3. The Lord of the Rings (1978)
The Lord of the Rings, Ralph Bakshi's animated retelling of Tolkien's classic, is legitimately a movie that ends far too soon, because... well, it actually does. This standalone feature, which was presumably supposed to be one part in a continuing series (had it made a little more cash) looks to be tackling the entire trilogy of
Lord of the Rings novels, only to, uh, not do that at all. Instead, Bakshi's movie gets to the end of
The Two Towers, with Gandalf saving the day at Helm's Deep, and that's it. The movie ends with an entire third of the story to go. There were plans to slap a "Part One" on the title to this movie originally, but back in the '70s, sequels and extra parts weren't really that popular (what a time it was!) and the producers didn't think that audiences would pay to see something that was incomplete. So "
The Lord of the Rings" it was, a move that presumably irked even more people when - 132 minutes in - the movie finished without explaining what happened to Sam and Frodo and the One Ring. And that was kind of the point of the book. Well, at least we have Peter Jackson's version now.