10 "Ambiguous" Movie Endings (That Totally Aren't)
There's nothing to debate about these endings.
Though audiences generally crave a concrete ending to stories, ambiguous final scenes can also be extremely powerful, leaving viewers to debate a film's closing moments for years, even decades, in turn allowing the film to live on forever more in the collective consciousness.
Yet there are also times where an "ambiguous" ending isn't really ambiguous at all - it's just that the movie didn't spell everything out with a neon signpost.
Inspired by this recent Reddit thread on the very subject, these 10 movie endings are all widely touted to be agonisingly ambiguous, despite that not really being the case in any way.
Indeed, you can save your breath tirelessly debating the true meaning of these endings by looking at the facts as presented by the movie and seeing that there's only one logical answer.
There are many great ambiguous movie endings out there, but these aren't quite it, no matter what the internet might tell you.
10. Blake Isn't Robin, Alfred Didn't Hallucinate Bruce - The Dark Knight Rises
Sure, the ending to Christopher Nolan's Inception is ambiguous, but The Dark Knight Rises? Not a chance.
Even more than a decade after the superhero threequel's release, many fans swear down that two aspects of its ending are up for debate rather than being, y'know, exactly what you see.
First up, there's John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), who after inheriting the Batman (Christian Bale) mantle, reveals his legal first name to be Robin.
While clearly nothing more than a cheeky wink-wink nod to Batman's legendary comrade, some took this as a suggestion that Blake would become Robin, rather than the movie's very clear indication that he will be the new Batman.
And then there's Alfred (Michael Caine), who in the film's final scene is shown dining in Florence, where he nods towards Bruce, who is revealed to have faked his death and is now settled down with Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway).
Some maintain that this was simply a dream or hallucination of Alfred's, but again, nothing in the film even remotely points to anything but Bruce faking his death and finding peace in anonymity.