The agony and ecstasy of movie cliffhangers
Open endings for movies like Mission: Impossible and Across The Spider-Verse leave some viewers frustrated, but others hungry for more
Film Features The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
We’re over halfway through 2023 and there are already three major blockbusters with cliffhanger endings. First came Fast X, the 10th installment of the Fast And Furious franchise and the first half of the main series’ 11th and final film, which is scheduled for release in 2025. Then there was the animated blockbuster Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse, the middle chapter in a trilogy set to conclude with next year’s Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse. Last is Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, the seventh installment of the Tom Cruise series, and you can deduce from its title that the story will not be resolved until Dead Reckoning Part Two hits theaters in June 2024.
While this is hardly a new trend—the origins of the movie cliffhanger stretch back more than a century—it seems to be on the rise of late. Yes, Peter Jackson won a shelf full of Oscars almost 20 years ago for The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, his cliffhanger finale to his ambitious Lord Of The Rings trilogy. But most fans knew what they were getting into when they signed on for that film franchise adaptation.
More recently, moviegoers have found themselves surprised and even frustrated after paying to sit through a 155-minute movie like 2021’s Dune or 135 minutes of 2017’s It just to find out at the end that they were only getting half an adaptation. And, of course, there are the Marvel and DC films, which have tested the patience of fans with their frequent focus on unfinished endings.
Who is Pauline and how did she change movies forever?
[pm_embed_youtube id=’PLjWddXHkjgZerflq18ursfs1y8gjgdOkr’ type=’playlist’]Cliffhangers have been around almost as long as movies themselves. The origins of the term “cliffhanger” can be traced to the biweekly 1914 film serial The Perils Of Pauline, produced by William Randolph Hearst and starring Pearl White as Pauline. Each installment would end abruptly, sometimes with White literally hanging onto a cliff. Early moviegoers would have to come back in two weeks to see what happened to her, and no one seemed angry or cheated that they were left in suspense. It helped that these early serials were short, usually 20-30 minutes each, and that moviegoers knew going in that The Perils Of Pauline was going to be an ongoing serial broken into many parts.
Fast-forward to the 21st century and audiences don’t always go into a theater knowing if the movie they are paying to see already has a sequel in the works. Many would have appreciated knowing that 2021’s Dune was only the first part of director Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s 1965 original novel, even if Herbert fans know that the saga is too epic to be told in one film—just ask David Lynch.
Stephen King’s It is 1,138 pages, so many fans expected the movie to be broken into two parts even before the end credits of 2017’s It confirmed that the film was indeed only Chapter One. The fact that both of these lengthy novels were split into movies with two installments each isn’t too surprising, but playing coy about this strategy until opening day runs the risk of alienating some moviegoers, who would prefer a one-and-done approach. People tend to like to know what they are paying for, and many feel duped if they find out they are essentially paying for half a movie.
The ultimate cliffhanger was released “a long time ago…”
There are some films that expertly execute a cliffhanger, and one of the best is Star Wars: Episode V–The Empire Strikes Back. After the success of Star Wars: Episode IV–A New Hope, there was little question that Star Wars was going to be an ongoing saga and moviegoers were aware going in that The Empire Strikes Back was the second chapter in a planned trilogy. The movie ended with the scene pictured above, with the Rebel Alliance on the run, Luke Skywalker down a hand and discovering that Darth Vader is his father, and Han Solo frozen in carbonite.
The fact that we knew the next movie—and the answers to our questions—was three years away didn’t diminish Empire’s power one bit. Many fans—including this one—consider Empire the best movie in the entire franchise, even though the Irvin Kershner-directed middle chapter of the original trilogy has the most unresolved ending.
There are numerous other examples of effective cliffhangers or, if a follow-up never materialized, the filmmaker could just proclaim that the ending was ambiguous or cheeky. At the end of George A. Romero’s 1978 zombie masterpiece Dawn Of The Dead, the two survivors escape their mall hideout in a helicopter and head off to an uncertain future, but the audience is left feeling that these two might have what it takes to survive. Even though their fate is not addressed in the sequel, 1985’s Day Of The Dead, the ending of Dawn is a cliffhanger that still works.
