10 Movies That Secretly Revealed Their Endings
Spoiler alert!
There's nothing like sitting through a two-and-half-hour movie and having every prediction you've made turn out to be completely wrong. However if filmmakers really want to take an audience for a ride then they'll slip in a big twists right at the climax.
But subverting expectations for the sake of it generally rings hollow. If you're going to end your movie with a twist, then you better have laced some clues throughout the whole narrative. A nice bit of subtle foreshadowing is one thing, but if you can reveal the plot early and have no one notice, that's the sign of a good script.
Like a magician's trick, this usually comes down to a simple case of misdirection - have the audience look at something seemingly significant while hiding the key to the plot in plain sight. When the big reveal finally comes the audience is usually dumfounded by the simplicity of it all.
These are the movies that had even the most stringent viewers slapping themselves for not predicting their endings.
10. The Prestige - The Twins Were Hiding In Plain Sight
Christopher Nolan's 2004 mystery-thriller centred around the rivalry of two magicians. Christian Bale stars as Alfred Borden who faces off against Robert Angier (Huge Jackman). The former friends soon become entangled in a bitter feud over who can invent the greatest on-stage illusion.
Like the film's protagonists, the narrative opts for misdirection while leaving clues to its deception in plain sight. Alfred Borden's most tantalising trick involved teleporting himself from one side of the stage to another. It's eventually revealed that like many of his tricks, Borden achieved this only because he had a secret twin brother.
Nolan left clues to this reveal throughout the entire movie. During the opening sequence a passage is read from Borden's diary, stating: "We were two young men at the start of a great career, two young men dedicated to an illusion." The way this is framed leads the audience to believe it is in regards to Alfred Borden and his rival Robert Angier - in fact this is referring to Borden and his brother.
The twins shared everything, even a wife, but not even she was aware of the deception. In several scenes she unknowingly makes reference to the trickery, noting that when Borden says "I Love You" he doesn't always seem to mean it - indeed, only one of the brothers was truly in love with his wife.