Rebecca Ferguson in A House of DynamiteImage via Netflix
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Ryan Heffernan
Published 4 hours ago
Ryan Heffernan is a Senior Writer at Collider. Storytelling has been one of his interests since an early age, with his appreciation for film and television becoming a particular interest of his during his teenage years.
This passion saw Ryan graduate from the University of Canberra in 2020 with an Honours Degree in Film Production. In the years since, he has found freelance work as a videographer and editor in the Canberra region while also becoming entrenched in the city's film-making community.
In addition to cinema and writing, Ryan's other major interest is sport, with him having a particular love for Australian Rules football, Formula 1, and cricket. He also has casual interests in reading, gaming, and history.
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There is nothing more frustrating than a cop-out ending. All the pieces are in place, the drama and intensity are boiling away to a grand finale, and then you are slapped in the face with the most underwhelming and unrewarding ending imaginable. Whether it’s a back-flip towards genre convention, a misguided attempt at ambiguity that fails to ask compelling questions, or just a forced happy ending that never feels earned, cop-out endings abruptly undo any and all of the good work that came before them with flattening, numbing efficiency.
Netflix’s release of A House of Dynamite has seen the disappointing storytelling trope become a popular topic of conversation. With everything from major blockbuster franchises to gritty war dramas and genre-centric hits being mentioned in the discussion, it seems as if no element of film is safe from a bad ending, with the following titles marking some of the most underwhelming climaxes cinema has ever seen.
'A House of Dynamite' (2025)
Anthony Ramos sitting on his knees in an army uniform in House of Dynamite.Image via Netflix
With an all-star cast, a unique narrative structure, and brutal high stakes, A House of Dynamite debuted on Netflix with plenty eager to immerse themselves in the chaos. The movie starts strong, too, entrenching viewers in the frenzy that erupts when a nuclear missile from an unknown source is detected heading towards Chicago with an ETA of 19 minutes. The first act is a masterclass in suspense, but the movie then shifts its attention to other characters to gain their overlapping perspectives as the 19 minutes tick down.
The non-linear, perspective-jumping approach doesn’t necessarily yield great results, but audiences stay involved to see what the grand finale has in store. It offers very little, cutting away before revealing the impact of the missile strike, signaling the potential aftermath, or even suggesting how the president (Idris Elba) opts to respond. While the attempt to use ambiguity to provoke thought is admirable, the film invests too heavily in immediate suspense and tension and not enough in the overarching thematic ideas to make the approach effective. It results in a frustrating and fruitless conclusion that undermines much of the visceral dread the movie conjures when operating at its best.
'Passengers' (2016)
Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt in one of Passengers' more romantic scenes.Image via Sony Pictures Releasing
There is a compelling sci-fi drama hiding somewhere within Passengers, but its execution leaves plenty to be desired, most evident in its misguided climax. Set aboard a sleeper ship transporting 5,000 colonists to a new home world on a 120-year journey, the story takes shape as mechanical engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) awakes just 30 years into the voyage. After much deliberation, he awakens the beautiful Aurora (Jennifer Lawrence) for companionship, but his lie about her pod’s malfunction underlines their budding relationship right up to the point the truth is revealed.
What could have been an intriguing exploration of the human condition and Jim’s deeply flawed, though understandable, decision is cheaply resolved as a happily-ever-after romance, with Aurora forgiving him and living the rest of her life with him rather than returning to cryosleep. It’s dull, formulaic, and borderline unethical, rewarding Jim’s immoral action simply so the movie can present a peaceful ending. It smacks of a big-budget movie delivering a comforting conclusion at any cost, and only highlights the thematic inconsistencies that mar the film in its entirety.
'Now You See Me' (2013)
The premise of Now You See Me is both fun and inviting: a group of performative magicians sap money from the accounts of the corrupt and wicked and funnel it to their audiences, catching the attention of Interpol and the FBI in the process. It even offers several thrills in practice, with director Louis Leterrier implementing a sense of style that distracts from the film’s uninspired characters and clunky plot beats. Alas, it all comes crashing down with an ending that reaches too far.
It almost feels as if the film believes it has to end with one last trick, one final twist to stun the audience and affirm its cleverness. The decision to reveal that FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) was orchestrating the Four Horsemen all along wasn’t the way to do it. Completely unsigned, it comes off more as a lazy gimmick than a final fantastic illusion. Granted, the ending hasn’t prevented Now You See Me from becoming a successful ongoing franchise, but it is an underwhelming and frustrating cop-out that reduces a sporadically entertaining movie to a desperate and dismal one.