The Silence Of The Lambs ends with Hannibal Lecter loose in the world and on the trail of his next victim. We had to wait a decade until 2001’s Hannibal to find out what happened to Dr. Lecter after The Silence Of The Lambs, but that didn’t stop the latter from winning several Oscars, including Best Picture. Even hit movies that ended with cliffhangers such as Kill Bill: Volume 1, Back To The Future Part II, The Matrix Reloaded, Planet Of The Apes, and The Dark Knight didn’t enrage moviegoers or leave them feeling cheated because they knew going in that a sequel was coming.
The MCU and the DCEU: A multiverse of cliffhangers
No discussion about movie cliffhangers is complete without addressing superhero movies. Every movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe ends with a mid-credits or post-credits cliffhanger that teases the next movie in the MCU. The pre-James Gunn DC Extended Universe attempted to do the same thing, but it was a mess. At the end of Justice League, Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor busts out of jail and teams up with Joe Manganiello’s Deathstroke to form the Injustice League, but don’t hold your breath for Justice League Part Deux.
There was a lot of pre-release buzz about a mid-credits scene in Black Adam featuring Henry Cavill’s Superman. The problem is that not only did Black Adam underperform, it has since been announced that Cavill will not be playing Superman in future DCEU movies, so this is a pointless cliffhanger that will go nowhere.
When a cliffhanger just leaves us hanging
There are numerous other non-superhero movies with frustrating cliffhangers that don’t work. In Solo: A Star Wars Story, we see in a hologram message that Darth Maul somehow survived being cut in half in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. OK, great, so … how? What did he do after that? We just have to rely on fan-fiction stories unless Darth Maul gets his own movie or Disney+ series.
The most egregious example of a bad cliffhanger is 2017’s The Mummy starring Tom Cruise. Not only did the movie end with the suggestion of a sequel, but the whole film was built on the presumption that it would kick off an entire Dark Universe of Universal monsters. Well, The Mummy’s tone was off and it bombed at the box office, which makes it even more embarrassing that the whole movie and its cliffhanger were built around the assumption that an entire universe of sequels would follow. Uh … oopsie?
While some viewers may not mind cinematic cliffhangers, most prefer going into a movie knowing if it’s a “part one” or if a sequel has already been planned so they’re aware of what we’re signing up for. When filmmakers trip over themselves to shove cliffhangers into their films in anticipation of sequels is where a lot of people lose patience. And in those instances when a cliffhanger absolutely has to be utilized, moviegoers see it as a promise they expect a studio to keep.
Now excuse me while I reserve my seat for Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, which I fully expect to end with Ethan Hunt’s problems waiting until next year to be solved.
57 Comments
Fun article, and the fact that it wasn’t a slide show made it even better. Cheers!
I didn’t see Cruise’s Mummy, but tell me that trailer doesn’t look like a scene from Mission Impossible? Lol.
Stop it. The Black Adam credit scene is not a cliffhanger. It’s a desperate tease, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the story that was just told.
I agree. One of the ways to define when a story is finished is when the characters/world have reached a new status quo, i.e. The story begins when the original status quo is either breaking or about to break, and it ends when there’s a new steady state. Stories are about change, so the story ends when things are stable again.A cliffhanger is when the movie/novel/season ends but the story is not complete.The mid-/post-credits scenes are a specialized type of movie trailer for a completely different film. They’re not cliffhangers because, as you say, the movie that just ended was a completed story.
There are a bunch of these that I don’t think count. They mention ‘The Dark Knight’, but that story comes to a conclusion: the Joker is caught, Harvey’s dead, and his legacy is protected by Batman taking the fall for his crimes. It suggests future stories to come, but the one it is telling has ended. If there had never been a follow up, there still would have been a complete story told. ‘Across the Spider-Verse’ is a cliffhanger ending because the story we’re watching is still in progress as the movie ends.
Got to mention the original Italian Job, surely?Spoilers (I guess) – new Mission Impossible doesn’t really end on a cliffhanger. Obviously will have to wait until Part 2 to properly judge, but didn’t leave thinking ‘this is definitely one big movie split into two.’Found Spiderverse to be infuriating. The trick with these sorts of things is for the movie you’ve just watched to still feel like a movie in its own right. Spiderverse didn’t for me. Very much felt like a part 1 (and with the strike/issues with effects etc, who knows when a part 2 will arrive?!)Best modern-day cliffhanger? Obviously Infinity War. Still savour the dumbfounded silence in the cinema when the credits started rolling.
I’m always comforted by the fact that Charlie had a great idea at the end of the Italian Job. So it was all fine.
