Foregone Conclusion / Film

Foregone Conclusions in film.

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Animated Films

• The official Interquel Bambi II also has one. During the climax Bambi falls off a cliff and seemingly dies. The scene exists solely to galvanise the bond between him and his father from this near loss, since everyone in the audience knows Bambi has to live past half of the original film's chronology.
• Bambi Meets Godzilla: you can pretty much imagine by yourself how something titled as such could possibly end...*SPLAT*
• The Emperor's New Groove starts with a wet llama shivering in the jungle, and a voiceover telling you that he used to be a human emperor.
  This is his story. Well, actually my story. I'm that llama.
  • And when the film actually comes to that, Character Narrator Kuzco and On-screen Kuzco start arguing — and from that point on, the film has no voiceover.
• In Hoodwinked!, the two minute opening sequence makes clear plot points that will show up in each character's story: that Red Puckett will meet the Wolf on her way to Granny's and it won't go well (as she says, "You again?!" in the opening), that Granny will somehow end up in her closet, Bound and Gagged. Fortunately, some of the plot twists - like the Wolf being a journalist, Kirk being an actor, Granny being an extreme sports athlete - are not brought up.
• The Legend of the Titanic zig-zags this trope. Yes, the Titanic sinks, but the sinking is the result of a gang of talking sharks, in cahoots with an evil whaler, tricking an octopus into throwing the iceberg into the ship's path, and Everybody Lives.
• Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch: Near the end of the film, Stitch dies shortly after being put in the fusion chamber made to fix him. However, since this film takes place before the events of Stitch! The Movie, which was released two years earlier as the Pilot Movie of Lilo & Stitch: The Series, then those watching Lilo & Stitch 2 who are aware of the existence of The Series will know that Stitch's death doesn't take.
• The beginning of Megamind opens with the title character currently plummeting to his death, which means you know by the end of the movie he's going to wind up in this position. Of course, after the movie reaches that point, he manages to save himself at the last second, and is able to win the day.
• In Monsters University, despite initially being antagonistic towards each other, the audience knows that Mike and Sulley will be the best of friends. Subverted because while most knew that Sulley would become a Scarer and Mike his assistant, it wasn't easy to guess that they would be expelled from the university and have to work their way up Monsters, Inc. the hard way.
• The Powerpuff Girls Movie serves as a prequel to the TV series. Thus, anyone with even a passing familiarity of the show knows going in that the monkey hobo Jojo the girls befriend will become their arch-enemy Mojo Jojo, Mojo Jojo's evil plan will inevitably fail, and the girls will become the beloved and celebrated protectors of Townsville.
• In Rango, the Greek Chorus of a band of owls starts off the film by remarking that the story will center on his life and death, and remind the audience of this fact fairly regularly. This is then subverted when Rango ends the story very much alive, and the leader of the band notes that Rango will still die before his time...probably in a housing accident, which is the cause of 65% of all premature deaths.
• The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie was originally intended to be the series finale to the show, before extreme popularity continued its run. Given that it is still canonically the end of the series, SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward, Mr. Krabs, Plankton, and all other main characters cannot die and all have to survive, because they make it to the movie alive and well.
• The Sword in the Stone: Anyone remotely familiar with the original Once and Future King books or the King Arthur legend they're based on knows that Wart is going to be the one to pull the sword out of the stone in the ending. As a result, Disney doesn't even treat it as a spoiler—the cover art for home video releases of the movie outright show him pulling out the sword.
• Both averted and played straight in Tangled:
  • The movie opens with the narration from Flynn "This is the story of how I died." And he does die at the end. It just doesn't take. Although the fact that he is narrating the story makes it easy to guess that he doesn't stay dead.
  • Tangled: The Series is set after the original film and before Tangled Ever After; because of this, Rapunzel, Flynn, Pascal, Maximus, her parents, and the whole kingdom of Corona have to survive because they all appear at the wedding perfectly fine. Cassandra leaving to travel the world in the Grand Finale also explains her absence from the wedding.
• Up: Carl attempts to ditch the animal companions at one point. He forgot that even if neither could smell or hear him, all they have to do is look underneath a floating house.

Live-Action Films

• 13 Minutes: Obviously, we know Elser's attempt to kill Hitler will fail.
