10 More Awesome Plot Twists That Totally Saved Terrible Movies
1. The Moon Was Built By Ancient Humans - Moonfall
There's a strong argument to be made that Moonfall is the worst major release of 2022 so far - a shambolically stupid sci-fi disaster film from the man who popularised the genre to modern audiences, Roland Emmerich.
The film chronicles humanity's existence being threatened by the Moon itself, which appears to be falling out of orbit and heading towards Earth.
Overall it's as spectacular and spectacularly stupid as that logline would suggest, awash in cringe-worthy melodramatic subplots, horrendous dialogue, and embarrassing amounts of product placement
The trailers ended up spoiling what appeared to be the movie's big twist, that an alien entity is actually residing on the Moon and responsible for its destabilised gravity.
However, Emmerich actually has an altogether nuttier rug-pull in store for audiences, as the third act reveals that the Moon was a megastructure created billions of years ago by humanity's ancestors, a technologically advanced race far beyond present-day humans.
The Moon was built to serve as an ark for their kind after an AI they created went rogue and attempted to wipe them out - that AI being the extraterrestrial entity on the Moon throughout the film.
As if this isn't insane enough, Moonfall then climaxes with eccentric conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (John Bradley) sacrificing himself to destroy the rogue AI, after which it's revealed that his consciousness has been replicated by the Moon's benign AI operating system, allowing him to live on.
Much like Malignant, that finale is bats**t bonkers enough to justify what is otherwise a groan-inducingly awful movie.