Watched this today.

First and foremost I loved the cinematography. The framing of shots was spectacular!

All the acting was great and I enjoyed the plot (yes the new pope was predictable, but still).

I think it deserves its nominations.

However, I too kind of groaned at the ending. It just felt needless and actually hurt the story and the movie a bit. The movie was a good one on the politics behind power and was an interesting ride that held my attention the entire time. The tacked on twist just felt needless and should have been trimmed. All things must serve the story and the twist didn't serve it well. I will say it would have worked much better (to me) if it was just a straight up woman who they elected. At first I thought that was that it was and liked it, but the hermaphrodite angle muddied it a bit with no added point.. What point it served had already been nailed home without the needed twist.

Also I don't think it's anti-Catholic at all. We attend Catholic church but my daughter and I do silently protest at the end of church when they want us to read a prayer for vocation that they have printed in the back of the hymnal. Both our view is "Don't complain about needing more priests if you are ignoring half the population. Let women be priests if you need more of them!"

Yeah, so I watched this. Fiennes was great, and as someone said 90% a great movie. But Brittney Griner for pope? Really? A worse twist ending than even "The Village".

I assume we're long past spoiler tags on this thread, but I'll go back and edit this if it really bothers anyone.

#Conclave starts streaming on Prime Video tomorrow pic.twitter.com/rYql2oh6Ob

— Culture Crave 🍿 (@CultureCrave) April 21, 2025

I'm not Catholic, but with the Pope's passing, this movie turned out to be a very entertaining watch today.

Watched it yesterday on the plane given the real Pope's passing, it was timely. Enjoyed it and agree the end sorta made me groan, but thought it was a good flick.

In light of current events we watched last night and really enjoyed the drama, the dialogue, the maneuvering, the politics, the tradition, the costumes, the setting (great recreation of Sistine Chapel having visited a couple years ago) but then the ending was just stupid.

Just finished it. Knowing there would be a twist but not knowing what it would be, I was thinking that Benitez had planned the bombings based on his connections to Kabul in order to step up as the good guy.

One of those movies I regretted watching about halfway through but stuck it out, only to see them go full tard on the ending. Beautifully shot and really strong performances, but just what you'd expect from a Hollywood critique of the church, I guess.

I kind of got the ending and why they did it.

Did not see it as a bad thing at all.

Watched it last night - really enjoyed the production, acting and cinematography. Watching Ralph Fiennes, Lithgow and Stanley Tucci as competing, backstabbing Cardinals was fantastic... But the end was absolutely eye rolling dumb.

I'm not Catholic - and not going to pretend I know much about the inner workings of the Catholic Church. Their views being antiquated and this movie as a commentary on that - really is beside the point of the ending being stupid. It was definitely an incredibly heavy-handed, far fetched scenario trying to be provocative for entertainment and social commentary sake... ok whatever.


But the idea that the College of Cardinals would vote a guy to one of the most important roles in the world, with immense power - someone that literally none of them knew even existed until 24 hours ago and don't know anything about - is objectively ridiculous


Good movie, horrible ending, predictable entertainment board catfight

LB12Diamond said:

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Why do you think they didn't know he existed 24 hours prior. He got a few votes at the very beginning. He was a Cardinal. They all kind of knew each other.

And the previous Pope clearly knew him well.

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Not being sarcastic here, but do you not remember them stating that the previous pope made this guy a cardinal in secret? No one still alive was aware of him, much less that he was a cardinal. He was completely unknown to absolutely every single one of the characters in this movie - all 100-whatever cardinals - prior to the conclave.

Which made them selecting this cardinal as the new pope just ridiculous. But I was willing to overlook that....until the surprise at the end. Like I said before, they really stretched credibility by selectig him, but then jumped the shark with the twist.

The perception that no one knew who he was is a flaw of the movie. In the book, he is something of a minor legend among the cardinals for accepting difficult and dangerous postings.

Lucky Jack Aubrey said:

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The perception that no one knew who he was is a flaw of the movie. In the book, he is something of a minor legend among the cardinals for accepting difficult and dangerous postings.