• 36 Hours (1965): Just before D-Day the Germans stage an elaborate deception to make the main character, a captured American intelligence officer, believe that it is 1950, the war is over, and he has had amnesia. The idea is to get him to disclose the D-Day plans as "therapy" for his amnesia. History says that surprise was successfully maintained for the D-Day landings, so the tension-inducing question is how the main character will discover the ruse.
• (500) Days of Summer: As the narrator tells us at the start, "This is a story of Boy Meets Girl. But you should know up front, this is not a love story." The Anachronic Order also helps with this.
• Alien Abduction (2014) starts with the In-Universe Camera being chucked off an alien craft, telling us that the Morris family's camping trip is going to go horribly wrong.
• All the President's Men may end in media res with Nixon's reelection, but viewers know the rest of the story.
• Amen depicts the efforts of SS Lieutenant Kurt Gerstein to stop the Holocaust by exposing it to the German public, via the Allies or the Vatican, and inspiring a campaign of protest against it similar to that which successfully stopped the Aktion T4 programme. The audience of course knows it didn't work out that way.
• Apollo 13 manages to wring surprising amounts of tension and suspense out of the story, even though you should know the ending already. They don't get to the moon, but they do survive.
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is based on the novel of the same name. God only knows how it will end.
• Barry Lyndon makes excessive use of this trope. Everything that is going to happen is stated outright by the title cards and the narrator well in advance of the outcome. In his review, Roger Ebert even suggested this is the entire point of the film.
• Atomic Blonde: Downplayed, but it’s clear that Lorraine’s mission has failed and that she has received a brutal beatdown at some point, as she is shown badly bruised and interrogated by her superiors about her mission in Berlin in the present.
• A Beautiful Mind has an odd variation. Although the major plot developments qualify to those familiar with John Nash's life, the script was written with the (correct) assumption that most of the audience wouldn't know him from Adam.
• Bill is about William Shakespeare's attempts to make it as a playwright in London whilst King Philip II of Spain plots to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I. History tells us Bill will succeed and Philip will fail; the question is what will happen in the meantime?
• From the mockumentary interviews at the start of Blooded, the viewer knows that Liv, Ben, Charlie and Eve will survive the ordeal.
• La bonne annee (The Good Year) starts with a character getting out of jail in 1973 then cuts to the same character preparing a robbery in 1966.
• Boys Don't Cry is based on the last days of a famous murder victim, so the climax of the film is a very carefully choreographed Mexican Standoff, Subverted Trope when the inevitable happens.
• Brass Target is set during the lead-up to General Patton's death. It is a foregone conclusion that Patton will die in a car accident.
• Breach begins with a news report on the arrest of Robert Hanssen. Since the movie is based on real events, which did indeed end with his arrest, this is understandable.
• Brick starts with Emily lying face down in a drainage ditch. When she shows up again in the flashback sequence, you already know she's doomed.
• Carlito's Way: Those who know his story know he gets shot.
• Casino subverts this, where Joe Pesci's character, Nicky Santoro, has his narration cut off in mid-sentence by the vicious beating that leads to his death.
• Challenger: It's fairly well-known that the eponymous Space Shuttle's final flight would end in its destruction just over a minute after launch, killing all onboard. The film ends just as the shuttle takes off, following a symbolic scene of the crew reciting John Gillespie Magee, Jr.'s poem "High Flight", parts of which were used in President Reagan's eulogy for the crew the night after the disaster.
• Citizen Kane starts with the main character dying, and the rest is told in flashback. So you know he's going to die. Moreover, the death scene is immediately followed by a newsreel that summarizes the major events of his life, the same events that the rest of the movie covers in more detail.
• Cloud Atlas:
  • Frobisher's suicide.
  • Subverted with Ewing. When Frobisher mentions he's reading his diary entries, he calls him a "dying man," leading the viewer to believe he will die on the journey. He is dying but only because he's being poisoned by Goose. Autua saves him and he's nursed back to health properly.
• Coalition is a dramatisation of the real life events immediately following the 2010 UK General Election. The story centres on the question of who will form a new government, and whether the Liberal Democrats will be in it. It was first broadcast in March 2015, just in time for the following election, when a Tory/LibDem coalition has been in power for five years. Also doubles as a Late-Arrival Spoiler.
• Confidence begins with the main character, Jake Vig, lying dead from a gunshot wound, his opening line of narration "...So I'm dead." Inverted Trope somewhat in that it turns out Jake's death is faked; his assertion that he is "dead" is only accurate in a sense that he is considered to be dead by the people who wanted him dead.
