- 15/07/2025
Nobody gave a damn about these "thrilling" cliffhanger endings.
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00:00Cliffhanger endings are generally intended to leave the audience desperate for more,
00:05to ensure they'll return for the next installment which continues the dangling narrative thread.
00:11When it's done well, like in Avengers Infinity War for example,
00:14it can truly capture the general public's imagination and generate surging hype for
00:19the next movie. But for every genuinely thrilling and shocking cliffhanger,
00:24there are many that simply don't make much of a dent with audiences.
00:27Sometimes a cliffhanger just doesn't hit how the filmmakers or studio intended,
00:33and the reaction from general viewers is total apathy, a simple lack of interest in what it's
00:38setting up. That's certainly true of these 10 movies, which whether good or not,
00:43all fail to deliver the satisfyingly tantalizing cliffhangers they thought they were.
00:49So I am Gareth here from WhatCulture.com and here are 10 movie cliffhangers nobody cared about.
00:54Number 10, Baby Godzilla Hatches, Godzilla 1998
00:58Sony originally had very high hopes for Roland Emmerich's 1998 Godzilla film,
01:04which they envisioned as the first entry into an epic blockbuster trilogy,
01:08assuming it turned a hefty profit of course. To that end, Godzilla 98 ended up with a rather
01:14lousy setup for a sequel, where following Godzilla's death, a single one of its eggs is revealed to
01:19have survived in the ruins of Madison Square Garden. In the final shot, the egg hatches.
01:25What a shocker. As cliffhangers go, it's pretty damn lazy, basically suggesting that a sequel would
01:31restore the status quo with another Zilla running rampant. Perhaps had we seen a few surviving
01:36creatures hatch, hyping up a sequel with way more giant monsters, this might have better energised
01:42audiences. Instead, following Godzilla's underperformance at the box office, Sony opted not to
01:47proceed with a sequel. Instead, the storyline was picked up in the Godzilla animated series,
01:52which while better received by fans, struggled to find an audience due to competing with both
01:57Pokemon and Digimon. That is some fierce competition.
02:00Number 9, Stowaway Smith, The Matrix Reloaded
02:03If you're old enough to have seen The Matrix Reloaded in cinemas, you'll remember how feverish
02:08the excitement was. That the Wachowskis were backed with a sequel to one of the greatest action
02:13films of all time. It ultimately fell short of most fans' expectations, yet even those
02:18who staunchly defend the movie won't have much positive to say about its absolute nothing-burger
02:23of a cliffhanger sequel bait ending. At film's end, Neo unexpectedly manifests abilities in
02:29the real world, which he uses to destroy a fleet of incoming machines before falling into a coma.
02:35In the final scene, it's revealed that the rescue ship has taken aboard another survivor
02:39from the machine's attack. Bane, who earlier in the film became possessed by Agent Smith.
02:45And then, just before the end credits roll, a title card reads, To Be Concluded.
02:50Even though everybody knew a third Matrix film was mere months away from release when they went to
02:55watch Reloaded, they sure as hell didn't expect to be left with such a lackluster pair of reveals to
03:00tee up the trilogy concluding entry. As such, it's perhaps little surprise that The Matrix
03:05Revolutions grossed barely half of what Reloaded did. Ouch.
03:098. Michael Gets Broken Out of Prison – Halloween 5 – The Revenge of Michael Myers
03:14Halloween 5 – The Revenge of Michael Myers is a film that broke the audience's spirit early on,
03:19and basically never recovered from it. After Halloween 4 ended with a genuinely tantalizing
03:24cliffhanger which suggested that Michael Myers' niece Jamie Lloyd had inherited his killer instinct,
03:29the fifth film opened by basically negating it. The rest of the movie plays out rather dispiritingly.
03:35Before Michael is captured by the police, and set to be held in custody until his dying day.
03:40Except, of course, that doesn't happen. Instead, the movie ends when a mysterious man wearing all
03:46black breaks into the police station, murders all the cops, and sets Michael free. Even with the
03:51genuine mystery of the man in black's identity, it was tough to give much of a damn about this
03:56cliffhanger after the previous movie's considerably more compelling one was a massive cop-out.
04:01And as it turned out, the sixth film's explanation that a cult of druids were behind Michael's
04:06liberation didn't exactly impress many fans anyway.