'I Am Legend' (2007)
Will Smith in I Am LegendImage via Warner Bros.
An adaptation of Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel that also doubles as a remake of the 1971 thriller The Omega Man, I Am Legend is a compelling look at a post-apocalyptic world. U.S. Army virologist Robert Neville (Will Smith) stands as one of humanity’s last survivors of a virus that killed off the majority of the population and turned those who lived into vampiric mutants. The novel ends with Neville realizing that his efforts to rescue humanity have made him a notorious monster in the eyes of the new vampire species, presenting an idea of understanding and sympathy that was actually mimicked in the film’s alternate ending.
The theatrical ending, however, isn’t quite so sophisticated, instead maintaining that the vampires are mindless monsters with Neville sacrificing his life to kill them so the cure—and, thus, humanity—will live on. I Am Legend rejects the philosophical intrigue of the original story in favor of making Neville a Hollywood hero. It isn’t a disastrous ending in isolation, but it is a cheap retreat from what could have been a stirring and compelling alternative more in line with Matheson’s original vision for the story.
'War of the Worlds' (2005)
Ray Farrier (Tom Cruise) runs for his life as people all around him flee in different directions.Image via Paramount Pictures
Ironically, after I Am Legend suffered from diverting away from its source material’s ending, Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of War of the Worlds arguably clings too closely to the conclusion of H. G. Wells’s esteemed sci-fi horror story. Set in modern-day America, the film unfolds as Ray (Tom Cruise) struggles to protect his children when alien invaders take over the Earth. Like the novella, the story ends with the aliens falling victim to the planet’s microbes.
It's an awkward argument to make, but the film had over 100 years of scientific knowledge on Wells to help conjure up a more believable ending. Spielberg himself has even conceded that the ending doesn’t make sense. Furthermore, the overtly happy point of Robbie (Justin Chatwin) reuniting with Ray and the rest of the family after embarking on a suicidal and futile fight against the aliens only adds to the film’s strenuously triumphant and anti-climactic conclusion. It takes away from what is, for the most part, an impressive sci-fi thriller from one of the genre’s greatest masters.
'Wonder Woman 1984' (2020)
Wonder Woman in her golden armor in Wonder Woman 1984Image via Warner Bros. Pictures
While 2017’s Wonder Woman delivered a meek ending that backtracked on its exploration of war and humanity, the movie as a whole is good enough to ensure it isn’t defined by its clumsy conclusion. Wonder Woman 1984, however, isn’t quite so lucky. The squandered sequel sees Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) battling against the charismatic, though desperate, entrepreneur and television personality Max Lord (Pedro Pascal), who seeks to use the Dreamstone to secure omniscient power while granting the wishes of everyone in the world.
The story is overly convoluted and, frankly, woefully conceived, and the only simple thing about it is the lazy way in which the villain’s wrongdoing is resolved. Using the lasso of truth, Diana implores everyone in the world to renounce their wish, and they immediately oblige. It’s as underwhelming as it is absurd, a misstep in dramatic tension that sadly defines the insipid and uninspired monotony of the film at large.
'Fury' (2014)
The tank crew of Fury (2014)Image via Sony Pictures Releasing
For the most part, Fury runs as a gripping and confronting war drama that immerses itself in the hardened morality and inhumanity of soldiers enduring the final stages of WWII. Through the eyes of young Norman (Logan Lerman), it introduces viewers to a grizzled tank crew under the command of “Wardaddy” (Brad Pitt). Its characters are nuanced and complicated, its story appropriately bleak, and the grounded brutality of its war violence is striking to say the least, but so much of its brilliance is let go in the final battle.
Betraying the grueling sense of war’s gruesome nature, the last stand of the tank crew against the German battalion feels more like a dose of action excitement than it does the thralls of combat, a tonal shift that is unedifying in its endeavor to offer a safe conclusion that glorifies the soldiers. Furthermore, Norman’s survival feels like an overly optimistic cop-out, one that goes against the movie’s intense tone of ferocious authenticity and cheapens the thematic focus as a whole.
