Top 10 Closing Lines in Movies

It’s not about how you start; it’s about how you finish! Welcome to WatchMojo.com, and today we’re counting down our picks for the top 10 closing lines in movies!

For this list, we’ve looked across all cinema genres, and selected the best closing lines! For the purposes of this video we understand a ‘closing line’ to be the last piece of speech or narration within a movie’s script. And, as we are revealing the final lines in movies, you may be hit with some spoilers, so a SPOILER ALERT is probably in order.

So you’ve just edge-of-your-seated your way through one of the greatest superhero movies of modern times, and then you’re treated to this! A closing line worthy of an especially classic caped crusader, it sums Batman’s entire anti-heroism act up perfectly! This is a guy who tries his best to defend the city, even if the city tries its best to paint him as the villain! Gary Oldman’s perfect delivery leaves the audience in no doubt... This knight’s good (in a dark kinda way), and this movie’s great, no question!

You’ve just shot yourself in the face, the city is about to systematically explode before your very eyes, the girl you like is right there with you and this is all your own doing... Our next closing line is quite clearly an appropriate one! Ed Norton’s tussling with Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden comes to a head in this scene, as he, we and the perfect Pixies soundtrack question the guy’s cognitive condition! ‘A very strange time in your life’ - You can say that again!!

If there’s one turn of phrase that just shouldn’t be uttered by a cannibal, it’s this one! Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling has spent this entire movie waging a psychological battle against Hannibal Lecter, but with this final line Anthony Hopkins’ character claims the upper hand at the last! Spoken from the other side of a long distance phone line, perhaps the doctor really is going to wine and dine an old friend or associate, entertaining them for the evening before bidding them farewell - but we sincerely doubt it!

By now Marty McFly should really know to expect the unexpected when it comes to Doc and the DeLorean! Still, Michael J. Fox’s slight uncertainty is set-up enough for this sensational closing line! It just doesn’t get any cooler than a slightly cracked old guy in a heavily souped up sports car, donning some sort of designer eyewear before taking his wheels off-road, literally! Oh wait, it does get a little cooler... as the line sets us up perfectly for the sequel!

A title-drop in a closing line is very rarely a bad thing, but this is the best of its kind! Jack Nicholson has really been put through the mill in this movie, but the climactic scene is emotional strain at its most taut! Shots are fired, people are killed, injustice is served... It’s an ending that satisfies because it doesn’t satisfy, and it’s a closing line that reflects that! Chinatown may as well have an ‘Abandon All Hope’ banner strewn across its entrance... now, how to ‘forget’ the unforgettable?

A movie about the movies, but about so much more besides, our next ending utterance is the final piece within a framing device executed to perfection! Time periods are jumbled in this film, but for the final scene we are very definitely (and regrettably) in the present, and at a point where the once-great Norma Desmond has finally lost touch with reality! She’s ‘ready for her close-up’, she’s about to get locked up, the whole thing is magnificently messed up!

A couple newly freed from an oppressive society in which they found themselves very much alienated... An apparently peaceful canter along an isolated beach... This closing line might have had a very different feel to it... It might have been a peaceful, happy ending... But then the Statue of Liberty turned up very far away from where we usually associate it, and Charlton Heston quite rightly damned us all to Hell! It’s probably the most outwardly dramatic final line to make our countdown today!

A movie that has it all, “Casablanca” is rounded off with one of the most quotable closing lines in cinema history! World War II has spread across Europe and no one can sleep safe at night... So when Rick Blaine’s old flame Ilsa Lund turns up in his Moroccan bar, Humphrey Bogart’s character is determined to help Ingrid Bergman out as much as possible! It just happens that he needs a little help from Louis and the ‘beginning of a beautiful friendship’ to make that possible!

It’s one of the best movies of modern times, it’s easily one of the best final scenes ever, and it’s our runner-up on today’s closing line countdown! Kevin Spacey, ‘Verbal’ Kint, Keyser Soze - call him what you will... - delivers the last lines of “The Usual Suspects” with appropriate devilishness, unveiling awesome deception, and a miraculous recovery! Having Houdini-ed his way out of the police station he has every mouth (on screen and off of it) wide open in amazement! It’s truly the ‘greatest trick’ ever told!

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions:
- “Dr. Strangelove or” (1964)
- “Manhattan” (1979)
- “King Kong” (1933)
- “GoodFellas” (1990)
- “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial” (1982)
- “Good Will Hunting” (1997)

We’ve given you uplifting closing lines, ambiguous ones and iconic ones, but we leave you with the psychotic, and a snippet of Alfred Hitchcock that really stays with you! Norman Bates is ‘mommy’s boy’ times a million, and in this final monologue we’re treated to (and terrified by) the man in all of his malevolence! It’s the ‘she’ that really sends shivers down your spine though! A defining detail the likes of which Hitchcock had a reputation for bringing out, it’s the closing line to close all others!

Do you agree with our list? Which big screen last line did we overlook? For more memorable top 10s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.