10 Movie Plot Twists That Punished Loyal Fans
Way to insult Terminator fans by screwing over John Connor...
When a movie plot twist is done right, it can become an enduring part of the pop-culture bubble for decades and decades, sometimes even becoming independently famous away from the film that it originated from.
The Sixth Sense. Psycho. Fight Club. The Prestige. Mention any of those films and chances are, you'll end up in a discussion about their twists almost immediately, with their shock value, story ramifications and general cleverness making for some satisfying narrative turns that are still entertaining to watch, even after all this time.
But the dangerous thing about plot twists is that - because they're meant to be big surprises that reframe the movie's narrative - fans can often feel like a story has promised them one thing, only for a bizarre and unwarranted twist to come out of nowhere and give them another.
Worse still, some twists don't seem to serve any purpose other than providing a cheap bit of shock value, punishing viewers who've invested their loyalty in a story by plucking an odd reveal or pointless character death out of thin air.
We all love a good twist (who doesn't?) but what we don't love is feeling like our time investment has been wasted.
10. The Random Giant Monster (The Cloverfield Paradox)
The first Cloverfield movie was a fantastic standalone flick that didn't need to become a franchise, but followup 10 Cloverfield Lane was surprisingly good, a claustrophobic thriller with a glorious John Goodman performance and a fun, monster-infused ending.
The Cloverfield Paradox, however, was a massive letdown. If viewed in a bubble it would probably come across as a solid sci-fi horror with a terrific cast of actors and some creative, stomach-turning death scenes. But we don't live in a bubble.
The main problem was how its marketing led us to believe that we'd get some definitive answers regarding the Cloverfield universe, with a specific focus on that original 2008 movie: where did the monster come from? What is it? Heck, the description box for the film's official trailer still reads "ten years ago, some thing arrived. Today, we now know why."
But that description was a complete lie. In one final twist, the movie leaves us with the head of an enormous Cloverfield monster poking through the sky. Its size means that it can't possibly be the same monster we first saw in 2008, so... where did it come from? What is it? Why is it so massive?
Fans had hoped for answers, but instead, they walked away with even more questions.