• The Conjuring Universe:
  • Ed and Lorraine have gone through many near-death experiences in the films, but they will have to survive, as the real Ed Warren died in 2006, while Lorraine Warren died in 2019, both of natural causes.
  • The Annabelle doll is still a very dangerous item by the events of The Conjuring, which means everything the protagonists of Annabelle and Annabelle: Creation do to stop it are doomed to fail (although the films don't end completely bleak themselves).
  • Valak will eventually move its curse from Romania to the United States. The one new thing we learn from The Nun is that we know how it managed to do so.
• Creepshow titles the segment starring Stephen King "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill".
• The Crossing, a movie about Washington crossing the Delaware. It's the Darkest Hour for the Continental Army, as they have only ever been defeated, their enlistments are up in days, they're broke, and if they fall to the Hessians—which everyone but Washington thinks is a foregone conclusion of its own because Hessians—The American Revolution is kaput. Not only do they win, they do it without losing a single man in battle.^note Two soldiers did die of hypothermia on the march to Trenton and several were wounded in the battle, but not fatally.
• Because Deewaar starts with a ceremony attended by Ravi and Sumitra before explaining How We Got Here, the audience knows that no matter what happens they will live.
• D.O.A.: "I want to report a murder — mine!"
• Double Indemnity opens with Walter shot in the arm and beginning the confession that makes up the narration for the rest of the film.
• Downfall is a movie advertised as "Hitler's last days", so you'd have a hard time finding someone who doesn't know how it ends. (spoiler alert: Hitler dies.)
• Dracula Untold, considering it's an origin story of Dracula. It's pretty obvious that the titular character's vampiric abilities become permanent, and he survives the events of the film.
• Drag Me to Hell. It's right in the title.
• The Eagle Has Landed: A team of Nazis land in wartime Britain to assassinate Winston Churchill. And they succeed! Except he's not really Churchill, but a double.
• El Alamein: The Line of Fire is about a group of Italian soldiers during the Second Battle of El-Alamein in the Second World War, which was a disastrous defeat for the Italian army.
• Evita starts with Eva Peron's funeral before flashing back to her early teenage years.
• Fallen begins with a voiceover from the main character: "I wanna tell you about the time I almost died." Subverted in that it's the demon Azazel who's really saying it. Denzel's character does die.
• Fantastic Beasts take place chronologically before the Harry Potter saga, so we already knew a couple of things from the beginning, no matter what happens in the films:
  • Newt Scamander and Tina Goldstein will have to survive and hook up, because Word of God states that they were still alive to see their grandson's marriage to Luna Lovegood decades later.
  • Gellert Grindelwald will live in the end, as he's still alive (though locked up) by the time of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, though he'll eventually be brought down. Similarly, Albus Dumbledore, since he's the one who brought Grindelwald down.
  • Nagini will eventually succumb to her curse and turn into a snake permanently, which she did by the time Voldemort turned her into a Horcrux. This may make the films rather sad since she's introduced as a hero.
• The Fast and the Furious: The third film takes place after the next three films. This means that we know Han will survive all of them, move to Tokyo, and die in a car crash. Also, his relationship with Gisele won't last, as he is single by the time of Tokyo Drift. On another note, Dominic will also survive the three films, since he cameos in the ending scene of Tokyo Drift.
• The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas takes place before Fred and Wilma's marriage, so unless you've never even heard of the cartoon, you'll know that Chip Rockfeller's scheme to marry Wilma for her wealth is Doomed by Canon.
  • On a lesser note, when Fred, Barney, Wilma, and Betty meet, they go on a double date, except with Fred & Betty and Barney & Wilma paired up. Even those unaware of the show should know that Betty and Wilma switch up.
• Gandhi starts with Gandhi’s murder. It then continues on after the death of the main character, and then goes back and tells the story of how the British Empire was humiliated. Considering the fact that the film is based of the life of a long dead historical figure, the beginning doesn't really give much away.
• Gettysburg will end in a Union victory and a total of 53,000 casualties from both sides across three days of battle. What the film does is examine selected individuals' motives for fighting, explains the tactical and strategic situation for key areas of the battle, and (despite the PG-rated level of blood) gives a pretty good sense of how it felt to be one of the men tasked with, say, repulsing seemingly-endless Confederate charges until you finally run out of bullets and execute a bayonet charge. Union General Buford and Confederate General Longstreet in particular give highly prescient tactical analyses, with Longstreet laying out in detail how Pickett's Charge (as it was later known) will be hampered by obstacles and blasted by Union firepower until it is reduced to a futile slaughter... and then having to order it anyway.
