Vanilla Sky Ending: Every Frame Explained

13. Martin Luther King Jr.

Though the montage largely skirts clear of politics, there is nevertheless a grainy, zoomed-in image of Martin Luther King Jr. in the middle of it all.

More than any overt social commentary, though, this is likely Crowe riffing on one of the primal memories of his own youth, of a civil activist being slain in cold blood.

Perhaps not-so-coincidentally, David is 33 years old at the start of the movie, and so this would mean he was actually born in 1968, the very same year that King was assassinated. Spooky.