10 Recent Movie Moments Nobody Saw Coming
Transcript
00:00 We, as audience members, often feel like we've seen it all.
00:03 And for the most part, we'd be right.
00:05 But every so often, a film will do something so totally unexpected
00:09 that all we can do is sit there in sheer stunned amazement.
00:13 And so, with that in mind, I'm Ellie with WhatCulture,
00:16 here with 10 recent movie moments nobody saw coming.
00:20 Number 10. Megan sings "Titanium" in Megan
00:24 The marketing for Megan did an absolutely outstanding job
00:28 of selling the film's darkly comedic and surreal nature,
00:32 focused on the titular android kicking ass and looking damn slick while doing so.
00:36 But the trailers had enough restraint not to spoil one of the film's best moments,
00:42 a scene that is both terrifying and hilarious,
00:45 and quickly blew up on social media following the film's release.
00:49 At the end of the second act, once Megan has caused the death of young KD's bully, Brandon,
00:54 KD gets ready for bed and asks Megan about what happened.
00:57 Megan cryptically retorts that she'll never let KD come to harm ever again,
01:01 before launching into a tender, if fundamentally robotic,
01:04 lullaby rendition of David Guetta and Sia's 2011 pop hit "Titanium".
01:10 It's an especially inspired choice, given that Megan is herself comprised of titanium,
01:16 but beyond that achieves a mix of being outrageously funny and utterly horrifying.
01:22 Number 9. The closing montage of cinema in Babylon
01:26 Damien Chazelle's Babylon is unquestionably one of the most ambitious and unhinged movies
01:32 of the past year. A debauched three-hour fever which appears to reach peak insanity
01:37 when protagonist Manny is brought to an underground place of revelry called
01:40 the arsehole of Los Angeles. But the most bizarre and unexpected moment
01:44 comes right at the very end of this film, when Manny returns to Los Angeles after roughly 20
01:50 years away and heads to a local cinema to watch a screening of the newly released Singing in the
01:54 Rain. Manny is moved to tears by the musical's iconic titular sequence, while remembering his
02:00 own past in Hollywood. And then the scene transitions into a montage celebrating the
02:05 most technologically groundbreaking films in cinema history, spanning all the way from A Trip
02:11 to the Moon, to The Jazz Singer, The Wizard of Oz, The Matrix, Tron, Terminator 2, and perhaps
02:16 most jarringly of all, Avatar. The montage ends with a blink and you'll miss it meta-flourish,
02:22 a glimpse of a slate from Chazelle's own film, before cutting back to a tearful Manny for a
02:27 few seconds and then finally rolling credits. Some found that this montage was a glorious,
02:33 triumphant celebration of cinema, while others felt that a world-class filmmaker ending his film
02:40 on a glorified YouTube supercut was a tacky and uninspired choice. Either way though,
02:47 nobody saw it coming. Nobody expected to see the "Navi" in Chazelle's period Hollywood epic.
02:53 8. Scrooge's Death by Chimney in Violent Night
02:58 Though it didn't surprise anyone that holiday-themed action flick Violent Night boasted
03:03 its fair share of grisly gore, nobody could have anticipated quite how brutally the film's
03:11 antagonist would meet his maker. Violent Night's big bad is Mr. Scrooge, the leader of a gang of
03:17 mercenaries who plot to steal $300 million from the Lightstone family's vault. Of course,
03:22 they didn't count on the actual Santa Claus showing up to stop them, and after he and the
03:26 family members dismantle most of the mercs, it comes down to Santa taking on Scrooge.
03:32 Scrooge manages to get the drop on Santa, and just when old Saint Nick's goose appears to be cooked,
03:37 Santa uses his magical powers to force himself up the nearby chimney. And because Santa grabs
03:42 hold of Scrooge, he drags him up the chimney too, explosively obliterating his body as it's
03:47 forcibly crushed into the chimney's confines. When Santa emerges out the other side, he's left
03:52 holding Scrooge's gory, dismembered torso, which he promptly hurls down to the ground with a
03:57 satisfying squelch. Even for the violent standards of the film up until this point, this was quite
04:04 the gnarly kill to send audiences home with. 7. Lydia Conducts a Monster Hunter Concert in Tar
04:11 Todd Haynes' Oscar-nominated drama Tar was one of 2022's most unforgettable films,
04:17 centered around a celebrated conductor, Lydia Tar, who is accused of sexual abuse.