04:097. Abraham Lincoln – Planet of the Apes – 2001
04:13If you were unlucky enough to watch Tim Burton's ill-fated 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes in the
04:19cinema, you might recall how you could hear a pin drop when that hysterical head-scratcher of a
04:24final scene played out. After Captain Leo Davidson travels back through the electromagnetic storm in an
04:30attempt to get home, he crash lands in Washington, DC, and finds that the Lincoln Memorial has been
04:35replaced with a statue commemorating General Thayde. Moreover, the cops, firefighters, and news reporters
04:41who quickly arrive on the scene are all apes. What the hell?
04:45While it's understandable that Burton and company didn't want to merely rehash the original 1968 film's
04:50widely known twist, that the ape planet was Earth all along. Er, spoilers, I guess?
04:56This sequel-teasing cliffhanger proved so head-smackingly ridiculous that it killed most interest in another movie altogether.
05:03Hilariously, Burton himself explained in the film's DVD commentary that the cliffhanger wasn't really supposed to make any sense,
05:09but simply drop enough of a WTF bomb that it would leave audiences curious to know what the hell happened.
05:14Evidently, the gambit didn't quite pay off, as despite turning a decent profit, both Burton and Fox swore off a sequel,
05:21putting the franchise on ice until 2011's reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
05:26Can you remember another ending that made you audibly ask WTF just happened?
05:30Let us know down below in the comments section, my friends.
05:33Number 6, Mr. Sinister is coming, X-Men Apocalypse.
05:37Despite being the penultimate mainline X-Men movie, X-Men Apocalypse was actually intended to set up a whole new era of X-Men films,
05:44prior to Disney's acquisition of Fox.
05:47The post-credits scene showed a fleet of men in black suits raiding William Stryker's Weapon X facility and retrieving samples,
05:54before a closing shot of a briefcase reads Essex Corp.
05:57First and foremost, this meant absolutely nothing to non-comic book fans,
06:01who wouldn't in any way appreciate that this was teeing up Nathaniel Essex, aka Mr. Sinister,
06:07to be the X-Men series' next big bad.
06:09Secondly, given that this movie had literally just spent 144 minutes ruining one of the most iconic comic villains of all time,
06:16Apocalypse, why the hell would anyone be excited that the same creatives were adapting Mr. Sinister next?
06:22The most damning proof that nobody cared, though.
06:25X-Men Apocalypse underperformed at the box office,
06:27and follow-up Dark Phoenix, which ultimately didn't feature Mr. Sinister anyway,
06:31was an outright flop, effectively sealing the franchise's fate.
06:35Number 5, Daisy's sequel bait, Super Mario Bros.
06:39Super Mario Bros. may not be a very good movie,
06:42and certainly not a good adaptation of its video game namesake,
06:45but it gets points for its creative production design,
06:48and generally bonkers throw everything at the wall filmmaking.
06:51That doesn't mean that its hilariously optimistic cliffhanger ending in any way got audiences young or old hyped for a potential sequel, though.
06:59The final scene sees Princess Daisy rock up to Mario and Luigi's apartment,
07:04tossing a large gun and burned clothes,
07:06before insisting she needs their help,
07:08and that they're not going to believe what she's been through.
07:11Mario and Luigi quickly grab their wares,
07:13but before Daisy can explain what's up, the movie abruptly ends.
07:17Cliffhangers intended to set up sequels generally need to give audiences a little more than just this.
07:22Show them how the stakes are going to be raised for a sequel,
07:25or give them a glimpse of a new world or even the next movie's antagonist.
07:28Instead, Super Mario Bros. basically gave viewers close to nothing,
07:32and so it's a little surprise that few were enthused to see what happened next.
07:364. Let the Games Begin – Dracula Untold
07:39Shortly before Dracula Untold's release,
07:42the film reportedly underwent reshoots to retroactively fashion it as the first entry into Universal's new Dark Universe,
07:49a cinematic universe set to feature the studio's most iconic monsters,
07:53like the Mummy, the Wolfman, Frankenstein, and the Invisible Man.
07:56Despite this, Universal denied claims that Dracula Untold was the series' launching pad,
08:02perhaps in part because said reshoots resulted in such a lackluster, unimpressive setup for future stories.
08:07The film's tacked-on present-day epilogue sees Vlad, aka Dracula,
08:11meet up with a woman, Mina, who bears a strong resemblance to his dead wife, Marina.
08:16The Master Vampire, who first turned Vlad into a vampire, is then revealed to be watching them.
08:21And as they walk away, the Master Vampire quips,
08:24Let the Games Begin.
