The most epic climax to a movie or book.

[Romicron]

Two words:

Minas Tirith.

 

[The Invisible Goldfish]

No

 

[Frybird]

Since it is (for non-fans) pretty much a very long action scene it may hardly count, but who could forget the probably craziest swordfight ever at the end of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children.

I mean, it goes from the craziest chase scene with logic and gravity-defying stunts to a (for Advent Children) pretty regular fight into the final fight with Sephiroth (don't complain about Spoilers, he is on every f**king DVD cover), wich involves flying around (well, jumping, but in such a ridiculous way that it may as well be), cutting through entire buildings and fighting within the debris of said buildings while the chunks are still falling down.

If you wouldn't know that this movie is Fanservice for the FF fans, you could think that the entire purpose of the movie is to give wire-fu movies the finger...

 

[Savioritis]

A lot of my choices have already been used, but I'm gonna pull out my favorite book of all time as my pick:

Ender's Game

Spoiler

ITS NOT A GAME! IT WAS REEEEAAAALLLL!!! THOSE PEOPLE WERE REEEEAAALLLL!!! In all seriousness, the ending blew my mind. All this time, I fully believed they were training. That everything was going to lead up to one big battle in the end, and that the last training session was merely the teaser of what would happen.

 

[Akai Shizuku]

I never saw the movie, but I read the book like 4 times. HP6.

 

[Pegghead]

Im gonna have to go with something pretty obscure here. The final book in the Mortal Engines series (Or the hungry cities chronicles) which is the best book series ever written (In your face twilight and harry potter, go cry to your fanbases). Let me see, it was called a darkling plain, so many things were tied up. This is a spoiler alert here. The evil part robot, part human Chinese STALKER woman Anna Fang has Tom (who is suffering from a serious heart attack brought on by Pennroyal in the second book when he shot him) and Hester held hostage in a delapidated house where she has the control to an ancient space energy weapon which will destroy the world...again. Pennroyal who has always been a bumbling, old coward who always gets caught up with the adventures of the gang has arrived in the houses location on an airship borrowed from one of the lost boys (an organization of underage cutthroats and thieves who were disbanded when their underwater establishment finally collapsed) he has a clunky, old-tech energy rifle and is sneaking through the house as he realizes this could be his real crowning moment rather than the rubbish he printed in his books. To cut a long story short he kills Fang to his shock, Tom dies from the heart attack and Hester is left behind as pennroyal is taken hostage on the ship with the boy. The world doesn't end again and finally after so much searching Shrike the rogue STALKER finds the house due to locating Hester. He finds her corpse next to Toms and realizes she killed herself. he takes their corpses up to a hill, sits down on a rock and shuts off his body and only his mind and sight is kept active. In carrying them up the hill he has a memory of a time very long ago (probably before the war that destroyed earth) when he would carry his children up to bed when they fell asleep, before he was turned into a half human, half robot soldier for the sixty minute war. He watches ages go past, the corpses of Hester and Tom rotting away, the world seeming to become a better, greener world. after centuries upon centuries he activates himself again to find a nearby village. He is bought to town square where he finds that people have forgotten about the war and the horrible roaming cities. He finds out that they thought he was just a statue up there and are shocked to hear what he is as STALKERS to them only exist as fairytales like everything else from his time. So to the whole crowd he sits down after agreeing to fill them in on the details. "It all began as the final airships rose from the small mining town that London was in pursuit of" (Or something like that, it was basically what happened in the beginning of the first book) And then the final full-stop to a great series. Read It if you haven't. In terms of movies, Gran Torino man. I was in tears...literally.

 

[similar.squirrel]

Either V for Vendetta or Perfume.

 

[Xvito]

V For Vendetta, Equilibrium, Fight Club and Clockwork Orange, those movies have epic endings.

 

[Rusty Bucket]

Toll the Hounds by Steven Errikson. Seriously, the climax of that thing takes up about 5 chapters. Best ending to a book ever.

 

[Silver Scribbler]