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I was under the impression that no one knew he had been made a cardinal, but was known as a priest who had served in very difficult regions.

powerbelly said:

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Lucky Jack Aubrey said:

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The perception that no one knew who he was is a flaw of the movie. In the book, he is something of a minor legend among the cardinals for accepting difficult and dangerous postings.

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I was under the impression that no one knew he had been made a cardinal, but was known as a priest who had served in very difficult regions.

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In the movie he sure as hell was not some sort of legend or well known figure. Ralph Finnes character had to inform everybody of where he had served. I'm sure he wasn't a complete ghost and some low level administrative people knew about this guy. But none of the cardinals had ever heard of him before.

Shame on the movie for changing that aspect and making him a complete unknown. The movie would have been better served with the book's description of him.

veryfuller said:

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I saw this on Friday night. It was 90% of an awesome movie. Great writing, great acting, beautifully shot, etc.

The "twist" at the end was so unnecessary and out of left field and ruinous to the great themes and debates that were being had in the film that it derails the film completely, IMO. Which was a real bummer because there was a lot to like about it before that.

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Completely agree. Enjoyed it all the way through. I was even complimenting it to my wife as we watched...for anything she didn't like, I would counter "it's actually an original idea that Hollywood is producing. We should applaud this"

Right up until that ridiculous plot twist that totally ****ed up a good movie. So stupid Hollywood.

dreyOO said:

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veryfuller said:

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I saw this on Friday night. It was 90% of an awesome movie. Great writing, great acting, beautifully shot, etc.

The "twist" at the end was so unnecessary and out of left field and ruinous to the great themes and debates that were being had in the film that it derails the film completely, IMO. Which was a real bummer because there was a lot to like about it before that.

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Completely agree. Enjoyed it all the way through. I was even complimenting it to my wife as we watched...for anything she didn't like, I would counter "it's actually an original idea that Hollywood is producing. We should applaud this"

Right up until that ridiculous plot twist that totally ****ed up a good movie. So stupid Hollywood.

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I think you should blame the author of the book that the movie is based on.

Jim01 said:

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Watched this today.

First and foremost I loved the cinematography. The framing of shots was spectacular!

All the acting was great and I enjoyed the plot (yes the new pope was predictable, but still).

I think it deserves its nominations.

However, I too kind of groaned at the ending. It just felt needless and actually hurt the story and the movie a bit. The movie was a good one on the politics behind power and was an interesting ride that held my attention the entire time. The tacked on twist just felt needless and should have been trimmed. All things must serve the story and the twist didn't serve it well. I will say it would have worked much better (to me) if it was just a straight up woman who they elected. At first I thought that was that it was and liked it, but the hermaphrodite angle muddied it a bit with no added point.. What point it served had already been nailed home without the needed twist.

Also I don't think it's anti-Catholic at all. We attend Catholic church but my daughter and I do silently protest at the end of church when they want us to read a prayer for vocation that they have printed in the back of the hymnal. Both our view is "Don't complain about needing more priests if you are ignoring half the population. Let women be priests if you need more of them!"

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Disagree.

Like seemingly anything that comes out of Hollywood these days, your reception of this film almost certainly falls along ideological lines, Catholic or not. I am not Catholic, but the framing of social issues in this movie is so blatantly oriented to lambast traditional church doctrine. The protagonists who support inclusivity on gender issues and want to carry on the legacy of the deceased pope who was a progressive a la Francis are shown as virtuous and sober minded. The cardinal who is meant to represent traditional church values is painted as a loud-mouthed racist bigot.

And this is all before the absurd and heavy-handed intersex piece de resistance.

It's a shame because the acting and cinematography was so great throughout.

Wolfpac 08 said:

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Boy, TCCTS really knows how to rile up the entertainment board

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He's really good at getting ratio'd. I'll give him that.

Watched it and enjoyed it right up until the twist ending. I think the storyline/movie suffered from trying to do too much so when the ending finally came it just felt cheap.

I went from regretting having not watched this in theaters to having no plans to ever watch it again.