08:25Evidently, the ending placed Vlad in the present day in order to set up his future interactions with the other monsters in the Dark Universe,
08:32with the Master Vampire possibly acting as the Nick Fury-esque link between them all.
08:37Audiences were more confused than interested, though.
08:40And so, Universal decided to relaunch the Dark Universe with Tom Cruise's The Mummy a few years later,
08:46which similarly failed to strike a chord with viewers.
08:48Well, at least they tried. Twice.
08:50Number 3, Quintessa Lives, Transformers The Last Knight.
08:54Transformers The Last Knight may not have been a billion-dollar mega-hit like its predecessor,
08:58but it still grossed over $600 million worldwide,
09:01meaning that a hell of a lot of people went to see it.
09:04And so, why is it that not a single solitary soul can remember how it ended?
09:08Michael Bay's final Transformers film concluded with a few teases for the planned sixth entry,
09:13namely Decepticon leader Megatron still being at large,
09:16and the Cybertronian sorceress Quintessa having taken the guise of a human woman to continue her quest to destroy Earth.
09:23Audiences simply couldn't be compelled to give a damn.
09:26And so, following the film's fair box office underperformance,
09:29the decision was made to sack off the sixth film and rejig the series with Bumblebee,
09:34which operated as a prequel to the original 2007 Transformers.
09:38With the upcoming Transformers Rise of the Beast also taking place before the first Bayformers movie,
09:43it's safe to say that The Last Knight's cliffhanger received a vocal vote of no confidence from just about everybody.
09:49Number 2. The End? Flash Gordon
09:51Though you've probably seen Flash Gordon, do you remember that it ends with a blatant setup for a sequel?
09:57Don't feel bad if you don't, because it's a completely forgettable non-entity of a sequel tease.
10:02After the evil Ming the Merciless is killed and the day is saved,
10:05we cut back to Ming's magic power ring, which is picked up by a hand wearing a black glove.
10:10All while Ming's signature laugh rings out and The End? appears on screen.
10:15Again, it's perhaps the least interesting part of a thoroughly entertaining, unapologetically camped space opera.
10:21Enough that many forget that cliffhanger even happens at all.
10:24More to the point, audiences of its era clearly weren't enamoured much,
10:27given that Flash Gordon underperformed at the global box office,
10:30and only solidified itself as a cult classic in the years that followed.
10:34And given that any prospect of a sequel had dried up long before the movie became a home video hit,
10:39the sequel tease again fell upon deaf ears.
10:42Number 1. Dom and Little B's Ambiguous Fates? Fast X
10:46The generally middling reception to the most recent Fast and the Furious movie, Fast X or Fast 10 or whatever it is,
10:53was topped off by the mesmerizingly cheeky manner in which it ended.
10:56Or rather, didn't end.
10:58After Dom rescues his son, Little B, from villain Dante Reyes,
11:01he's forced to drive off the edge of a dam in order to avoid two remote-controlled trucks from crashing into him at the top.
11:07Dom's car eventually hits the water at the bottom,
11:10and both father and son manage to escape to the surface, mostly unscathed.
11:14But at that moment, Dante then blows up the dam,
11:17leaving the fates of Dom and Little B apparently uncertain moments before the end credits roll.
11:22Needless to say, the series has such comically low stakes for its characters,
11:26who can be constantly resurrected without consequence or logic,
11:29that it's near impossible to be even remotely concerned for Dom or his son.
11:34We know they're fine, so what's the point?
11:35To hammer home the utter listlessness of this cliffhanger,
11:38the film's final scene immediately afterwards brings Giselle back from the dead.
11:42Again, compounding that death means absolutely nothing in these movies.
11:46Because the audience isn't worried for Dom or Little B,
11:49and few will give much of a damn that Giselle is back either,
11:52the whole ending falls laughably flat.
11:54At least Hobbs is back though, right?
11:56Yeah, missed that goatee.
11:58And that's our list, know of any other movie cliffhangers nobody cared about?
12:02Well, let us know all about them in the comment section right down below,
12:04and don't forget to like, share, and click on that subscribe button while you're down there.
12:08Also, if you're a fan of this sort of cliffhanging stuff,
12:10then please head on over to whatculture.com and find some more fantastic articles,
12:14just like the one this video you're watching right now is based on.
12:17I've been Gareth from whatculture.com, cheers for watching this particular video today.
12:21Hopefully I'll see your faces rather soon, but in the meantime, just be good to yourself.
12:25Bye bye!
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