• Ghost (1990) is a case where the advertising and in some cases even the subtitle "Message from Sam" do the Foregone Conclusion without the movie itself actually hinting at it at the beginning. If anyone went into that movie, not knowing that Sam will die, they must have been blind and deaf.
• Godzilla vs. Destoroyah shows that Godzilla is slowly dying of a nuclear overload at the beginning of the film. Which actually starts even before the film, as the trailers for the film actually flat out state "Godzilla Dies!" as part of the advertising campaign to draw in viewers!
• The Guns of Navarone: The Expository Theme Tune tells that the Good Guys will manage to blow the guns up. The movie tells how.
• Halo: Nightfall has an Anyone Can Die scenario, but it's known that the main protagonist Jameson Locke will survive to become a SPARTAN-IV, meet the Arbiter as seen in Halo 2: Anniversary Edition and appear as the secondary Player Character in Halo 5: Guardians. Hell, you originally^*The movie was initially only watchable on the Halo Channel Xbox One app, unlocked with a code packaged with H:TMCC, but was later released on DVD. needed Halo: The Master Chief Collection in order to watch Nightfall, so unless you watched this first, you'll know Locke gets out okay.
• Heavenly Creatures begins with Pauline and Juliet running through a park covered in gore, screaming that Mummy's 'terribly hurt'. The rest of the film reveals how they came to this sorry pass. Those familiar with the case won't be surprised.
• The Highwaymen: Eventually, Bonnie and Clyde will be killed in a Multiple Gunshot Death by law enforcement when Hamer and Gault track them down.
• The Hobbit:
  • Since Bilbo is narrating the story, you know that he will survive this journey. Same with Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, Saruman, Gollum, and Legolas, who all make appearances in The Lord of the Rings.
  • Likewise, anyone who paid close attention to The Fellowship of The Ring will know that Balin can't die in this trilogy, because he's the one entombed in the crypt at Moria, having fallen to the invading orcs.
  • The filmmakers are really playing with this, going as far as creating a new character, the elf Tauriel, as a love interest for Kili, who dies by the end of this trilogy, meaning their love story is doomed from the start.
• Des hommes et des dieux is based on a true story. Seven of the monks were kidnapped and killed.
• Iceman (2017): "Ötzi the Iceman" is a Stone Age man whose frozen body was discovered in the 1990s. He was found to have been killed by being shot by an arrow, and the film imagines the events leading up to his death.
• In Ikiru, the narrator tells when and how Watanabe will die. You get to see what he does before then, and then watch his funeral.
• Inglourious Basterds mostly concerns two independent plots to kill Hitler and the rest of Nazi high command in a movie theater in France, in 1944. Since everyone knows how Hitler really died, there's only one way this can possibly end. Surprisingly, they succeed: Eli Roth shoots Hitler dead.
• Into the Storm (2009): Obviously the audience knows how the Second World War (and Winston Churchill's career) turns out. The interesting part is witnessing Churchill's struggle firsthand.
• Ip Man. The audience already knows that he would survive the Japanese invasion of China and become Bruce Lee's martial arts master.
• I Shot Jesse James: Anybody that knows the story of Jesse James knows that Jesse and Robert Ford's friendship isn't going to end well. Hell, the movie's title gives it away.
• Jack (2013) is largely predictable to those who've followed Canadian Politics more closely.
• James Bond:
  • Skyfall: It's clear that James doesn't die after being shot by Miss Moneypenny in Turkey, as it happens about 15 minutes into a nearly 2.5-hour long film.
  • Spectre: What, you didn't expect Blofeld to appear in a Bond film named after his terrorist organization?
• During Joker (2019), Gotham City descends into rioting, during which Thomas Wayne guides his wife and son out of a theatre and down an alleyway. Anyone who has seen a Batman film or Gotham knows what will happen next. And we see it happen.
• Kagemusha: Anyone familiar with the history of Sengoku era Japan can tell you that Oda Nobunaga will utterly crush the Takeda clan in the Battle of Nagashino.
