10 Movies That Totally Surprised You When They Ended
8. True Lies
As James Cameron just proved once again in Avatar: The Way of Water, he is the crowned king of the third act - a filmmaker who knows how to deliver an exhilarating finale that sends audiences home satisfied.
And though Cameron also proved himself to be a master of the extended finale way back in Aliens, audiences still likely didn't expect his 1994 action-comedy True Lies to wrap up when it did.
At almost exactly the two-hour mark, spy Harry Tasker (Arnold Schwarzenegger) saves his wife Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis) and ensures the bad guys' nuke detonates safely on a remote island.
But because that's apparently not enough for Cameron, Harry then learns that his daughter Dana (Eliza Dushku) has been kidnapped by the still-at-large terrorist Salim Abu Aziz (Art Malik).
And so, the movie continues for an extra 20 minutes as Harry steals a harrier jet, rescues Dana, and wrecks the remaining terrorists.
It's a fun sequence that culminates in one of the greatest one-liners in action film history, but also arguably a case of climax fatigue, given how tacked-on this second-third act feels when the audience was just about ready to go home.
Aziz and the other terrorists could've easily just been killed by the nuke on the island and saved everybody 20 minutes, but as we all know, Cameron doesn't do anything the quick and easy way.