Best Movie/Show Ending

Breaking Bad

I think “Justified” is an underrated show. It should be up there in the top 10 of all time great shows.

I loved the way it ended.

No Way Out. Kevin Costner's first big hit. I had no idea what was about to happen at the end.

Yeah - always loved Blade Runner and it’s ending. I thought Harrison Ford’s film noir-type narration was great too, although some people didn’t like it. Blade Runner 2049 also has to be a true sci-fi geek’s (me) favorite. Great effects, performances and continues the original story in a creative and interesting way. It’s vision of the future is cool too. It’s based on the future world created in the original, which has changed in reality (the world obviously won’t looked like that in 2049) but makes sense in the fictional vision of the future created in the 1982 original. Tricky.

The Shield. Not only was Vic Mackey the perfect anti-hero, but the series finale was the perfect ending. That was the most perfectly balanced, fulfilling ending I have ever seen.

It was a little chick-flicky, but HBO’s post-killer pandemic series, Station 11, was excellent and had a very satisfying ending.

I love tv and movies. Agree with most of the examples above. Disagree on a technicality that Justified is underrated. Anyone who has seen it loves it. I agree it isn’t mentions as often as Breaking Bad or The Wite when talking about best shows. Maybe because it was on FX and didn’t get as much publicity? Anyway, the dialog of the show perfectly captured the writing of Elmore Leonard (wrote the books). If you like that flashy, snappy clever dialog, check out other EL books made from movies like Get Shorty (Travolta, Devito) and Out of Sight (Clooney, JLo). They also did Miami Blues with Alec Baldwin but I don’t remember that being as good. Get Shorty also goes on the list for a very clever ending to a twisty turny story. And… they are doing a Justified sequel series that they announced last month. Super excited but hope they don’t screw it up.

I also add Firefly/Serenity to the list because of its odd journey. Sci-fi series that was supposed to be a western in space. Series was originally broadcast on Fox and they fucked it up royally. They broadcast the episodes out of order when it didn’t initially take hold with audiences. They set up a pretty elaborate big picture storyline among the episodes and then it got canceled after one season with a lot of questions left open. It eventually caught on with fans through the dvd release and word spread online, plus the attention it got at Comic-Con and the like finally convinced them to make a movie that went to theaters. The movie very neatly tied up all the storylines and was pretty good on its own. Not easy to do. For example, Deadwood tried it and the movies were meh.

I'm sure I'll think of more later, but off the top of my head, I thought the end of The Americans was fantastic.

Shit, forgot to add Rounders. After watching the movie multiple times, Teddy KGB’s ‘tell’ is obvious, but when that movie came out people couldn’t agree on what it was. Fabulously done.

Also, The Usual Suspects, Pulp Fiction and a very freaky movie told backwards in 5 minute increments, Memento.

+1 for Breaking Bad and especially The Shield. They're tense and suspenseful even when I know what's going to happen.

The Shield, everyone gets poetic justice like a Greek tragedy.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off "You're still here"

Newhart series ending "Honey, you won't believe the dream I just had"

Two movies that immediately spring to mind are Fight Club and The Sixth Sense, the endings of both caught me completely by surprize.

Breaking Bad for TV shows.

The Usual Suspects for movies.

Worst movie ending (recent): Spider-Man: No Way Home. It ended the way the second movie Tobie McGuire began. They made so many great decisions with the new trilogy: Direct tie-in with MCU. A hot Aunt May. Skip the origin telling. put the setting back in high school. Yet they kept all of the key points: trying to manage the dual lives of a high schooler and a super-hero, weighing the responsibilities of great power and personal desire, etc. Then, they just got tired of the hard work of the bold new direction and turned it back into what it had always been. A great movie, in a great series, with a stupid ending.

Jacob's Ladder (1990) such a disturbing movie needed such an ending

Arlington Road with Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins. Total shocker of an ending.

I love Breaking Bad, but only like the ending if Walter White died in the snowed in car in New Hampshire and everything that followed was a death dream of his oxygen starved dying brain.

Otherwise, a terminally ill and fading fast White just happens to find the keys in the visor, drives to New Mexico in a stolen car without getting caught, Sets up his family financially by the people who cheated him, sets up the perfect remote control machine gun in the trunk of a car at just the right angles, rescues Jesse, and dies taking a bullet shielding Jesse.

Way too pat of an ending for this series. Nope, he died of cancer and hypothermia in the car in N.H. I am going to ignore Vince Gilligan and the El Camino movie. (Still enjoying Better call Saul though.)

A pair of Tom Selleck movies for me

The first is the ending of High Road to China when he and Bess Armstrong are about to share a kiss and he says, "I should have sold you (to an Afghani chieftain) when I had the chance!"

Second is the not quite ending of Quigley Down Under right after he has blown away the villain and two henchmen with a pistol. "I said I didn't have much use for one, not that I didn't know how to use one."

Favorite scene: Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the battle in the town square with a badass swordsman who is doing an intimidating series of sword strokes, and Indy, with a bored look on his face, pulls out a .45 revolver and drills the guy without looking at him. The whole theater erupted in laughter and cheers, lol.

And now you guy's spoiled it for me!!! I was really into whatever episode of breaking bad was on whenever I traveled, but trying to binge watch on netflix just turned into a chore and couldn't make it past a few seasons. But always thought, once I retire, I can finally see how it ends!!!

Fuckers!!!

(and GOT, watched the whole last season on a flight home from Bangkok... Expect for the last 30 minutes when I finally fell asleep, in pain from watching a @!%# screen for that long, heard the ending sucked, no one's actually explained it to me yet, but I just don't care anymore..)

Best I can remember recently is Don't Look Up.

Also Ferris Buehler and Shawshank Redemption.

Duh! The Sixth Sense - and M. Night Shyamalan hasn’t made a good movie since.

bkkruined - rosebud is the sled.

someone somehow managed to sit and watch in its whole entirety an M night shamamamaling ding dong movie. you sir deserve not 1 but 2 VIP's with your fave(s).

I am not a huge Star Wars fan but... Rogue One Darth Vader goes on a rampage and the ending becomes the beginning of A New Hope

A lot of good shows have already been mentioned but there are a few older finales I'm surprised haven't been brought up.

Most notably M.A.S.H. is still the greatest series finale I have ever seen. While I was too young to remember it when it first aired I have seen it numerous times over the years and each time is just as good as the first time. As the war ended the show gave each of the main characters a fitting conclusion to their stories and Hawkeye's time with the shrink talking about the the woman needing to keep her "chicken" quiet to prevent being found and killed by the enemy did a great job of showing how the horror of war can effect even the most upbeat people.

Cheers had perhaps the best, and simplest, final line of a series as Sam responded to a knock on the door with a simple "We're closed."

West Wing handled the transition from one Presidential administration to the next wonderfully.

ER managed to bring back most of it's major characters that had left through the years as part of a really good storyline centered around their longest tenured character. They even managed a good final scene that with an incoming mass casuality and Dr Carter calling out to Mark's daughter to ask "Dr. Greene, you comin'?"

Say what you want about Bill Cosby, but the Cosby show is top 3 all time great sitcom IMO. So for me the Cosby Show with Cliff and the door bell was a great ending to the legendary TV series.

I second The Americans. The final half hour was simultaneously sentimental and heart wrenching.

And Mad Men. Ending with the fictional creation of the most iconic commercial of the era was brilliant and believable.

I loved Rounders - and the ending.

Se7en had a good ending too.

The Shield had a great ending! The only part I disliked was knowing the series was over.

If you haven’t enjoyed it yet - Pretty Peaches 2 has a great final scene! I think Hustler gave it several full erections!

The Usual Suspects makes you watch the whole thing over. You STILL don't know which parts might have actually happened.

The Bob Newhart show where he ran a B&B with his wife.

