Movie endings, they’re usually pretty straight forward right? Everything pays off, the main characters learn something, and our heroes ride off into the sunset. Sometimes though, we don’t get the typical ending from a movie, we get something much more nuanced, complex and open ended. The kind of endings that leave things up in the air for all of us to debate and theorise on until we’re blue in the face. With Movie Endings Explained, we aim to delve into some of the more ambiguous and mysterious endings to films that have left audiences scratching their heads for years, and to attempt to explain them. In most cases, a definitive answer isn’t really there, so we definitely want to hear from YOU on how you interpret the various endings we’ll be discussing with this series.
This time we take a look at the finale to director Joe Carnahan‘s 2011 film THE GREY starring Liam Neeson. While the survival thriller was generally well received, its last scene split audiences. The marketing of the film had built up the expectation for moviegoers that they would get to see Liam Neeson fighting a wolf. While the primal theme of man versus nature and indeed man versus beast, is very much a big part of the film, it’s about much more than that too. It’s a film that explores mortality, and how we deal with it, set in the back drop of the harsh Alaskan wilderness and a group of men stranded there after a plane crash. In this installment of Movie Endings Explained we look at the ending of THE GREY, which isn’t so much a mystery as it is a concealment. Using shots from the trailers that didn’t make it into the final cut, some behind the scenes images, and the tantalising post credits scene, we piece together what could have been, and explore whether or not we should’ve seen more at the close of the film.