Greatest Movie Theories To Blow Your Mind
I’ve always wanted to pull together in a single blog posting many of the various theories about movies that I have created or that I adore. I’ve definitely done my fair share of crazy theory development. And I’ll be honest with you, one of the main reasons I create some of my crazier theories is just to piece together illogical movies that are otherwise good. But a better reason for for creating theories is just because you guys eat ’em up. But I have been creating crazy ideas for movies since I can remember.
The Matrix – Matrices Movie Theory
The Matrix is a clever movie. Take the red pill and escape the matrix. The blue one? Wake up none the wiser. But there is a problem with the Wachowski brother’s (siblings?) brilliant trilogy. And it isn’t a small one. When the characters (especially Neo) truly learn that there is no spoon, there is no reality, they are able to do all sorts of amazing special feats of super hero strength and stamina. Right? Makes perfect sense. But what about outside of the Matrix? How does Neo come back to life? How does he do his amazing bullet dodge outside the Matrix? This theory states that Neo never left the Matrix. Or possibly, that he left one Matrix, and exited out into another (though grittier) Matrix. Maybe the movies would have been better called, The Matrices?
Inception – 7 Layer Cake Movie Theory
Christopher Nolan adds layer after layer into pretty much every movie he writes and directs. Inception is no different – though maybe the most potentially shallow of his offerings. During the heist into the mind of their Inceived heist victim, Cobb decides he needs to head down not 1, not 2, but three layers in order to successfully pull off the Inception required. But as the movie moves along we realize that maybe Cobb isn’t actually awake? And by the time that Cobb and Saito end up in Limbo there are potentially Seven Layers of dream states going on here, not just three. Even the most conservative viewer has to admit there are five. But I personally believe that Mal is actually alive and safe, one layer up from where Cobb is grieving his dead wife. Interested in the details, read more here.
Signs – Holy Water Movie Theory
M. Night’s reputation definitely has seen better days. During the creation of his latest movie with Will Smith, After Earth, Sony worried so much about the director’s mounting terrible reputation that they hid the fact that he was involved at all. Signs was one of the first movies that began to cement this slide. But what if the aliens weren’t aliens at all? What if they were demons? Then the movie might actually begin to make more sense. Right? Because then we understand why simple water (Holy Water?) from Mel Gibson’s character’s house was so effective. Reverend Graham Hess (Gibson) would have had plenty of the stuff on hand to fight the demon onslaught.
Upstream Color – Injustice Movie Theory
Understanding anything Shane Carruth does is not a simple task. Primer is insane. And so goes Upstream Color. There isn’t a simple synopsizable bite-sized theory I can play out for you in under 500 words. But I will say this. The mind job of Upstream Color is that the Thief. The one who perpetrates the crime against his victims… he is the one that gets off completely free and clear. The Sampler on the other hand is, by all intents and purposes innocent. Well, that isn’t entirely true… but he is definitely not worthy of being hunted and shot. That is for sure. So the truly sad, and cosmically mind-blowing aspect of this film is that Justice is not achieved. In fact, its worse than that… what we have here is a terrible miscarriage of justice.
Titanic – Projection Jack
This well received theory claims that Jack Dawson wasn’t a real person aboard the Titanic in the film, but was in fact just her conscience in a form that would appeal to her. While travelling on the ship, Rose was depressed about having to marry someone she didn’t like and was deeply unhappy about the general state of her life. Just as she is about to kill herself, Jack appears and stops her. This manifestation is simply too good to be true, being almost the exact opposite of her husband and helping her to overcome her unhappiness. Jack also seems to know a lot about Rose, despite only just meeting her. The final piece of evidence for the theory comes in the form that near the end of the movie, when it is revealed that there are no records of Jack, and Rose says he only exists in her memory.
Edge of Tomorrow – Cage Becomes Omega
Many of these theories run cross the grain. Sort of that “WachootalknboutWillis” sorts of theories. But when you have a movie as complicated as Edge of Tomorrow it becomes less of a theory and more of a – what the heck just happened there? And with The Edge of Tomorrow, the main thing that we have to figure out is this, how do the time travel rules work? And in my Edge Explanation post I posit that the real mind-job here is the fact that we need to figure out how Cage wakes up in the helicopter instead of on invasion day. The truly mind blowing theory that pulls this anomaly together is that Cage must be the new Omega. Not buying what I’m selling, read more over here.
