9 Movies You Didn't Realise Stole Their Endings

1. Every Marvel Phase 2 Movie Stole... The Epic Third Act From The Avengers

The Ending: The final battle of Iron Man 3 sees Tony Stark unleash his forty-odd suits of armour and engage in an explosive, three-dimensional firefight with the Extremis soldiers. Thor: The Dark World climaxes with the Dark Elves invading Greenwich and Thor and his gang tackling them in a dimension-hopping showdown.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier has a fight in the skies above Washington with the heroes sending helicarriers crashing down. Guardians Of The Galaxy ends with an epic final fight above Xandar, with the Nova Corp. engaging Ronan's Kree soldiers and the heroes fighting for billions of lives, with one of their own seemingly sacrificing themselves.

Where You Saw It First: All these endings are fun watches, but they're essentially slight variations of The Battle of New York from The Avengers. In that film you have an ensemble hero team (Cap 2, Guardians) taking on a massive army of villains (Iron Man, Thor, Cap, Guardians) who come from a portal (Thor) in aerial combat (Iron Man, Cap, Guardians) with millions of lives in the balance (Thor, Guardians), with one main character seemingly killed (Guardians).

Much of Phase II relied on conventions set in The Avengers (just look at the prevalence of humour), but it's at its most noticeable in the CGI splurge finales. The films are still fun, but the super studio needs to be careful they don't fall too far into formula.