• Kick-Ass references this; since Dave has been narrating all the way through, when seen tied to a chair and being tortured by Mooks, it seems reasonable to think he will survive. He promptly calls the audience on it, reminding them that Posthumous Narration is always an option; "if you're reassuring yourself that I'm going to make it through this since I'm talking to you now, quit being such a smart-ass! Hell dude, you never seen Sin City? Sunset Boulevard? American Beauty?" He survives despite pointing out that he might not.
• Kill Bill: The scenes in the first film are not shown in chronological order. Although Vernita is actually the second name on the Bride's list, the scene where she confronts her is shown before the far-more climatic confrontation with her first victim, O-Ren Ishii. After killing Vernita, the Bride crosses her name off the list, and the viewers can see that the name "O-Ren Ishii" has already been crossed out, making it obvious that O-Ren didn't survive in the yet-to-be-seen confrontation.
• Lawrence of Arabia: You know the title character is going to die. Better yet if you know the true story.
• Letters from Iwo Jima: Even the Japanese realize that their situation is basically unwinnable. Really, the only question is whether Saigo will survive the battle or not. He does, and is actually better off, as he is sent to a internment camp, internment camps were actually just boring holding camps, and he gets a free life in the US, and may still be friends with his American friend.
• Lincoln's ending is well known historic fact. You know how the vote will go but the tension is generated by what it takes to succeed.
• Love Story:
  Oliver: What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach, the Beatles, and me?
• Both The Man Who Never Was and its 2022 remake (albeit under a different name) deal with Operation Mincemeat, a Second World War plot by the British which involved disguising a deceased homeless man as a top-ranking Royal Marine official carrying plans for a fake invasion of Greece in the hopes the Nazis would read it and relocate their troops from Sicily - the actual intended invasion site - to Greece. As it was a real-life plot that succeeded, the films are more docudramas than straight-up dramatic pieces.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Everything in Captain America: The First Avenger led up to him being frozen for decades before waking up in the present time.
  • Agent Carter (the "One-Shot" short film) establishes that Peggy Carter will go on to help found S.H.I.E.L.D., thus rendering her survival of any dangerous situation in Agent Carter (the series) a Foregone Conclusion.
  • With the amount of coverage it got in the build-up to the film, the only person who didn't know that Bucky Barnes was the subtitle in Captain America: The Winter Soldier was Cap himself.
  • We know that at least all of the original six Avengers — Tony, Steve, Thor, Bruce, Clint, and Natasha — will survive Avengers: Age of Ultron, since the characters are all slated for further films.
  • Even after the death of Spider-Man and most of the Guardians of the Galaxy in Avengers: Infinity War, sequels to Spider-Man: Homecoming and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 have already been announced prior to Infinity War's release, so we already know their deaths aren't going to stick.
  • Captain Marvel (2019):
    • We know that the Tesseract will end up in S.H.I.E.L.D. custody by the time The Avengers rolls around. It just takes Goose a while to cough the thing up.
    • Obviously, the Kree aren't going to successfully carpet bomb Earth in the climax.
  • Black Widow (2021): Natasha is going to survive the events of the film since she is present in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
  • Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: Promos for the movie make it out to be a mystery who the next Black Panther will be in the wake of T'Challa's death. However, anyone familiar with the comics knows that Shuri has been her brother's understudy more than once. And even if you're not, the movie itself doesn't ask the question "Who will be the new Black Panther?", but rather "How will Shuri make it happen?"
• Max (2002) follows the young Adolf Hitler as he struggles with the decision of whether to make his career in art or politics.
• Melancholia starts with an Apocalyptic Montage. The director has stated he intentionally gave away the ending like this, because he didn't want the audience to speculate on whether or not Earth would survive.
• Memento starts with Leonard shooting a man dead. The rest of the movie is spent finding out why he thinks he did it. An interesting variation on the trope, as the chronology of the movie mostly runs backwards and so it's natural to have the conclusion at the start. The chronology alternates between going forward and backwards, and meets in the middle in the climax.
• Michael Clayton shows him survive an assassination attempt in the beginning. Who wanted him dead? Watch the rest of the film to find out.
• Michael Collins starts with Joe O'Reilly consoling Kitty over the death of Collins. The film then continues after the death of the main character, and then goes back and tells the story of how the British Empire was humiliated. Considering the fact that the film is based of the life of a long dead historical figure, the beginning doesn't really give much away.
