"Baddest" as in BadMeaningGood. Especially used in conjunction with action movies.
Disclaimer - if you have not seen some of these movies take caution reading this page as it contains many spoilers
Candidates include:
- SixthSense
- ShawshankRedemption
- Casablanca
- PulpFiction ("Zed's dead, baby. Zed's dead.") This is not actually the ending of the movie; it's the ending of the vignette just before the final one in the diner. But it's better than the actual ending. It's not the last scene in the film; however it is the last action to occur temporally in the movie. All that scenes that come after ZedsDead occur before ZedsDead. Remember, Bruce Willis's character (the boxer, Butch) shoots and kills John Travolta's character (Vincent Vega) in the "watch" vignette; in the final vignette (which goes back to the beginning of the film) Travolta's character is once again alive.
- TheUsualSuspects
- No Way Out - Kevin Costner spy thriller
- TheMatrix (the phone call segue into the RageAgainstTheMachine tune is very BadMeaningGood. The baddest scene however is not the ending, but the scene where Trinity and Neo enter the building of the agents to the tune of 'spybreak!' by the PropellerHeads.)
- Raiders of the Lost Ark absolutely best ever -- MichaelChermside
- Dr. Strangelove
- ReservoirDogs
- Predator (just love that alien morality)
- FightClub (some people didn't like the ending, but I did; especially with that Pixies' song)
- MementoMovie (both endings; the beginning and the end)
- TheyLive (Hey baby, what's the matter?)
- InvasionOfTheBodySnatchers (1956 original)
- HighLander (original of course)
- DeadOrAliveMovie (Japanese movie directed by TakashiMiike; if you have a chance to see it, don't hesitate!)
- BrazilTheMovie
- Gattacca (Ethan Hawke's character launches into space with his "class" in business suit against the odds, light from the portals playing on their faces to some forgettable narration. The noir/TomSwiftJr aesthetic of the whole movie was great and this was the perfect ending to it)
- MenInBlack I - scene pans out to the earth, solar system, galaxy only to become embedded in a game of marbles by alien "children" in a higher universe. The sequel tried similar with this reality being a locker in a HigherOrder grand central station; while good did not quite work the same.
- BackToTheFuture 1 - "Where we're going we don't need roads..." and the DeLorean wheels fold up (was road bound to this point), takes off into the air, zooms down the road then back. The sequels were a bit of an anticlimax but as an ending for 1 this was "bad".
- Aliens. "Get away from her, you bitch!" The aliens, you would think, know to avoid airlocks...
- Dark City
TheGangsOfNewYork has a virtuoso fight scene that would surely have been a candidate for TheBaddestEnding, if it had appeared at the end of the movie. However, it appears at the very beginning. MartinScorcese --- what a nut!
If there was a "TheBaddestBeginning" I would nominate TimeCop when the old western (Union?) soldiers are plodding through the rain and intercepted by what looks like a real straggler "goldminer" - the furthest looking scene from ScienceFiction all of a sudden he brings out his high tech weapons with laser finder and "relieves" them all of their gold to take forward in time.
See TheSaddestEnding, TheWorstEnding, TheStrangestEnding.