04:22 At the end of the film, Lydia's reputation is left in tatters as she's removed as chief
04:26 conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic and consequently moves to the Philippines in
04:30 order to keep working. The closing moments show Lydia preparing to play with her new orchestra,
04:36 the message seemingly being that cancel culture doesn't exist and Lydia will continue to make a
04:41 solid living regardless of her acts, until the final seconds reveal precisely what she's conducting.
04:47 As Lydia begins conducting, Haynes cuts to an audience full of Monster Hunter cosplayers,
04:52 revealing that she's conducting the score for one of the iconic video games.
04:56 Now, the ending is in no way a slight against Monster Hunter fans, but rather that for Lydia,
05:01 conducting a video game score to an audience full of people dressed as its characters
05:06 is a colossal fall from grace from her prior glory.
05:09 Some eagle-eyed viewers may have spotted that Monster Hunters was credited in the film's lengthy
05:14 opening title sequence, but it would have been safe to assume that the video game would just
05:19 appear on a TV screen at some point in the film, rather than actually being a major plot point to
05:25 the film's ending. But at the same time, it made for a hilarious and totally unexpected conclusion
05:30 to the story. Number six, human s'mores in the menu. The menu boasts one of the strongest and
05:37 most brilliantly enigmatic first acts of any movie released last year, until it becomes clear that
05:43 celebrity chef Julian Stoick has a major bone to pick with pretty much everybody assembled in his
05:49 restaurant that evening. Julian's entire ploy has been to end the night with everyone in the
05:53 restaurant, including his guests, his staff, and himself dying, serving as an ultimate statement
05:59 of his psychotic disillusionment with the fancies of fine dining. And so Julian's final dish is a
06:06 dessert like no other, the most effed up version of s'mores ever made. Julian, clearly no fan of
06:14 the childhood classic, has his staff cover the floor in crushed crackers and adorn the diners
06:19 with cloaks made of marshmallows and chocolate hats. Julian then sets himself and the restaurant
06:24 on fire, with the diners helplessly watching as their chocolate hats melt, and eventually,
06:29 an explosive barrel blows the entire restaurant to smithereens. The only one who manages to escape,
06:35 of course, is Margot, who, in addition to being an unexpected guest at the restaurant that night,
06:40 had the presence of mind to ask for a cheeseburger to go. Given that many expected the menu to take
06:46 the cannibalism route, this was a rather surprising and hilariously messed up narrative turn indeed.
06:53 Number 5. Shyamalan sells an air fryer in Knock at the Cabin
06:58 M. Night Shyamalan has appeared in the vast majority of his movies, often in surprisingly
07:03 large roles. Yet in his latest film, Knock at the Cabin, he opted to appear in a fleeting cameo,
07:09 so as not to distract from the confined apocalyptic scenario. If you're wondering how he managed to
07:14 insert himself into a film that is singularly focused on seven people facing off inside a cabin,
07:19 he appears, for a few seconds, on a TV inside the cabin. Midway through the movie, as the
07:27 intruders are cycling through the TV channels, an infomercial shows a host, played by Shyamalan,
07:32 peddling an air fryer that's apparently really, really good for cooking chicken.
07:37 Considering that so many of Shyamalan's cameos often have some sort of impact on the plot,
07:43 usually in distracting ways, it was really fun to just see him playing such a gleefully dumb
07:49 and unnecessary role for a change. According to the filmmaker himself, he almost didn't appear
07:55 in the film at all. He said, "Sometimes I'm not in the films because I just can't. It doesn't
07:59 seem right. And this one I thought, 'For sure, I'm not going to be in.' That's what I thought,
08:04 for sure. And then in pre-production, I was like, 'You know what? I have a funny idea.'
08:08 And then everybody enjoyed the concept so much, I was like, 'All right, let's go shoot.' It was the
08:13 first thing we shot, this thing that's in Knock at the Cabin. And I was like, 'This is never going
08:18 to end up in the movie.' And it did. And the editor was like, 'I love it. It's so funny.'
08:23 And I was like, 'You sure?'" Number four, Keith dies at the end of the first act in Barbarian.
