5
votes
Upgrade (2018)
The ending of a movie ultimately makes it or breaks it for me.
I'm old. I've seen thousands of movies. I've read thousands of stories. It's hard for me to be legitimately surprised by an ending.
The ending of Upgrade blew my mind.
If you love an unusual ending, if you love sci fi, and if you don't mind a little bit of the old ultra-violence, I fully recommend.
Have you ever seen a movie, where the ending is completely incompatible with earlier scenes?
I always replay the movie in my mind, and often get annoyed if the earlier scenes were straight up lying to your face once you knew the ending.
With Upgrade, I had the complete opposite experience. There were a couple of scenes that appeared hackneyed or overly contrived, but once I got to the ending, seemed completely legit.
My favorite all time ending is Inside Man (2006)
I haven't been a fan of Whannel's writing for a while; Insidious 4 was terrible (putting himself in the movie as the contrived love interest of the 'most beautiful woman' was just stupid), and his sense of humor is a bit... hokey. The trailer for Upgrade looked great, up until that "You didn't think I was a ninja" line... I'm not really a big fan of his stilted humor. Do you keep up with his work and agree with that, and if so, did it flow better in this film? If not... did the humor feel organic, or (better) was there not much of it?
Interesting questions.
I thought Saw & Insidious were just OK. That is really all I recollect. I never watched any of the sequels. I did like the humor in Mule.
The Ninja line didn't stand out during the movie, because it's a momentarily manic quip from a character who is mostly morose. I almost never watch trailers, so it didn't even register.
Actually, nothing about the movie really stands out initially. It's just your typical, well executed, sci fi revenge action thriller... until the ending.
There is a little bit of black humor in a couple of scenes. You've seen it during the trailer (that I just watched.) It's the slightly goofy look of horror the lead actor makes as his stem upgrade is smashing tableware over the other guys face.