'Jurassic World: Dominion' (2022)
A velociraptor runs over a hill, overlooking a small American town in 'Jurassic World Dominion' (2022).Image via Universal Pictures
The foundation of the Jurassic Park franchise is that the marriage of commercial ambition and scientific advancements is a dangerous thing. The original movies, like Michael Crichton’s novel, use the wonder and destructive might of dinosaurs to illustrate this point in breathtaking fashion. Jurassic World Dominion, however, is unwilling to maintain this thematic conviction, cowering away from the underlying truth of its source material in favor of an impractical co-existence between humans and dinosaurs.
Such contradictory senselessness feels like it’s trying to pander to younger viewers, indulging their fascination and admiration for dinosaurs at the expense of storytelling principles and faithfulness to the source material. The threat the Jurassic beasts present—and, by extension, the inherent dangers of mankind playing God—are diminished in a flurry of sequences that depict the dinosaurs living freely, co-existing in nature with today’s animals. It’s an undermining and ignorant cop-out that defers from making a strong narrative choice in favor of a cheap, happy ending, too shallow-minded and dismissive to work.
'Law Aiding Citizen' (2009)
Gerard Butler's Clyde standing in front of flames in Law Abiding CitizenImage via Overture Films
A gratifying rage against the failures of the justice system and the apathetic people within it that comes to one of the most underwhelming and misguided conclusions in cinematic history, Law Abiding Citizen is a great movie, completely undone by the unfathomable stupidity of its ending. Clyde Shelton (Gerard Butler) is a former CIA specialist who, after the murder of his wife and daughter—and the mishandling of the murders’ trials—embarks on a volatile and explosive vendetta targeting everyone involved in the violation of justice.
Nick Rice (Jamie Foxx), the attorney who let the case go askew to preserve his conviction rate, is positioned as the movie’s protagonist as he tries to put an end to Shelton’s murderous rampage. His eventual success feels completely unearned and at odds with the film’s thematic complexity and its skewering of the inadequacies of the justice system. Law Abiding Citizen feels as though it is building up to a complicated and compelling conclusion of moral compromise and carnage, but the lousy “good guys win” finale makes the movie fall flat, especially as the “good guy” in question is a direct figure of the corruption and carelessness that Shelton is fighting against.
'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' (2019)
Daisy Ridley as Rey on Tatooine in Star Wars: The Rise of SkywalkerImage via Lucasfilm
Many would argue that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a cop-out ending to a trilogy and a larger saga in itself, a gutless and soulless revert to plain conformity that suggests its producers were so violently stunned by the polarizing response to Star Wars: The Last Jedi that they opted for the safety of familiarity at every turn. It doesn’t come off as traditionalism but as cowardice, and it is a point most egregiously illustrated in the film’s final moments as Rey (Daisy Ridley) announces herself as being "Rey Skywalker."
Disregarding any notion of individualism or subversive heroic tropes introduced in The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker ends by completely rejecting its predecessor, retreading old ground in a desperate attempt to appease the disgruntled vocal minority of the fanbase. It is a cop-out emblematic of a lack of conviction within the franchise, a beacon of the pathetic desire for commercial success and fan approval that refrains from doing anything interesting for fear of failure. It fails anyway, with the calamitous conclusion marking just one of many faults in the sequel trilogy and, by extension, possibly the single most damning moment in Star Wars’s near 50-year history.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
PG-13
Adventure
Action
Science Fiction
Release Date
December 18, 2019
Cast
Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Naomi Ackie, Domhnall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong'o, Keri Russell, Joonas Suotamo, Kelly Marie Tran, Ian McDiarmid, Billy Dee Williams, Greg Grunberg, Shirley Henderson, Billie Lourd, Dominic Monaghan, Hassan Taj, Lee Towersey, Brian Herring, Dave Chapman, Richard Guiver
Runtime
142 minutes
Director
J.J. Abrams
Writers
Chris Terrio
Genres
Adventure, Action, Science Fiction
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It's funny. I feel like critics who failed to figure out "a twist", relegate movie endings like "Now You See Me", to movie jail out of spite. People complain when a twist seems to come out of nowhere, but they also complain if they "could see it coming". It's really, really hard to give all the information throughout the movie only to realize everything you thought was one thing is actually another.
Dual meaning dialouges is my favorite. Becuase when you realize when you rewatch it, it should have been obvious.
2025-11-20 20:16:04 Upvote Downvote Reply Copy