9 Movies You Didn't Realise Stole Their Endings

4. Transformers: Age Of Extinction Stole... The Open-Ending From Prometheus

The Ending: Normally the ending of a Transformers film goes something like this: explosions in a city, bad guy snarls, human character kills secondary villain, Optimus Prime brutally murders the big bad, 360 degree shot of the gang at sunset with Peter Cullen saying something pseudo-deep.

The fourth film mixed this up; on top of all the above, it added an extra scene that set up a sequel (because the plots are so important), with Optimus Prime jetting off into space to find his creator.

Where You Saw It First: Prometheus started life as a simple prequel to Alien, but Ridley Scott wanted to make something that probed our existence, not just xenomorphs'. The film provided hints at the events leading into the original sci-fi horror, but after spending much time in ambiguity (thanks to Lost's Damon Lindelof on scripting duties) it ended rather openly with Shaw jetting off into space to find her creator.

Although the action was still unwatchable and the camera obsessed with the female stars, Transformers 4 felt very much like Michael Bay was trying to address his critics, throwing in ideas from numerous recent films in a move intended to show depth but only makes him look more like a hack - on top of Prometheus' narrative drive, there's Bourne, Alien and Marvel inflections to events.

3. Moonraker Stole... The Trench Run From Star Wars

The Ending: The Bond series had never been one for realism, but Moonraker certainly took it to its extreme (next to this an invisible car seems logical). The plot involves a Nazi-inflected scheme to kill everyone on Earth and repopulate it with a genetically superior master race and is enacted from an evil space station.

The final battle sees a bunch of space men engage in a tense laser battle while Bond escapes and foils the plan thanks to some precise flying and surprisingly accurate, last minute shooting. Oh, and Jaws falls in love because... we actually have no idea.

Where You Saw It First: Star Wars ends... oh, you know how Star Wars ends. We'll not insult you with a summary. It's no secret that Moonraker is 007's attempt to cash-in on Star Wars, which completely revitalised sci-fi in the late seventies.

The Bond movie is one of the better imitators - it is Bond after all and Jaws is still an entertaining henchman - but its finale is essentially a repurposing of Star Wars'; spacemen replace TIE Fighters and X-Wings and globes of poison replace the exhaust port.

Contributor
Contributor

Film Editor (2014-2016). Loves The Usual Suspects. Hates Transformers 2. Everything else lies somewhere in the middle. Once met the Chuckle Brothers.