Taxi Driver
Taxi Driver stars Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, a former U.S. Marine who takes on a new job as a taxi driver in New York City. Struggling with a severe lack of sleep, Bickle goes on a killing spree that ends with him trying to shoot himself. Before he can take his life, the police arrive on the scene.
The very next scene, however, shows Bickle back to business as usual. While fans thought that the killing spree was a dream, director Martin Scorsese confirmed the murders did happen, though he didn’t say if Bickle died or not.
Vanilla Sky
While some movie endings are a little too ambiguous, Vanilla Sky director Cameron Crowe has complained that his ending wasn’t vague enough. The film follows Tom Cruise’s character, who suffers a terrible experience that leaves him horribly disfigured.
As the movie progresses, we learn that Cruise’s character is actually in a dream. In the end, he can choose to live the dream again, or he can fall off a building and wake himself up. The final scene is Cruise opening his eyes, showing that he chose to live in the real world rather than existing in his fantasy.
Birdman
The director of Birdman once stated that the ending “could be interpreted as many ways as there are seats in the theater.” At the end of the film, Riggan (Michael Keaton) jumps out the window to his supposed death. When his daughter rushes to the window, however, she looks up instead of down.
Some fans took this to mean that Riggan found the freedom he was searching for and flew away. In reality, his daughter’s upward glance is likely a red herring. The ending is probably exactly what it looks like, with no redemption for this destructive character.
Interstellar
Any movie that deals with space and time paradoxes will always be confusing. Interstellar uses the ideas of quantum physics to push its main character, Cooper, into a black hole. In this fourth dimension, Cooper can interact with the past.
To help save mankind, Cooper chooses to interact with a past version of his daughter, giving her the equation she needs to save the earth. By the end of the movie, he’s reunited with his little girl, who is now a much older woman. Although they have little time left together, their prior work succeeded in saving the human race.
12 Monkeys
Another time travel movie, 12 Monkeys, focuses on the idea that time travel can’t change the past. At the end of the film, Cole goes back in time and ends up getting shot when he attacks Dr. Peters, fulfilling the scene from the beginning when young Cole watches an unknown man die.
Although Cole didn’t change anything for himself, he was able to get some information to the future that helped create a vaccine. The movie focuses on changing the future, not the past. Hence the “insurance agent” follows Peters at the end of the movie.