12 Most Hated Blockbuster Movie Endings
Hollywood doesn't always know how to wrap things up nicely.
Given that it's the last thing you see before getting up and leaving the cinema, an ending can have a serious impact on how you feel about a film. No one ever forgets that scintillating final shot of the DeLorean taking flight and rushing into the camera in Back To The Future, or that last devastating image of the Statue of Liberty in Planet of the Apes.
More recently, the final scenes of Avengers: Infinity War have had a pretty significant impact on audiences worldwide. Plenty have declared it to be one of the boldest, most unexpected blockbuster endings ever, whilst others have been less happy, predicting (no doubt correctly) that the upcoming fourth Avengers movie will render most of it null and void.
Still, while the ending of Avengers: Infinity War may have proved a little controversial, it isn't necessarily one that audiences and critics everywhere have outright hated. Endings so bad they induce groans, sighs of bewilderment, or - in the worst instances - snorts of unintended laughter.
Sometimes they make no sense; sometimes they're just silly; sometimes they're trying desperately to set up sequels which never happen. They're not always enough to completely ruin an otherwise good film, but they are enough to leave you with a bad taste in the mouth once the credits finally roll.
12. Planet Of The Apes (2001)
Tim Burton's 2001 reboot of the classic science fiction series came with pretty high expectations on its shoulders. Unfortunately, while it may boast a strong cast and some great ape make-up, it wound up one of the most underwhelming blockbusters of the past 20 years, as well as bearing very little resemblance to the original films.
The thing is, we might have been able to excuse how overblown and absurd it all is, were it not for the utterly incomprehensible climactic twist. Having helped overthrow the tyrannical apes ruling over the mysterious alien world, Mark Wahlberg's astronaut goes back through the wormhole that brought him there and returns home - only to come face to face with a Washington Monument at which General Thade (Tim Roth) has replaced Abraham Lincoln, and find that apes have taken over.
As to quite when or how Thade was able to get back to Earth, and travel backwards in time, without anyone noticing: well, that's anyone's guess.
Fair enough, they didn't want to directly recreate the original's 'it was Earth all along' denouement, but it beggars belief that they really thought this was a suitable replacement. And it certainly didn't help set up a sequel, even if that had been the plan: Planet of the Apes would once again remain dead until the new reboot trilogy began in 2011.