1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
I'm halfsies on this one. I like it visually, I love the score, the scale of it all, the performances, and the story. But out of all the films that begin coherently and cut to a strange ending, this one surely takes the cake. Two words have come to define what this film means to me and they are: space baby. I don't even know what to say. Maybe Kubrick was going for the personal ending, the whatever it means to you is what it is, but...there was a space baby. Things got way out of hand when Dave started to go through what seemed like Tomorrowland's Adventure Through Inner Space until suddenly he gets to the old man version of himself who eats dinner and then looks at and even older version of himself lying in bed, dying, pointing to the monolith, before turning into a mythical space baby and watching over the earth forever and ever the end. Someone said Kubrick was taking a lot of LSD at this point in his career and that would make sense. I'd just love to see the pitch for this. "So we cut to Dave, traveling through space until he reaches his own future through a vortex, like a movie that will come out in the future called 'Donnie Darko', whatever that means. And Dave sees old Dave who sees even older Dave we sees the monolith who turns Dave into a baby who becomes the guardian of earth." And the execs just said, "Whatever all that means, yes. A thousand times yes. Now let's take a hit." This doesn't even come near to covering all the strange endings out there. There's the comment section below, lets see what you got.