10 Movie Cliffhangers Nobody Cared About
7. Ape-raham Lincoln - Planet Of The Apes (2001)
If you were unlucky enough to watch Tim Burton's ill-fated 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes in the cinema, you might recall how you could hear a pin drop when that hysterical head-scratcher of a final scene played out.
After Captain Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) travels back through the electromagnetic storm in an attempt to get home, he crash-lands in Washington, D.C. and finds that the Lincoln Memorial has been replaced with a statue commemorating General Thade (Tim Roth).
Moreover, the cops, firefighters, and news reporters who quickly arrive on the scene are all apes. What. The. Hell.
While it's understandable that Burton and company didn't want to merely rehash the original 1968 film's widely-known twist - that the ape planet was Earth all along - this sequel-teasing cliffhanger proved so head-smackingly ridiculous that it killed most interest in another movie altogether.
Hilariously, Burton himself explained in the film's DVD commentary that the cliffhanger wasn't really supposed to make sense, but simply drop enough of a WTF bomb that it would leave audiences curious to know what the hell happened.
Evidently the gambit didn't quite pay off, as despite turning a decent profit, both Burton and Fox swore off a sequel, putting the franchise on ice until 2011's reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes.