Let There Be Movies

Group List

A good plot twist is hard to forget, but so is a bad one. Throughout the years in film there have been a lot of both. We thought it would be fun to rack our brains for our favorite, and least favorite plot twists we’ve ever seen. To be fair, some of these “twists” come very late in the film. So late in fact that you may well view them as surprise endings rather than plot twists. Although we didn’t set forth any concrete guidelines for this list, in general, if there are one or two scenes after this big surprise/twist then it can count for this list. Warning: there be spoilers ahead!

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Tres

Favorite Plot Twist – Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back

I have dug around in my brain trying to find the greatest plot twist of a movie for me. Now, surprise ending would have been easy. I can rattle many of those off. Buy an unexpected, true shocking, WHAT?, plot twist I struggled with. I have been a movie person since before VCRs and VHS tapes (old-fashioned DVDs for you really young readers) to where you could re-watch things 1000s of times.

FINALLY! Like blue lightning it struck me. I believe I’m the only writer on this blog (very sad indeed) that is old enough to say, “I was there in 1980 when he said it for the first time!” Said what, you ask… “Luke, I am your father.” From Empire Strikes Back. BOOM… Mind blown. That line has been repeated for… big sad gulp… 34 years now. My youngest son said it just the other day at Wal-Mart when he saw an put on a Vader mask. The boy hasn’t seen a single Star Wars movie.

Least Favorite Plot Twist – The Crying Game

In 1992, my junior year in college, I wasn’t catching a lot of theatre movies due to funds. A buddy paid for my movie ticket to this movie that he had heard fantastic things about, as long as I drove him there. I took the offer to see The Crying Game. Dark movie, kind of hard to follow. The plot twist was shocking to see on a giant theatre screen… and it made me gag. I have no idea how the movie ends. Let’s just say… Forest Whitaker’s girlfriend has a surprise for him.

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Logan

Favorite Plot Twist – The Book of Eli

This is a movie that I love primarily because I am a Christian. The book shows that even if everything were to blow up, even if the sun scorches the earth and evil reigns in the world so much that it is basically Hell on earth, God still has everything under control. He still offers hope. That could’ve been diluted by Eli’s heroics, but it’s not because of the plot twist. Eli is blind, meaning that there’s only one way that he could’ve done everything that he did: if God was with him.

Least Favorite Plot Twist – X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Wolverine has always been my favorite mutant, so I was pretty thrilled when I found out that he was getting his own movie. I even liked most of the movie, even loved the history between Wolverine and Sabretooth. When it came to Deadpool, however, they went too far. Ryan Reynolds had a lot of promise as Deadpool, but instead of a hilarious schizophrenic mercenary, we found a mindless zombie killing machine with his mouth sewn shut, injected with powers of previous mutants. So, in other words, Marvel said “Surprise! We puked all over your favorite mercenary, because we know you’ll give us your money anyway.” The only hope we have now is that Days of Future Past will write this abomination out of continuity.

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Elliott

Favorite Plot Twist – The Prestige

The ending to this is rather dark and demented, but I thought it was great. It’s twist after twist, that make you want to immediately re-watch it, to see what all you can pick up on. Each time I watch it again, I pick up on more and more details, that I didn’t notice in previous viewings.

Least Favorite Plot Twist – The Happening

I’m not one of those M. Night Shyamalan haters, but this movie is bad, really bad. Personally, I liked both Signs and The Village. However, I couldn’t bring myself to accept the horrible plot of this story. The “twist” was that the plants naturally created a toxin that would kill humans, if they began to overpopulate and threaten nature. I’m all for taking care of nature, but this is just plain stupid.

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Gene

Favorite Plot Twist: Shutter Island

Just before Leonardo DiCaprio reminded us of his talents in Inception, he starred in the less known mystery drama, Shutter Island. Leo played U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels. Daniels is tasked with investigating the disappearance of a patient in a hospital for the criminally insane. He’s also saddled with newbie detective Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo). You’re buying all that, right? So was I! Along the way you get some hints that things just aren’t right. But you’re none the wiser. After all, we’re dealing with the criminally insane, not everything will make sense. This twist involves the reality of who Teddy Daniels actually is the reason he is really on this island in the first place. The delivery of the twist is somewhat slow, but that’s not a negative because it still hits you hard. Then the way the movie continued until the end leaves you feeling both satisfied and unsatisfied all at once. If that makes sense. It will have you wanting to watch it again right away. I know I did!

Honorable mention to Memento and Fight Club. I love psychological twists and these two certainly fall in that category.

Least Favorite Plot Twist: Iron Man 3

I hate picking recent releases for a list such as this. Makes me feel like if the best or worst of anything I’ve seen is just the most recent thing I’ve seen, then I haven’t seen enough… make sense? Or I’m biased to my generation. Despite that, one of the most sour tastes the big screen has left in my mouth was during Iron Man 3. In that movie Ben Kingsley played ‘The Mandarin’, or did he? About midway through the film, in an ‘edge of your seat’ kind of scene, Tony Stark finally tracks down and confronts this terrorist and is completely thrown off by the actual person he finds. I was quite disappointed in the twist thrown in for this character. It turned what I thought was playing out to be an excellent conclusion for the trilogy to yet another one where the sequels do not live up to the original. For his part, I thought Ben Kingsley made the switch wonderfully, somewhat funny too after I was over the shock of it. The problem is, it never should have happened. It didn’t quite ruin the movie for me, but it drastically altered the tone and seriousness at that point in the film, which I thought was a good thing it had going for it.

Dishonorable mention for me goes to Signs. These aliens travel however many billions of miles to a planet which is 70% covered in water, and their one weakness is… water. Riiiiiight.

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There you have it. What are some that you might add to this list, good or bad?