08:29 The pre-release buzz surrounding Zack Krager's mesmerizing horror debut Barbarian relentlessly
08:34 implored audiences to know as little about it as possible going in because it massively subverted
08:40 expectations. And even if you concluded from those hints that Bill Skarsgård's male lead,
08:45 Keith, wasn't a total creeper with malevolent designs on protagonist Tess, you probably still
08:52 didn't see his abrupt, brutal demise coming. Keith and Tess end up sharing the Airbnb that
08:57 they were double booked into. And after Tess discovers a hidden corridor in the house's
09:02 basement, Keith goes down to investigate. He doesn't return. And so Tess follows him downstairs
09:07 where she discovers a secret underground tunnel and eventually stumbles across a deeply alarmed
09:12 Keith. A confused Keith tries to get Tess to follow him out of the tunnel in the wrong direction.
09:17 But amid their scuffle, Keith is suddenly attacked by the gigantic mutated woman living down there,
09:23 who smashes his head to a bloody pulp by slamming it against the tunnel's wall.
09:27 Again, even if you predicted that Keith was just a nice, slightly awkward guy,
09:32 the jolting quality of his death is something nobody saw coming.
09:37 Number three, David Lynch cameos as John Ford in The Fablemans
09:42 Steven Spielberg's new movie The Fablemans doesn't really offer up much in terms of surprises. And
09:48 that's absolutely fine. It's a well-made, quasi-dramatization of Spielberg's own life,
09:54 and it doesn't really need to shock the audience. But the legendary filmmaker did,
09:59 nevertheless, serve up one jaw-dropper of a cameo in the film's final moments,
10:03 when young filmmaker Sammy does some work on the sitcom Hogan's Heroes and is by chance
10:09 introduced to director John Ford, who happens to be working in a nearby office.
10:13 The kicker? Ford is played by none other than David Lynch, who sports an eye patch and makes
10:19 a meal of lighting a cigar before dispensing some wise filmmaking advice to Sammy.
10:24 Given the larger-than-life quality of Ford himself, it was a fitting yet wildly shocking
10:31 choice to have him played by such an eccentric and unique director.
10:36 Number two, the Mona Lisa gets destroyed in Glass Onion, a Knives Out mystery
10:41 Glass Onion is a tremendous murder mystery, where the true ruin of the movie's villain
10:46 isn't their death or incarceration, but the total destruction of their reputation.
10:52 Tech bro hyper douche Miles Braun is ultimately foiled at film's end when Helen Brand uses
10:57 Braun's alternate fuel, clear, against him. Helen uses the unstable fuel to spark an explosion in
11:03 Braun's home, before unlocking the protective casing keeping the Mona Lisa, which Braun had
11:08 on loan from the Louvre, safe. As such, the Mona Lisa is shockingly burned to a crisp along with
11:13 Braun's house, ensuring that just as he wished, his name would be forever mentioned in the same
11:18 sentence as the Mona Lisa, given that he will be credited with the $870 million painting's
11:24 destruction. Even though Rian Johnson's film plays a bit of a Chekhov's painting with the
11:28 Mona Lisa by introducing it and its protective casing early on, Johnson also does a great job
11:33 shifting the audience's focus away from it, enough that when Helen finally dies for the
11:38 control switch, it's a genuine "oh no" moment. Though we don't get to see the public reaction
11:45 to the Mona Lisa's destruction, it's safe to assume that Braun will be a laughing stock for
11:49 the rest of his life, regardless as to whether any criminal charges actually stuck or not.
11:55 1. Colin Firth's Pathetic Handjob in Empire of Light
11:59 Empire of Light may have scored mixed reviews from critics and failed to make much of a dent
12:04 with Oscar voters, but this otherwise modest, sedate drama does feature one unforgettably
12:11 toe-curling scene. At the start of the movie, we're quickly introduced to protagonist Hillary
12:16 Small and her humdrum life working as the duty manager at Margate's Empire Cinema.
12:22 Shortly after arriving at work, she's called into the office of her boss Donald Ellis,
12:25 at which point Sam Mendes cuts to Hillary administering the world's most depressing
12:30 handjob to Donald. Even ignoring the massive impropriety of the power dynamics at play,
12:36 the seedy low lighting combined with Donald's desperate attempts to convince Hillary to give
12:40 him oral sex instead make it an excruciating scene to sit through. Thankfully, Mendes doesn't force
12:46 it upon us for too long, but as part of a card-carrying Oscar-bait movie that marketed itself
12:53 as a "classy" drama about the power of cinema, this was the last thing anybody expected to see.
13:00 And that concludes our list. If you think we missed any, then do let us know in the comments
13:04 below. And while you're there, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell.
13:09 Also, head over to Twitter and follow us there. And I can be found across various social medias
13:13 just by searching Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with WhatCulture. I hope you have a magical
13:18 day and I'll see you real soon.