10 Lame Movie Twists That Ruined Great Endings
6. None Of It Was Real - Life Of Pi
Based on the mind-bending novel of the same name, Ang Lee's Life of Pi was a visual masterpiece that should have been remembered for years for its brilliant use of both subtle and overt CGI to suggest an unreliable narrator. However, if audiences remember anything about this movie, its just how much of a hindrance that unreliability ended up being.
The film is framed as a writer asking an Indian man, Pi about his life's story. Pi weaves an epic and philosophical tale of survival against the odds about himself as a young boy when his father's menagerie of animals, being transported to North America, was destroyed in a storm. This ultimately leaves Pi adrift in a lifeboat with a desperate but proud tiger as his only company and the two must battle the elements, nature, each other, and even divinity itself in order to live long enough for their boat to finally wash ashore in Mexico.
It is a beautiful story and told by one of cinematography's greatest minds, but the entire narrative is completely undermined in one last-minute twist. Pi all but admits that the story is completely made up and that he'd actually been on the boat with his mother, a sailor, and a malicious chef who killed them both. After over an hour of harrowing but astounding fantasy, the last thing audiences needed was an unhealthy overdose of reality.