“Empire” had the better ending. I mean, Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader’s his father, Han gets frozen and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that’s what life is, a series of down endings. All “Jedi” had was a bunch of Muppets.
Dante?
I’m not even supposed to be commenting today!
You commented 37 times!?
In a row!
That was an era with a much longer attention span and more patience. It was three years between ESB and Return of the Jedi.
True, but you didn’t have the internet back then, with site after site reporting on the next installment.
The ending of Silence of the Lambs doesn’t come across to me as a cliffhanger at all. It’s closer to the horror movie tradition of ‘one last scare’ done in a sophisticated way. The Dark Knight is a curious choice also. Marking him as a vigilante satisfies Batman’s inevitable role in Gotham City.
But that’s my view in not thinking every dangling thing is leading to another thing. Sometimes it’s just emotional impact. I’m very much in the school of “Movies need to tell complete stories, cliffhangers are for radio and television.” Maintaining an audience was why that technique made sense for those mediums. As cinema now struggles to maintain their audiences, the gimmick (ostensibly what it is) has carried over here. I don’t think it does films any favors because- call me old fashioned- movies shouldn’t function like tv. So I’ve never really been a fan of this, be it popular flicks, planned trilogies, or even if an adaptation is too long for a single film. It’s not something I look forward to. But that doesn’t mean I’m totally close-minded to it. Cliffhangers can be palatable if the main plot is resolved while the greater threat persists. (Which, thankfully are many of the best cliffhangers.) This way, there’s still a sense the film itself had a beginning, middle and end. It’s when there is no feeling of that that leaves me frustrated, and I’d say stuff like with Harry Potter and The Deathly Hollows split, made it clear the studios were exploiting audiences to pay for the same thing twice.
I’m much more open to cliffhangers in general, but I agree that just leaving a dangling plot line open isn’t the same thing as a cliffhanger. Stories can have complete resolutions and still leave an impression that the characters intend to go on living and doing stuff the next day. The ending of The Rise of Skywalker leaves Rey with her whole life ahead of her, but it’s definitely not a cliffhanger.
I’m actually not sure that I would call most stories cliffhangers if they don’t pick up at the same scene (or at least somewhere else more or less concurrently) in the following installment. Empire Strikes Back even sort of playfully acknowledges this by ending after saving its protagonist from his precipitous hanging position. That story ends with a lot yet to be resolved, but it’s not actually incomplete. Contrast that to Dune Part 1 or Spider-Man: AtSV, which both leave the characters hanging, the latter one again literally. By that measure, I don’t really think MI:7 counts, because even though the threat hasn’t been eliminated, it’s been disrupted enough to provide an actual ending. Also I’m just now realize how many of these movies continue to incorporate the literal hanging part of cliffhangers into their story.
Yep. Empire strikes back doesn’t end in a cliff hanger at all. It tells a complete story.Your correct that the definition of “and just how will our heroes get out of this predictament…stay tuned for the next episode” is what an actual cliffhanger is. Cliffhangers carry over directly in the same scene, and not just “the next chapter of our story.”
Agree – Empire doesn’t end with Luke still hanging off the bottom of Cloud City. There’s another installment coming, obviously, but that segment of the story is self-contained.And any of these that were announced as multi-part films (It, Dune) shouldn’t be on the list at all.
It’s an interesting point about where the next one picks up, because in Avengers for instance, there is a huge time jump between Infinity War and Endgame. Is The Blip event the cliffhanger or just an “everybody dies” bleak ending? I suppose the actual cliffhanger is the Captain Marvel tease, but in principle, once credits are onscreen, a movie is over. People are counting post-credit cliffhangers, but should they? Because we do not pick up that Captain Marvel thread in Endgame for a while.
Infinity War is a peculiar case, because it kind of ends with everyone having fallen off the cliff entirely. Regardless of the feeling of anticipation it leaves, it’s probably not a true cliffhanger, because the plot Endgame is about reversing The Snap. Normal cliffhangers resolve the danger at the top of the next installment, and it takes about two hours (and yeah, five years) for them to do that in Endgame. But it technically skates by on the timing condition because it opens on Hawkeye right before The Snap.
I agree that Infinity War is not a cliffhanger. In theory, that could have been the end of the story, especially since the status quo of the snap was maintained for several years in universe. Of course, everyone knew it wasn’t the end of the story, and there was huge anticipation to see how it concluded, but it wasn’t a cliffhanger.