Minority Report – Anderton’s Eternally Jailed
The ending of the film is not as it seems. If you recall, the futuristic jail that houses would be criminals keep the prisoners’ minds “free to dream”. This keeps any of the prisoners from attempting to escape and commit their future crimes. Now, remember that Chief John Anderton (Tom Cruise) was imprisoned there at the end of the film. What if the ending of the film is just Anderton’s dream and he actually is still held hostage in the prison, simply believing that he has in fact beaten the system. When in fact he is still safely locked up in prison?
Dark Knight Rises – Batman Died
I recently discussed this particular theory when Christian Bale made public his own theories known about the ending of the popular movie. It was actually this comment by Bale that made me want to talk through all my various and sundry movie theories. This theory is fairly simple, but enormously impactful to the ending of the Nolan Batman trilogy. It states that Batman died in the nuclear blast, and the vision Alred has of him and Selina in Italy was merely a dream.
Pulp Fiction – Marsellus’ Soul
Marsellus Wallace spends the whole of the movie hunting for a suitcase. We are never told what is in the suitcase but we are given several key clues as to what is inside. First clue? The key-code to get into the briefcase is 666. The second is the glowing the occurs when Vincent Vega (John Travolta) opens the suitcase. And the most critical clue is the bandaid on the back of Marsellus’ neck after his soul is stolen.
Primer – The Pandora’s Box
Primer is the single most complicated movie that has ever made its way to the silver screen. Hands down. Seems straight forward, until the whole movie unveils itself and you realize that Carruth has been working the audience from scene one on. There are multiple tricks to this movie that are required to understand the way the time traveling works here. The first is that each time machine is a single use box. But, it is possible to bring a time machine into the box with you, this opens a wide range of craziness possible. The second is that, if Abe goes into box one, and comes out 8 hours earlier, there are now 2 Abes. Abe and Abe prime. If Abe prime keeps Abe from getting back into the box again (thus disappearing forever) there will then be two Abes physically present in the world forever. Right. I’m done here. Need more of this? Check it out here.
Blade Runner – Decker is a Replicant
Its really quite funny how many people blithely accept the movie Blade Runner at face value. Which is just astonishing to me. So let’s put it bluntly. Deckard is a replicant. The entirety of the movie is about Harrison Ford’s character grappling with this proof which is all around him. He slowly begins collecting proof of this fact throughout the entirety of the movie. So for the whole of the movie Deckard realizes that he had been hunting his own brethren.
The Prestige – The Machine’s a Hoax
The Prestige might possibly be my favorite movie of all time. That said. This movie has two very basic alternatives to it. Either the portal machine worked, or it didn’t. I posit that the movie itself is a magic trick, and is asking you to watch very closely, which means the machine didn’t work as a cloning machine at all. The key are the two diaries written by Borden and Angier, which narrate most of the movie. They were written for their nemesis, and thus they were lies from beginning to end, and shouldn’t be trusted. The top hats, the cats, the bodies in the tanks, were all one big long con by Angier to win the “game” of best magician – which came with very very deadly side effects. This takes a modest movie from a great film maker, and makes it one of the greatest movies of all time. But the question is this… are you watching closely?
Memento – Lenny is Sammy
Let’s face it… pretty much any theory that will explain the backward unfolding movie from Christopher Nolan is a good one. Ok, so half of the movie is forwards, while the other half interlaces with the forward sections while proceeding backwards. Its enough to give any casual viewer the howling fantods. There are many many schools of thought here, but the two main theories that make the most sense are as follows. Lenny survived his wife’s murder and his memory is damaged from the event. Teddy, a local police officer then begins using Lenny to begin cleaning up criminals on the streets, one by one. Another even darker alternative is that Lenny’s wife survived the attack just fine but Lenny’s memory is damaged. In a test to see if her husband’s memory really is damaged, she asks him to give her her insulin injections over and over again… thereby killing her himself. Regardless of which school you come from, what do you do with the shot of Lenny, with his wife, and the tattoo that says, “I’ve Done It”?
Bonus Round “GAME” Theory Extra Credit –
To end this walk down theory lane, I’m going to break the rules of the post from the get go by positing a theory from a video game instead of a movie. And recently I’ve mentioned portal quite a lot, like here and here. Basically, this theory is about the companion cube. In Portal 1 GLADOS tells you that you have to incinerate a companion cube before you can move on to another level. She refers to it as “fratricide”. Well, who are your other brothers? Other test subjects. Could it be that other injured or deceased players are actually housed in the “companion cubes”?