10 Movies That Completely Wasted Awesome Twists

1. Smaug Is Already In League With Sauron - The Hobbit

The Hobbit may have always been doomed to be a lesser companion to the much more epic The Lord Of The Rings, but Peter Jackson tried his darndest to make it feel important. From the off he framed the dwarves' quest, which in print is highly episodic and has only a few links (rings, Bagginses) to the bigger picture, as a pivotal point in Middle Earth history; while the party was mostly concerned with getting their gold back from a dragon (technically wyvern), their mission was actually a big power play by Gandalf to stop a re-emergent evil from getting a fire-breathing ally and a strong foothold in the lands of men.

Shockingly, in The Desolation Of Smaug it was revealed they were too late; Smaug was already in league with the Necromancer/Sauron. It's not only a strong narrative device, but in diverging lightly from the source (in Tolkein's mythology there's only the threat of the duo teaming up) it actually provides an unexpected turn even for those familiar with the story.

Unfortunately, no time was spent on this major plot shake-up, with only a cautionary mention by Smaug before the film dived into a physics-flaunting action scene and then ended all of a sudden. There was a better scene filmed detailing the full reveal at Dol Guldur, Gandalf finds Thorin's father, Thráin, at Dol Guldur who reveals the whole thing is something of a trap - but that was only included in the Extended Edition.

Gandalf later repeated how important things were in The Battle Of The Five Armies, but by then nobody cared.

What other movies wasted awesome twists? Share any we missed down in the comments.