Spoiler: Mortal Engines

Im gonna have to go with something pretty obscure here. The final book in the Mortal Engines series (Or the hungry cities chronicles) which is the best book series ever written (In your face twilight and harry potter, go cry to your fanbases). Let me see, it was called a darkling plain, so many things were tied up. This is a spoiler alert here. The evil part robot, part human Chinese STALKER woman Anna Fang has Tom (who is suffering from a serious heart attack brought on by Pennroyal in the second book when he shot him) and Hester held hostage in a delapidated house where she has the control to an ancient space energy weapon which will destroy the world...again. Pennroyal who has always been a bumbling, old coward who always gets caught up with the adventures of the gang has arrived in the houses location on an airship borrowed from one of the lost boys (an organization of underage cutthroats and thieves who were disbanded when their underwater establishment finally collapsed) he has a clunky, old-tech energy rifle and is sneaking through the house as he realizes this could be his real crowning moment rather than the rubbish he printed in his books. To cut a long story short he kills Fang to his shock, Tom dies from the heart attack and Hester is left behind as pennroyal is taken hostage on the ship with the boy. The world doesn't end again and finally after so much searching Shrike the rogue STALKER finds the house due to locating Hester. He finds her corpse next to Toms and realizes she killed herself. he takes their corpses up to a hill, sits down on a rock and shuts off his body and only his mind and sight is kept active. In carrying them up the hill he has a memory of a time very long ago (probably before the war that destroyed earth) when he would carry his children up to bed when they fell asleep, before he was turned into a half human, half robot soldier for the sixty minute war. He watches ages go past, the corpses of Hester and Tom rotting away, the world seeming to become a better, greener world. after centuries upon centuries he activates himself again to find a nearby village. He is bought to town square where he finds that people have forgotten about the war and the horrible roaming cities. He finds out that they thought he was just a statue up there and are shocked to hear what he is as STALKERS to them only exist as fairytales like everything else from his time. So to the whole crowd he sits down after agreeing to fill them in on the details. "It all began as the final airships rose from the small mining town that London was in pursuit of" (Or something like that, it was basically what happened in the beginning of the first book) And then the final full-stop to a great series. Read It if you haven't. In terms of movies, Gran Torino man. I was in tears...literally.

Whole post gave me tingles, had forgotten how awesome that series was.

 

[Unreliable]

Im gonna have to go with something pretty obscure here. The final book in the Mortal Engines series (Or the hungry cities chronicles) which is the best book series ever written (In your face twilight and harry potter, go cry to your fanbases).

Spoiler

Let me see, it was called a darkling plain, so many things were tied up. This is a spoiler alert here. The evil part robot, part human Chinese STALKER woman Anna Fang has Tom (who is suffering from a serious heart attack brought on by Pennroyal in the second book when he shot him) and Hester held hostage in a delapidated house where she has the control to an ancient space energy weapon which will destroy the world...again. Pennroyal who has always been a bumbling, old coward who always gets caught up with the adventures of the gang has arrived in the houses location on an airship borrowed from one of the lost boys (an organization of underage cutthroats and thieves who were disbanded when their underwater establishment finally collapsed) he has a clunky, old-tech energy rifle and is sneaking through the house as he realizes this could be his real crowning moment rather than the rubbish he printed in his books. To cut a long story short he kills Fang to his shock, Tom dies from the heart attack and Hester is left behind as pennroyal is taken hostage on the ship with the boy. The world doesn't end again and finally after so much searching Shrike the rogue STALKER finds the house due to locating Hester. He finds her corpse next to Toms and realizes she killed herself. he takes their corpses up to a hill, sits down on a rock and shuts off his body and only his mind and sight is kept active. In carrying them up the hill he has a memory of a time very long ago (probably before the war that destroyed earth) when he would carry his children up to bed when they fell asleep, before he was turned into a half human, half robot soldier for the sixty minute war. He watches ages go past, the corpses of Hester and Tom rotting away, the world seeming to become a better, greener world. after centuries upon centuries he activates himself again to find a nearby village. He is bought to town square where he finds that people have forgotten about the war and the horrible roaming cities. He finds out that they thought he was just a statue up there and are shocked to hear what he is as STALKERS to them only exist as fairytales like everything else from his time. So to the whole crowd he sits down after agreeing to fill them in on the details. "It all began as the final airships rose from the small mining town that London was in pursuit of" (Or something like that, it was basically what happened in the beginning of the first book) And then the final full-stop to a great series. Read It if you haven't.

In terms of movies, Gran Torino man. I was in tears...literally.

1) Dude, spoilers.
2) I actually have read the books (back when they first came out)
3) I kinda liked the ending to the first book better, but it was a good climax.
4) Good books, but pretty strange too, and I dont think the idea of giant wandering cities would ever work (I know its fantasy, just saying)

 

[LockHeart]

I've gotta mention the ending of the Night's Dawn trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton where...

Spoiler

Quinn Dexter is using his powers to open a gateway to a dimension of absolute entropy to unleash a horde of orgathe (shapeshifting energy absorbing/devouring creatures) onto the Earth's surface, leading to the destruction of our universe as they literally drain it of all energy (incidentally bringing about Dexter's satanic paradise).

Joshua Calvert is conversing with the Tyrathca's Sleeping God which turns out to be a sentient naked singularity with virtually unlimited power which comes from it absorbing vacuum energy. He persuades it to use its powers to send the dead human souls that have returned to possess the living back to the dimension from which they came and places Quinn Dexter there to act as a vessel for all of them so that they can be transported to the 'omega point' (the end of the universe) instead of waiting in torment in 'the beyond'. The orgathe are sent back to their dimension. The singularity then returns the planets that the possessed had used their powers to transport to other dimensions and moves all of the systems in Confederation space to an area just outside the Milky Way Galaxy, where humanity can exist in peace and continue with their own development unhindered.

The ending comes with Quinn Dexter releasing the souls of humanity as the universe reaches the omega point billions of years in the future.

Absolutely. Fucking. Epic.