• Midway: Both versions cover the pivotal Battle of Midway, the moment that is widely credited as turning the tide of the war in the Pacific. Everyone knows the US Navy inflicted a devastating defeat against the Japanese. The tension comes from how the battle unfolds, and in some cases who makes it out alive.
• Milk actually comes right out and says that Harvey Milk is killed within the first few minutes of the movie. Interestingly, though, the movie even continues after he dies.
• Miracle: Everyone knows that the American hockey team will beat the Soviet Union, but how did they manage to do it?
• Moulin Rouge!:
  • The film begins with Ewan McGregor's character typing "The woman I loved is dead." So there you go.
  • Director Baz Luhrmann has admitted that his whole Red Curtain Trilogy (Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!) were more about telling the story of getting to the foregone conclusion.
  • And the 1955 version is based on the actual life of Toulouse-Lautrec (and the novel).
• Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: When the audience first sees the Manson Family, and when protagonists Rick and Cliff move in next door to Sharon Tate and Roman Polański, it seems inevitable that they will witness the infamous and tragic murders of Tate and her friends. As it turns out, this is an Alternate History, as they prevent the murders by slaughtering the killers.
• The Opposite Of Sex: Narrator Dede and her ex-boyfriend struggle over a pistol, which goes off. The both lie there for a moment until Dede pushes his body off her. Her narration says "What, you thought I'd be the one who died? I'm the narrator here, guys! Keep up!"
• Ouija: Origin of Evil: Doris and Alice will die and become ghosts, Paulina will be sent to a mental asylum, and the Zanders' house will turn into a cursed place.
• Oz the Great and Powerful: Theodora is "turned evil" in a situation sympathetic enough that in a different movie, you would probably be hoping that the effects of eating the apple will be undone and she'll return to her good self; just as Oz, not having seen the movies, offers her a Last-Second Chance when sending her into exile. But of course, in 'later' works she is the Wicked Witch of the West and therefore nothing like that will happen.
• Pan's Labyrinth starts with Ofelia, lying on the ground, bleeding from her nose. From the fact that the blood is moving backwards, viewers can tell right away that the plot is about to rewind, which it does.
• Multiple films have been centered around the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. Anybody who knows anything about the Second World War knows what's going to happen in films like Tora! Tora! Tora! and Pearl Harbor. For this reason, these films generally tend to be documentarian, or rely on using the raid as a footnote or backdrop against another plot.
• Penn & Teller Get Killed: At the end, they, well, do. There's a closing narration along the lines of, "Well, what did you expect to happen?"
• The Phenix City Story starts with a 13-minute Real Life newsreel outlining the events of the film. At the time of the film's release, everybody knew of the case of Albert Patterson since it had happened only the previous year, but viewers nowadays may very well go into the film unawares and be spoiled.
• Pompeii: Vesuvius explodes, Pompeii is destroyed and everyone dies.
• Public Enemies is based on the life of the infamous bank robber John Dillinger, famously shot by three FBI agents.
• Revolution (1985) is set in the American Revolutionary War, so you know that the Americans will win out against the British in the end.
• Romeo is Bleeding starts with a bartender telling a story about one of his regulars (Gary Oldman), and why that man is such a mess. There's a bit of a twist, though, when it's revealed at the end that both of them are the same man.
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead: Even if you're not familiar with Hamlet, you can probably guess what happens to the two leads at the end.
• Seven Pounds starts with the main character calling in his own suicide to 911.
• Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows gives us a really good view of a waterfall during the establishing shot of the castle in which the climax of the film takes place. Those familiar with Holmes mythology could tell where the movie was headed from there. Subverted in that it's shown that Holmes survived. Those who weren't sure knew how it was going to end when Mycroft mentioned that the peace summit was taking place at Reichenbach.
• Smokin' Aces 2: Assassins' Ball: As it's a prequel, Lester Tremor and Lazlo Soot are both guaranteed to survive.
• Sodom and Gomorrah is based on the Book of Genesis, so if the alternate title The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah isn't enough of a giveaway, the cities will be destroyed at the end of the film, Lot's attempt to find enough righteous men to lead out of Sodom to persuade Jehovah to spare it is destined to fail, and Lot's wife will ignore his instructions not to look back at the cities' destruction and be turned into a pillar of salt.
• Space Jam is partly based on real life events; namely Michael Jordan's brief retirement from basketball in favor of baseball, before returning to basketball. So you know he's going to go back to basketball at the end.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek (2009) is an alternate continuity and takes liberties such as killing Kirk's dad and destroying Vulcan, but still, you know everyone will get over the conflicts to become True Companions as the Enterprise crew.
  • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: When your movie is called The Search For Spock, it's not going to end with Admiral Kirk turning to the viewers and saying, "Sorry folks, we didn't find him." As William Shatner put it, if they had done so, "people would have thrown rocks at the screen."
• Star Wars:
  • The prequels, unless you were living under a pop culture rock since the '70s. Even the posters admitted this one was a given — the most famous poster for The Phantom Menace shows young Anakin walking by a building...casting Darth Vader's shadow.
  • While perhaps not immediately obvious to casual fans, it was also obvious to most Star Wars fans as soon as Chancellor Palpatine showed up that he and Darth Sidious would turn out to be the same person; while not mentioned in Return of the Jedi, "Palpatine" was known to be the Emperor's name in many novels where he appeared. And those who were musically savvy knew that he was Darth Sidious/the Emperor from the beginning as, on several occasions, the Emperor's theme plays in the background in certain shots with him in the foreground in both roles. Also, the same actor plays both roles, despite the prequels taking place almost 20 years before Return of the Jedi and being filmed 20 years after. The character was always supposed to be old, but the actor who plays him, Ian McDiarmid, originally played the role in heavy makeup, and by the time the prequels were filmed was old enough to portray the character again.
  • Downplayed in Rogue One: while the mission to retrieve the Death Star's plans to exploit that exhaust vent will ultimately succeed, the fates of anyone participating in it are completely up for grabs. In fact, EVERYONE who isn't Saved by Canon gets wiped out by the end.
  • As Solo is obviously a prequel and origin story for Han Solo, every previously-established character who appears in this film—namely Han, Chewbacca, and Lando Calrissian—will survive the events of the film even as they're put into exceedingly dangerous situations. Like, say, nearly being sucked into a black hole.
• Stations of the Cross is a movie where each scene is a parallel of a station of the cross, except with a depressed young sedevacantist in the place of Jesus. Given that the twelfth station is "Jesus dies on the cross," things can't end too well for our protagonist.
• The first scene in The Stoning of Soraya M. of Zahra burying the bones in combination with the title leaves no doubt about the fate of the titular character.
• The Strangers begins with saying that the two protagonists left a wedding reception in 2005 and nobody knows exactly what happened next, all but saying that they died. Then they show some parts of the ending. Though the movie cheats at the end by having the female lead impossibly survive. Though she may be better off dead, as she was terrorized by a group of serial killers, saw her husband blow a friend's head off, and was stuck in a chair while he and her husband were stabbed repeatedly. Even if the survivor...well, survives, they won't be getting out of a psych ward for awhile. In her case, "death" may have been meant metaphorically.
• Stranger Than Fiction: "Little did he know that this simple seemingly innocuous act would result in his imminent death." "What? What? Hey!" Subverted, though: he lives at the end.
• Sunset Boulevard starts with a shot of the main character and narrator lying dead in a swimming pool. Being a movie about a screenwriter and an old movie starlet, it sure as hell makes you wonder the whole length of the movie.
• Terminator: Kyle Reese will live through Terminator Salvation. The humans will win the Robot War in the end.
• The Thing (2011) is a prequel about the Norwegian camp story, and you know through MacReady and his team's investigation in the 1982 film the overall fate of the Norwegian camp and its occupants, including how some of them are going to die. It also foreshadows the ending that "The Thing" will imitate a dog and 2 survivors from the Norwegian camp will chase and hunt it down, which they will fail to accomplish.
• Thirteen Days covers the two weeks of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the United States and Soviet Union ever came to an all-out thermonuclear war. The obvious fact that the planet wasn't reduced to a smoldering and radioactive charcoal briquette in 1962 leaves little doubt as to how the film ends. The tension comes from watching the conflict between the President and his staff and the military, and the negotiations on the floor of the United Nations.
• Titanic (1997):
  • Titanic is a double example. You know that the Titanic is going to sink, and you know right from the start that the main character survives. Nevertheless, it's a credit to James Cameron's talent as a filmmaker that, despite opening at the wreck and showing an explanation of the sinking early on, he is still able to make the collision suspenseful and uncertain.
  • May also qualify as Prophecy Twist - viewers paying attention to Rose's backstory at the beginning will know immediately which man she ends up with, as her last name is given as Dawson. However, at the end of the movie it's revealed the circumstances surrounding this were not marriage.
