him true happiness and comfort.
12.Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
How it starts:
Slumdog Millionaire begins with the above title card asking, "Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it? A: He cheated. B: He's lucky. C: He's a genius." Before revealing that Jamal (Dev Patel) is in the hot seat of a game show, poised to win big.
How it ends:
The rest of the film shows how Jamal — an otherwise completely ordinary man — was able to use knowledge from his various life experiences to help him answer each question correctly on the way to winning the grand prize. Sure, the audience goes into the film knowing how far he's going to make it and that he's likely going to win, but the excitement comes from learning how he does it!
13.Uncut Gems (2019)
How it starts:
At the very beginning of the movie, a loan shark’s henchman (Keith Williams Richards) tells Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) that he's going to kill him.
How it ends:
Simple, straight-forward, and true to his word, the henchman puts a bullet in Howard's head at the end of the movie.
14.Magnolia (1999)
How it starts:
In the movie's opening sequence, an unseen narrator discusses the existence of coincidences. Plus, the number 82 appears multiple times throughout the movie.
How it ends:
A major coincidence makes up the movie's big climactic scene. Frogs fall from the sky, uniting all the characters. The frogs are a major allusion to the scripture of Exodus 8:2, in which Moses tells the Pharaoh that frogs will fall from the sky. If you pay attention to the "coincidences" in the repetition of 82 throughout the movie, it serves as a major hint.
And finally:
15.Love Story (1970)
How it starts:
Love Story opens with the provoking question: "What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?”
How it ends:
True to the film's opening line, 25-year-old Jenny (Ali MacGraw) dies at the end of Love Story, leaving her husband Oliver (Ryan O'Neal) to attempt to figure out how to grieve her, hence his tragic opening question.
