Yet, as the film's iconic ending demonstrates – a still frame of Louise's green 1966 T-Bird Convertible as it flies over the Grand Canyon in their final act of death-suicide – Thelma & Louise trades on a tension between movement and stillness, life and death.
Why did Thelma and Louise drive off Cliff at the end of the movie?
Hal arrives on the scene, but the women refuse his last attempt to talk them into surrendering. Rather than be captured, Thelma proposes that they "keep going". Both kiss and hold hands as Louise steps on the gas and they accelerate over the cliff to their certain deaths.
Essentially Thelma & Louise is a rape-revenge film, and Khouri and Scott adroitly show you that the rape that it is a revenge for happened a long time before this story started: the gunshot discharges the backstory's pent-up frustration and rage.
While it's not explicitly capital-G Gay, it's certainly blurring the lines of their relationship at the very least and introducing a romantic element that they've been unknowingly nurturing throughout their journey.
Geena Davis reveals why Brad Pitt was cast in Thelma & Louise 😍 | The Graham Norton Show - BBC
Why did Louise kiss Thelma?
The ending of Thelma and Louise makes the film a tale of sapphic escape. Their last act together before dying is to kiss. To me, this kiss is a vow. In life or death, sickness or health, Thelma and Louise are there for each other.
One thing led to another and it just sort of happened. Four years later, two women in Texas would become equally notorious for a crime spree that had such clear echoes of the iconic silver-screen duo that newspapers as far away as the U.K. would refer to them as the “Real-Life 'Thelma and Louise.
Thelma: Hey Louise, better slow down. I'd just die if we get caught over a speeding ticket. Louise: You know, for the first time in my life I wish this car wasn't green.
Was there an alternate ending to Thelma and Louise?
It's lucky audiences got to see it, though, as the film almost had alternate endings that would have robbed its final moments of some of their power. Instead, the original ending remains one of the most iconic finales in modern film for a reason -- because it results in a far more powerful finale.
The kiss was a spur-of-the-moment decision, Susan Sarandon revealed. Thirty years on, “Thelma & Louise” still has one of the most memorable endings in film history — when the title characters share a kiss and hold hands before (spoiler alert!) driving their car into the Grand Canyon as law enforcement closes in.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Sarandon revealed that Ridley Scott considered having Louise push Thelma out of the car at the last minute, keeping her alive.
Slocumb learns that Louise had been raped years earlier in Texas. Thelma tells Louise she can't go back to Darryl, but she understands if Louise wants to return to Jimmy. Louise promises they will keep going together.
Did Louise drive the car off the cliff in Thelma and Louise?
Instead of surrendering, Thelma and Louise opt to "keep on going" and drive over the Grand Canyon in their 1966 Thunderbird. The last scene viewers are shown is the pair holding hands as they drive the car over the edge.
They flee, fearing the police won't believe them. Thelma borrows money from her boyfriend, Jimmy Lennox, later stolen by a hitchhiker, JD. Their status as outlaws is compounded when Thelma robs a liquor store to replace the lost money and fund their escape to Mexico.
The two leading characters of Thelma & Louise have remained etched in the collective consciousness for many reasons. They both face a journey of inner growth and awareness that drives them to self-empowerment. They live in a patriarchal world where it is unusual for women to fight back.
In fact, Thelma and Louise's demise is familiar. Their deaths echo that of Romeo and Juliet. They fall in love and realize that when they have nowhere else to turn for a life where they can live out happily with each other, they take their own lives.
Suddenly, a film in which women were, in every sense, behind the wheel. It turned the tables on Hollywood, instantly becoming a classic, and continues to electrify audiences as a cultural statement of defiance. But if the film's place in history now seems certain, at the time its creation was a long shot.
Geena Davis was thirty-four and Susan Sarandon forty-four when they landed the roles. In Callie's mind, the women were the same age, friends from high school, and definitely not in their forties. Thelma & Louise, Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, 1991.
Directed by Ridley Scott, the road movie (which opened May 24, 1991) follows two women on the run, caught in an outsized misunderstanding with law enforcement. Thelma & Louise was nominated for six Academy Awards and won best screenplay, a prize that went to Nashville creator Callie Khouri.
The vision - and version - of feminism presented in Thelma & Louise is one that emphasises friendship, love and unity between women as much as it depends upon a vigilante response against the men who abused and oppressed them.
The movie Thelma and Louise was filmed in the states of Utah and California. Throughout the film, the women are driving from Arkansas to the Grand Canyon. Most of the filming for the movie was done in and around Moab, Utah, and Bakersfield, California.
Before Brad Pitt was cast, the role went to William Baldwin but he ended up dropping out. George Clooney was rejected multiple times. Mark Ruffalo auditioned. Eventually, the role went to Robert Downey Jr.
Harlan takes her to the parking lot and tries to sexually assault her until Louise intervenes and threatens to shoot him. As the women walk away, Harlan yells he should've continued the assault, causing Louise to fatally shoot him in a fit of rage. The two women immediately drive off.