• Tora! Tora! Tora!!: Most of this film is about the Japanese planning to attack Pearl Harbor and the Americans fretting over their attempts to discover what Japan is up to. The Japanese achieve complete surprise — but fail to either hit the American carriers or scare the U.S. out of joining the war. And, of course, everybody knows how the war turns out.
• Transcendence: As Max narrates at the start of the film, reminiscing about Will and Evelyn, it's clear that both of them are dead by this time.
• Troy:
  • Troy falls. 'Twas ever thus.
  • The film does have significant differences to the Iliad on which it is based. Both Menelaus and Agamemnon survive the war in the original story, whereas Paris does not; in the film this is reversed.
  • In the film, Helen leaves with Paris because she genuinely loves him and hates Menelaus, the old man who she was forced to marry. In the original legend, Helen dearly loves Menelaus, the marriage is her personal choice, and she only falls for Paris because of a spell put on her by the goddess Aphrodite.
• The 2010 version of True Grit has the adult Mattie Ross narrate the death of her father at the hands of Tom Chaney. Right from the get-go, she is going to survive the events of the movie albeit as a disabled, middle-aged woman.
• Two Came Back: This 1997 made-for-TV movie depicted five young people left adrift in an emergency raft after their yacht sinks. Guess how many of the characters survived the ordeal and returned to land safely? If you need to, take another look at the title.
• Underworld: Rise of the Lycans is a prequel to the first film, mostly showing details that were only mentioned there. Sonja will die and not carry her baby with Lucian to term, Lucian and Viktor will survive, and the Lycans will successfully rebel against the vampires.
• United 93: This film was based on one of the four planes that were hijacked on 11 September, 2001. This was the one that crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.
• Seeing how Pompeii was most famous for its volcanic destruction, and how Up Pompeii had the budget to show it off in a way the series didn't, audiences expected the film to end with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The film's trailer even prominently shows it off, several times!
• Vagabond (1985): The film opens with the still image of a decrepit body, then goes into the two related storylines of the police trying to work out what happened and a woman becoming more uncivilized in every scene. Guess what happens to the woman.
• Valkyrie: Even if you are not familiar with the historical details, everyone knows that Adolf Hitler will survive the bombing. And if you don't like that, well, just watch Inglourious Basterds instead.
• Veronica Guerin is not only based on the life and death of the aforenamed Irish journalist, the movie begins with a depiction of her murder. The film then flashes back to two years prior, when she began her investigations into the Irish drug trade, which is what lead to her gruesome fate.
• Warcraft (2016) is a twofold example:
  • People who remember the plot of the first Warcraft game will know the major plot points, twists and the ending to the story, although there are some small (if impactful) differences.
  • The movie begins with a scene of a human and an orc fighting in a ruined land around the Portal, then jumps back in time, restricting possible outcomes to Bittersweet Ending and Downer Ending. It's the former.
• Went the Day Well?: Charlie the church deacon is present in the prologue, which is set years after the main events of the film, guaranteeing that he'll survive the hostage situation.
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: First Class:
  • These films are both prequels to the first three entries in the X-Men Film Series (though the prequels contradict each other in some regards) and therefore contain numerous examples of this trope (assuming that the viewer has seen the first three films and/or is familiar with the comic book source material).
  • In Wolverine, it's a given that Logan, Sabretooth, and Stryker will all survive the film. Logan will receive his adamantium skeleton from the Weapon X program. Finally, Logan's memories of everything in his life up to, and including, the events of the film will somehow be erased by the end of the film.
  • In First Class, it's sadly given that despite Xavier and Magneto starting out as best friends, Magneto's inevitable Face–Heel Turn will result in them becoming the leaders of two opposing mutant factions. Eventually Mystique will make a Face–Heel Turn of her own and become Magneto's Dragon. Beast's attempts to "cure" the physical appearance aspect of his mutation will not only fail, but will actually backfire, making his condition much worse.
    • Averted with the First Class sequel Days of Future Past which revealed that the First Class series of films actually take place in an alternate timeline and has dramatically different outcomes for a lot of the characters that appeared in the original trilogy (specifically Mystique in Dark Phoenix).
• Yamato is a historical film about the eponymous battleship. She's not going to make it.
• Zodiac: Anybody who knows anything about the Zodiac killings knows the killer was never caught.

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