Don’t you just love it when the movie you’re amped to see is spoiled by its trailer? You know, that moment when you’re about an hour into the film and you start to remember things you were excited to see, and before you know it, you’ve got the ending figured out with another hour left to go? Instead of finding and burying the people responsible for ruining our moviegoing experience in less than two minutes, let’s publicly flog them together in this roundup of movies in which the trailer ruined the whole ending. (OBVIOUSLY, SPOILERS AHEAD!)
The Departed
Remember that scene with Matt Damon getting shot by Mark Wahlberg at the end? Well, you waited and waited for Wahlberg to break uniform and pull a gun, but once the movie was almost over, you realized you hadn’t seen it. Oh, wait, there it is. It was the ending, slipped right into the trailer at the 1:51 mark. And we thought Scorsese was a smart guy.
Castaway
You’d have to be crazier than a guy who talks to a volleyball to not see that Tom Hanks clearly gets off the island, which was sort of the point of the whole movie. The anticlimactic return to mundane living tacked onto the end to the film was highlighted by the kissing-in-the-rain scene from the trailer, heavily displayed at its 1:39 mark. By the time he’d left to go on the trip, we already knew he was getting back alive. At that point, we cared about the movie about as much as we cared about Lost after they escaped from the island but were stupid enough to go back.
The Island
Speaking of islands, it turns out there is none in The Island. Of course, you already knew that from the trailer around 1:19. In fact, the very last line of the preview reiterates, “Still think there’s an island?”
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
One of the most shocking moments from the trilogy’s first installment was the loss of Gandalf, which by the end of the trailer is revealed to have not been his end. Starting from 1:30 on, we see a huge chunk of trailer that could’ve been reallocated to some other part of this 12-hour story.
Contagion
Gwyneth Paltrow dies. The first 59 seconds of the trailer lead up to the doctor telling Matt Damon she’s dead. And at the one-minute mark, we no longer need to see the first hour of the film.
Speed
Between the first 45 seconds and the end of the trailer, we see multiple explosions that give away all the different suspense moments of the film. Then they give us the ending at the very end. Trailers in the ’90s were very insecure about getting people into theaters, seriously.
Funny People
The whole build-up of the film was that Adam Sandler’s character was dying of cancer, at least until that point in the movie. Or, in the case of this trailer, the 2:06 mark, where they decide to disclose that he beat his illness and will spend the rest of the movie rehashing that one time he almost died of cancer, thus becoming like every other movie.
Terminator Salvation
The entire first minute drops hints that Sam Worthington’s mystery is being revealed. Then, at the 1:09 mark, we see him completely divulge the whole point of the film: thinking he’s human before Christian Bale is kind enough to shed some light for him. But a leaked script ruined everything long before the trailer did.
Brothers
The whole thing about Sam (Tobey Maguire) being dead is stated and restated constantly in the first minute of the trailer, and then it’s disclosed he’s not dead at the 1:05 mark. Just when things were heating up for Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal). Not only that, it goes on to show you his crazy PTSD flip-out phase, another highlight of the film.
Free Willy
The trailer speaks of the greatest adventure of the summer of 1993, but that great whale-freeing experience was completely summarized and spoiled in its less-than-two-minute-long trailer. The entire plot and ending are essentially summarized right here.
