“I’ll be right here.”

The last lines of dialogue in any film should leave viewers with something to remember. Here are a few notable ones.

“I’ll be right here.” Elliott’s emotional farewell from his otherworldly friend in E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982) tugged at a lot of heartstrings.

“Oh no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast.” Another emotional ending in King Kong (1933), which held up in the 2005 remake.

“I do wish we could chat longer, but I’m having an old friend for dinner.” Quite literally, in fact. This was Hannibal Lecter’s (Anthony Hopkins) farewell to Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) in The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

“Honey, uh, you wanna know who really killed JFK?” Agent Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) examines a piece of microfilm that had been hidden for three decades in The Rock (1996).

“Watch the skies everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!” In the 1951 version of The Thing (From Another World), a reporter on site at the North Pole issues this dire warning about alien invasions.

“Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads!” Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) to Marty McFly in Back to the Future (1985). He’s about to transport Marty and his girlfriend Jennifer in his seriously souped-up DeLorean.

“God damn you all to hell!”

“Oh my god, I’m back! I’m home. All the time, it was… We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” Astronaut George Taylor (Charlton Heston) upon seeing the remains of the Statue of Liberty in the OMG final scene of Planet of the Apes (1968).

“The name’s Bond. James Bond.” Yes, that line has been uttered by every actor who played the iconic character in every James Bond film ever made. But it happened to be the final line in Casino Royale (2006), cementing Daniel Craig as the latest (and maybe greatest?) Bond.

“There’s no place like home!” Who else but Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) in the 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz.

“This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off.” Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) makes a final log entry prior to her 57-year hyper-sleep in the 1979 sci fi/horror film, Alien.

“The unknown future rolls toward us. I face it, for the first time, with a sense of hope. Because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.” This voiceover by Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) should have been the perfect ending to the story. Unfortunately, a slew of sequels never held a candle to this awesome film.

“Oh, God!” A simple but powerful two words from Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) as he watches his friends disintegrate on the battlefield of Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity War (2018).

“There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always.” Wise words—and hopefully true—from Mahatma Gandhi (Ben Kingsley) in the 1982 gem, Gandhi.

Ben Kingsley as Mahatma Gandhi.

“After all, tomorrow is another day.” Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh) looks to the future in another 1939 classic, Gone With the Wind.

We have a gazillion movies out there, hence a whole lot of final lines to choose from. We’ll do some more in a future post.