I actually wouldn’t really call the end of Dead Reckoning a cliffhanger. No one’s in any immediate danger, and Ethan even already has a leg up on the bad guys. It just happens that this time it takes more than one movie to beat them.
“In Solo: A Star Wars Story, we see in a hologram message that Darth Maul somehow survived being cut in half in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. OK, great, so … how? What did he do after that? We just have to rely on fan-fiction stories unless Darth Maul gets his own movie or Disney+ series.”We already have that. It’s called Clone Wars and Rebels.
And it’s been well documented that it was George Lucas’s idea to bring Maul back and planned to have him in Episodes 7, 8 & 9. Hardly fan-fiction.
It’s worth keeping in mind that you can’t really expect much of the regular movie-going public to have kept up with Clone Wars and Rebels.
People keep saying that, but at the same time, find a Disney+ series to be perfectly acceptible substitutes for movies. Well, Clone Wars & Rebels ARE Disney+ series now.
I don’t expect the public to kept up with that stuff but it would be nice to expect that an entertainment writer would at least fact check things before writing it in their articles though. I know this is the AV Club and expecting that is too much to ask, but it would still be nice.
He’s speaking for the perception of the movie-going public. Of course Star Wars superfans will get the kind of obscure drop at the ending, but the audience for these films is way, way bigger. The point is that Darth Maul has fuckall to do with anything that happens in that film or to Han Solo anywhere else.
It is not really an obscure drop. It was a very successful and popular TV show. Nowhere does it suggest that author of this article is speaking on behalf of the movie going public. It just appears to be a bold statement that how Maul survived has only been explained in fanfic. In a better world someone who writes about entertainment for a living would confirm that this is the case before making such a statement. Do I expect things to be better? No. Can I want things to be better? Yes. Do I want people to know the difference between a sequel bait and an actual cliffhanger? Sure. Am I being pedantic? Of course. Does any of this matter? Nope.
That’s fair, but if we’re arguing from the perspective of an audience that only watches the films, it kind of behooves the film to fill the audience in on why a previously dead character is still alive. Although I will concede that the average movie goer could probably give a shit less why a character from a film almost 20 years previous is still alive, if they even remember / recognize him.
From an audience stand point I assume having him show up without explanation is just bad sequel bait and the people who know the story will want to see more of him or so you will watch the next one to find out what happened because you somehow care about the character but have been oblivious to all other star wars media. I am not saying it was a good move at all and clearly a sequel is not happening. But to circle back to my point, it is not the audience claiming Maul is alive with no explanation. It is the author of the article and the tiniest bit of research would prove otherwise. If the author wanted to make us believe it is the audience making these claims it could have been worded differently. Something like “Solo: A Star Wars Story“In , we see in a hologram message that Darth Maul somehow survived being cut in half in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. OK, great, but movie goers are not likely to have seen the shows that explain that and might be left confused” This way it points out the explanation of his return isn’t movie going public knowledge while acknowledging that is has indeed been explored conically. I am assuming the shows are cannon, I may be wrong about that but it doesn’t change my point.
I think I have spent more time defending this minor point than the author did writing this article.
I know I fit that category, having not watched any of the shows beside Mandalorian. But I know enough that how Maul survived is addressed in other properties that are obviously not fan fic. Feel like this DeSalvo guy should as well.
Evidently we can’t expect AV Club writers to have kept up with that either.
I’m still trying to understand how so many people were blindsided by Across the Spider-Verse. Presuming someone didn’t know that it was originally named Part One before the third was renamed Beyond the Spider-Verse, they still should have known there were two sequels coming out in quick succession. I wasn’t sure that it was going to end on an actual cliffhanger going in, but by about halfway through it I had grokked that it wasn’t going to finish neatly. To be fair, I remember there being people who didn’t realize that both Dune and Infinity War were going to be two parters, despite the former actually keeping the “Part One” in the official title, and the latter being heavily marketed as the first of two, after it pulled the same renaming stunt Spider-Verse did.
I think it has something to do with the way people are constantly talking about how nothing is being marketed correctly these days. Even here, where readers might be generally assumed to keep at least somewhat abreast of entertainment news, I’ve seen people complain that they didn’t even know Indiana Jones, The Flash, or Elemental were even out yet. Personally, I saw tons of ads for all of them, and of course I saw trailers for them multiple times because I go see movies weekly. I think people have carefully curated their lives so as to see as few ads as possible, and then don’t understand why they don’t know what’s coming out when. You’ve cut off an information stream! Likewise, if you don’t go to theaters anymore, you won’t see previews and you’ll be less likely to know what’s coming out when. That’s not a lack of marketing on the studio’s part, it’s a lack of you engaging with the marketing.
