The year was 2010 and The Twilight Saga films were already a massive global success, with the third film, Eclipse, merely a few months away from being released. Robert Pattinson was at the height of his fame from the first two films — the world was still very much obsessed with Edward Cullen and the rest of his vampire cabal.
As fanatical as lovers of the films were, to critics, they were seen as nothing more than gimmicky fantasy devised as the realization of the author’s fantasies and deployed on-screen as fodder to capture tween audiences. This meant that while the films were extremely popular, they were also heavily maligned, with their stars often serving as the easiest targets for all the lampooning. In fact, later, even the stars themselves would criticize it.
Likely seeking to branch out from the image of the good-guy vampire so steeped in tropes to dazzle younger viewers (he actually glittered), that year, Pattinson also starred in the coming-of-age drama film, Remember Me. The film scored an average rating with audiences but was shredded by critics. The bulk of its criticism came from the shocking twist at the end that was seen as insensitive and exploitative — basically, a cheap way to add tragedy to it after seeming to be a very different movie entirely before its infamous climax.
What Remember Me Is About
Remember Me saw Pattinson plays a much darker role as Tyler Hawkins, a young man who’s close to his little sister, Caroline, but has a very strained relationship with his father, Charles (Pierce Brosnan). Their estrangement stemmed from the death of his brother and how their father chose to push him and Caroline away to deal with it. Tyler cuts a morose and aggressive figure at times, and his cynically rebelious ways lead to him being arrested.
He later finds out that the arresting officer has a young daughter, Ally (Emilie de Ravin), whom he hatches a plan to seduce and dump as revenge against her father. After getting to know her, Tyler learns that she’s a student, and finds that she’s just as troubled as he is. This actually causes him to start falling for her instead.
Between Ally’s strained relationship with her own father, and Tyler and Charles constantly butting heads, the pair find comfort in each other. Throughout these parts of the film, it operates as a decent romantic drama centering on Tyler and Ally’s relationship, and the respective struggles both their families face to connect with each other on any meaningful level.
However, while nothing about this made the film extraordinary, it still helped it move forward as a pretty decent coming-of-age story that was well executed at times. That is, until the final scenes build toward some typical resolution tropes that are swiped away in an instant when it concludes with a shocking twist and very controversial ending that never befits the rest of it.
The Ending of Remember Me
After Tyler and Charles begin reconnecting and working through their issues, Tyler is pleased to see his father finally taking an interest in Caroline and spending time with her. Tyler and Ally also work through their own problems, and end up spending a night together where they profess their love for each other.
When Charles asked Tyler to meet him at his office the next day, Tyler arrived there but has to wait for him since Charles is taking Caroline to school, which Tyler is happy about. However, in a separate scene, Ally goes to her classes and when the teacher writes the date on the board, we learn that it’s Tuesday, September 11, 2001 — the infamous day that the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers took place.
Cutting back to Tyler, we later see him looking out the window of his father’s office as he waits for Charles and learn that Charles works on the 101st floor in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. While the attacks are never explicitly shown, the film ends in a way that lets us know Tyler was killed in the attacks that day, while Charles was spared since he was with Caroline. The ending was a brutally unexpected one and caused outrage among viewers and critics alike.
The Controversy Explained
There were a couple of reasons that made the ending of Remember Me the target of so much outrage. For one, the film took place less than ten years after the actual 9/11 terror attacks took such a horrific toll on the lives of so many people. Whether victims or the family members and friends of the nearly 3000 innocent people who tragically lost their lives that day, it was seen as way too soon for such a callous representation of it to be used as the film’s finale.
Given how little time had passed relative to the magnitude of the attacks and their inconceivable consequences for so many real people, the film’s ending also could not escape being seen as a cheap exploitation of their grief and the world’s living memories of the atrocious event, simply to give it shock value.