Blade Runner and of course 2049 (open ended with closure) Dr Strangelove (Happy endings are for stripclubs) Evil Dead (Did you really think he would end up in medieval Spain where they speak English?) No Country For Old Men (dark noir) Blood Simple (just see it)

Spielberg's West Side Story. Not because the ending was a surprise, but the opposite, it was inevitable -- foreshadowed from the very beginning. That movie was an emotional rollercoaster for me. When it ended, everyone in the theatre was silent for a moment and then spontaneously broke out in applause.

I watch the first season of The Americans. I get it. It was well made and good - but I hated the idea of those fucking soulless, morally corrupt, brain-washed Russians getting over on us. I was rooting against them the whole time. Stressed me out.

The end sequence of the movie Taxi Driver: Taxi Driver (1976) - Ending - Saving Iris

m.youtube.com

Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) “God’s lonely man” decides it's time to do something about Matthew “Sport” (Harvey Keitel) “the pimp” who pimps out 12-year-old “runaway hooker” Iris “Easy” Steensma (Jodie Foster).

Travis jumps into his cab, speeds over to the pimp's hangout, and shoots him at point blank range before walking over to the shady building/“hotel” where Iris takes all her clients.

When the creepy hotel “clerk” tries to stop him, Travis shoots off the man's fingers, then a not-yet-dead Sport walks in and puts a bullet in Travis' neck, the Vietnam veteran vigilante turn around and empties an entire gun into the pimp's body.

And when Sport's big-time Mafia boss blasts Travis in the shoulder, the taxi driver whips out a hidden gun and sends a lot of lead into the crime boss's face, who falls back pulling down the beaded curtain into Iris’s room.

The “clerk” tries to fight inside Iris’s room Travis pulls a knife taped to his boot and stabs him in the fingerless hand, and executes him with a shot to the head, despite terrorized 12-year-old Iris’s screaming and crying at Travis “don’t shoot him”.

Travis puts a pistol under his chin. But when the hammer comes down, there's nothing but a click. Travis is all out of bullets. Travis collapses on the couch.

The cops show up and find Travis, drenched in blood and smiling from ear to ear. The taxi driver puts his fingers to his head and mimes suicide, and that's when the camera pans out of the room, the overhead camera showing us all the carnage that Travis has wrought.

Well, after the shootout, the film jumps forward in time, and we see Travis' apartment. His wall is covered in newspaper clippings with headlines that read "Taxi Driver Battles Gangsters" and "Taxi Driver Hero to Recover." And as the camera pans across the room, we hear voiceover narration from Iris' dad reading a letter to Travis and thanking the man for rescuing his daughter. He even lets Travis know that Iris is back in school and "working hard."

Then, in the final few minutes of the film, Travis and Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) a Presidential hopeful campaign manager, who had rejected him before, reunite. she actually seeks out a ride from him in his cab.

She climbs into the back of his cab and asks how he's doing. Travis doesn't have much to say, but after dropping her off, he doesn't let her pay for the ride. Instead, he just smiles and rides off into the darkness of New York City.

No one mentioned Scarface? m.youtube.com

The Lion King

I’m biased because it was loosely based on my life. Very loosely. My life is way dirtier. And I’m usually in an alcoholic fog. But I’m definitely the king of beasts. ROAR!!!

^ funny I would have guessed Born Free.

Uncut Jems with Adam Sandler and Kanye’s now “ex”girlfriend.

Of course, bkk liked the final season

of GOT. Credibility blown. What a tool.

Yeah - I was a big fan of GOT. I also read all the books. Epic. But the final season on HBO SUCKED !

I liked Rutger Hauer's "Tears in the Rain" speech at the end of Blade Runner. He improvised it on the spot.

I also like the ending of Casablanca. They were going to shoot two endings, one where Ingrid Bergman stays with Bogart and one where she flies off with her husband and then pick the best one. After they filmed the first ending, they decided they liked it so much they wouldn't even film the other ending.

the ending of clockwork orange. "i was cured all right."