I mean, I can see not liking that Spider-Verse ended on a cliffhanger, but it shouldn’t have come as a shock unless you somehow went in entirely blind. It might not have been as heavily telegraphed as Infinity War was, or as explicitly indicated as Dune: Part One, but it should have at least been as obvious as say Back to the Future Part II.
I am a complete Marvel nerd (username checks out) and I was totally blindsided by the Spider-Verse ending, but that had just as much to do with how poorly constructed the film was. As I commented above, if your movie is basically 2.5 hours of build-up (the ending of Spider-Verse is quite literally “oh now we got the team together), then people will be disappointed when it finally reaches the point where it’s supposed to kick off and… it just ends.
Did you know that a third movie was coming out? Or that Spot was supposed to be the antagonist for both? It just seems weird to not at least expect the possibility that it would end on a cliffhanger
I don’t think the film is poorly constructed at all. It’s about Miles being introduced to the Spider-Verse and realizing that it’s not what he thought it would be, it’s not about the team up. The shot at the end is only to draw you in for the sequel. It’s no different than most Marvel stingers in that respect. The conclusion is Miles getting the better of Miguel, not defeating Spot or saving the Spider-Verse. That’s what the third movie is going to be about.
I was vaguely aware that Spider-Verse was being developed into a franchise and that there would be more movies. That’s far different from a movie announcing “this is Part 1″ and/or constructing a movie in such a way that its main plot actually resolves satisfactorily before “cliffhanging” into the next. Having 2.5 hours of “let’s get ready to fight the bad guy” and then just… end… is awkward.
I find it weird that a Marvel nerd would have a huge issue with a film adaptation behaving like a comic book and/or the second installment of any good genre trilogy. But everyone has a take.
This is far from a new thing, too. Ralph Bakshi wanted to make clear in all the marketing for his Lord of the Rings film that it was only the first half of the story, but the studio insisted on leaving it off, and what do you know, people hated not getting the whole story they were expecting. It’s kind of amusing to picture fans of the book looking at their watch around Helm’s Deep and thinking “Holy crap, how long is this thing?”
I think you might be overestimating how much attention the general public pays to this kind of stuff. Sure, you and I knew that Spiderverse might end on a cliffhanger because we read sites like this and we remember when they were calling it Across the Spiderverse Part 1. But my coworkers and my parents and my son and the people on my softball team don’t follow movie news at all and I’d bet that most of them had no idea.
Oh, I for sure know that most people seem to pay little to no attention to just about anything, let alone detailed movie news. Like I said, I was aware of people not knowing about follow up installments for Dune or Infinity War. Someone downthread even mentioned people not realizing that The Fellowship of the Ring was the first part of a trilogy, which I somehow find even more hilarious. But even on this site, where I might be justified in making assumptions about the base level of knowledge commenters have about current pop culture, there were quite a few people who had no idea. Overhearing “Wait, what?” in the theater is one thing, seeing the reviewer on this site where I initially read about the two Spider-Verse movies claim the ending was “surprisingly abrupt” is a whole other thing.
“ …it’s a lack of you engaging with the marketing.”Phrases like that encouraged me to drop out of the MBA program.
I applaud that decision. Sorry, I know that came off as some sort of value judgment, but I’m not criticising people for choosing to avoid marketing. I don’t even make eye contact with people in public because I don’t want to risk the possibility of someone approaching me and having to then engage in conversation with them. But it would be weird if I was also complaining about never meeting new people while doing that. People who substantially reduce advertising in their lives (another thing I do) perhaps don’t realize that they spent decades without that being an easy and ready option, and grew accustomed to a steady flow of corporate dreck. The reason I know that there was a green ketchup and a purple ketchup is not because I ever used it, but because I saw thousands of commercials for it when I was younger. If they were to debut a brand new color of ketchup now, I wouldn’t know unless I saw it in the store. New movies and shows are being marketed in old ways and new, but if I don’t use TikTok or have cable, then I’m not going to see a lot of it. And that’s my fault, in a blameless sort of way. It would be silly for me to claim that the marketing doesn’t exist because I’m specifically avoid it, but a lot of people do so.
