9 Movies You Didn't Realise Stole Their Endings
7. Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull Stole... The Villain Death From Raiders Of The Lost Ark
The Ending: After being introduced stuffed into the trunk of a car, proving incapable of capturing his previous action beats and handing over much of the fighting to his son (wait, he has a son?!), Indiana Jones somehow makes it to the city of Akator.
There he puts the Crystal Skull on a skeleton and CGI erupts; a bunch of bodies merge into a generic alien and indiscernable things fly about. In amongst all that, Cate Blanchett's Irina Spalko gets her head burned from the inside.
Where You Saw It First: This is the exact same way the villains in Raiders Of The Lost Ark were dispatched. After being introduced as a bad-ass, doing lots of bad-ass action and handing much of the fighting over to no-one, Indiana Jones gets captured by Nazis who open the titular ark and have their faces melt in an assortment of creative ways.
Unlike Crystal Skull, this had some logic that had been worked into the plot; it had been clearly stated you couldn't look in the ark. The Indiana Jones series had always followed a formula to some degree, but in the original trilogy it never got in the way of the story at hand.
Everything in the belated fourth movie seems built around invoking Raiders and nowhere is it more obvious than with the villain's death.
6. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Stole... The Retired Hero From The Dark Knight Rises
The Ending: In what is one of the most unsurprising moments in summer movies since Benedict Cumberbatch revealed he wasn't actually John 'Generic Name' Harrison, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 recreated The Night Gwen Stacey Died with all the tact you'd expect from a film featuring Jamie Foxx going full nerd. Still, at least it shook things up.
With his girlfriend dead, Peter Parker put his superhero antics behind him. That is until a new threat arrives in the form of a hamming-up Paul Giamatti, bringing Peter out of retirement.
Where You Saw It First: That is literally the first act of the The Dark Knight Rises, except in Nolan's case the girlfriend death is both shocking and emotional while the retirement is for more than a two minute scene rushed by so fast it has little effect.
It's like Marc Webb (or ghost director Sony Pictures) saw The Dark Knight Rises and thought "we need to copy that too." In fact, that's probably what happened. After taking from The Dark Knight Trilogy and essentially riding the shared-universe bandwagon, what's next on Spider-Man's list?
We're betting The Amazing Spider-Man 3 will see Peter jetting off on an epic space adventure with a talking squirrel and humanoid fern.
5. The Machinist Stole... The Twist From Fight Club
The Ending: The Machinist, otherwise known as Christian Bale Goes Hideously Stick Thin Part 1, is the story of Trevor Reznik, a machine operator played by a stick thin Christian Bale (who'd have thought it?). Throughout the film he feels like he's been followed by co-worker Ivan, a guy so sinister he'd creep out Patrick Bateman.
Trying to figure out what he wants, Trevor tracks Ivan's car registration, only to discover it's registered to him. And slowly from thereon it becomes clear that Ivan is actually in Trevor's mind, a form of his guilt for a previously committed hit and run.
Where You Saw It First: It's impossible to not sit through The Machinist for the first time and not feeling that it's going to pull a Fight Club.
David Fincher's meditation on commercial culture and machismo ends with the same imaginary friend reveal; Tyler Durden, the man who has "liberated" Edward Norton's narrator is in fact a figment of his imagination, the expression of an ideal man devoid of all his faults.
There's a lot of time in The Machinist between the first suggestion of who Ivan is and its confirmation, which only serves to exacerbate the similarities. However, this is the only real link between the films; although they share elements they're exploring totally different things.