I was actually glad Dune ended on a cliffhanger and I think most people knew Dune may be split into parts. The opening did let the audience know this was Part One.
Did audiences at the time know that Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 LORD OF THE RINGS would end with “to be continued”? (and wasn’t really, at least not by Bakshi)
How about the “ending” of Joe Dante’s INNERSPACE, which looks like the start of an exciting conclusion but turns out just to be the ending credits?
I feel like there’s a profound difference between a cliffhanger where the primary plot doesn’t resolve, and an ending that teases more possible plots in the same setting.ESB or Dune or Spider-Verse 2 are definitely cliffhangers, the main plotline kind of ends without resolving anything. But Silence of the Lambs? The Dark Knight? The main plot is thoroughly and explicitly resolved. Character arcs are done, themes have opened and closed. That the status quo has changed and there’s a sequel hook is not the same, as you can easily watch them on their own and really don’t need to see Hannibal or Rises.I definitely laughed at, “The Return Of The King, the cliffhanger finale to his ambitious Lord Of The Rings trilogy.” I got what you meant, but wow is RotK the least cliffhanger movie I can possibly think of. Real clear ending, that installment. No ambiguity at all, it even gives you 5 endings in case you had any questions.
It’s a massive pet peeve when people misuse a term to make something less interesting. Describing every open-ended narrative as a “cliffhanger” gives the impression that every narrative needs closure (and/or a sequel). Thinking about movies with open endings and how those endings work (or don’t work) is much more interesting.But either way, yeah, you really can’t end a movie (and end it, and end it) more definitively than Return of the King.
I disagree on ESB and Dune. ESB was a chapter and wrapped up the key elements of that part of the story, but not the whole series. Dune was announced as a two-parter.
The problem with Spider-Verse is that it genuinely felt like half a movie: buildup buildup buildup, stakes finally get established, characters take sides, and then… end.Other movies in this list have clear endings, the main narrative wraps up, then there’s effectively a tease of something new to come in the next film. With Spider-Verse, someone literally shouted “what the fuck” when the lights came up at my cinema. That didn’t happen with Dune, the new Mission: Impossible, or any of the others on this list. Even Infinity War ended on a definitive statement: this story is over, but damn if we didn’t interest you in what comes next.
When you are deliberately writing a trilogy, there is no need to wrap things up in each installment. More often than not, that’s a bad decision, leaving you with situations like Harry Potter, wherein the adults realize at the end of every book/film that withholding information from Harry et al. was a mistake that almost led to catastrophe, only to totally revert back to that default position for the start of the next film.Just as LOTR was considered by Tolkien to be a single novel in three (actually six) parts, some trilogies are best viewed as a single film in three parts. The middle of those kinds of films are generally the best, because they are liberated from all of the establishing exposition and resolution.People expecting things to be one way is not a complete argument for why they have to be that way.
There were definitely people who didn’t know Fellowship was the first part of a trilogy. Had to reassure one couple that I overheard wondering why “the movie had ended there, are there going to be more” that yes, indeed, there was going to be more.
I saw the first Hobbit movie with the person I was seeing at the time and at dinner afterwards, they expressed that it just kind of ends abruptly and they were expecting a bit more epic after LotR. It took me a few minutes before I realized they had no idea it was movie 1 of 3.
Skeletor emerging from the water in the post-credit scene in Masters of the Universe and defiantly proclaiming “I’ll be back!” Not a cliffhanger, but good times, man. Good times.
My favorite (most frustrating) cliffhanger was from the first LotR movie, back when I first saw it and didn’t know there were other books about it. I still remember being 11-12 and being pissed that the first movie was ending just as Sam and Frodo were about to head to Mordor; even if it was around 2.5 hours already I could have sat through another 4 hours of that world, and was a difficult wait for the second and third installments.
I don’t think there was any question what was about to happen at the end of Silence of the Lambs. Lecter was going to kill and eat Dr. Chilton in short order then go into hiding, and told Starling with apparent sincerity he had no interest in coming after her.
It and Dune definitely didn’t advertise as part ones but I did know from reading about the films. I did hear a couple of groans when Dune ended. Films that end with some stuff unresolved but not with someone in direct danger at the last shot aren’t really cliffhangers. Star Wars: A New Hope could have been it the way it ended but they did show us Darth Vader survived, so is that a cliffhanger?