10 Movies That Subverted Expectations (And Fans Hated It)

Prometheus swerved, but it didn't exactly work...

Prometheus EW Cover
EW/Fox

While it can often be fun to watch a movie completely cold – as in, with zero of idea of the plot or what to expect – more often than not, audiences will rightly check out of a film with certain expectations in mind.

These days, that is even more-so the case, given that the cinematic landscape is littered with characters and stories that so many of us are all well familiar with by now. Whether that’s fan favourite franchises such as Star Wars and Star Trek, the comic book characters we’ve read about and watched for years, the horror icons whose murderous habits we've lapped up, or even the familiar tropes and techniques of our favourite directors. And that’s all before you even take into consideration the spoiler-laden trailers that are annoyingly commonplace these days.

Now while the topic of predictability is certainly one that has many different angles to it, there are still those great moments where you watch a movie with a certain mindset, only to have your mind blown at the film being the opposite of what you were expecting.

Then again, that element of the unexpected can totally ruin a movie if not handled carefully.

10. Terminator: Genisys

Prometheus EW Cover
Paramount Pictures

A new Terminator movie – Terminator: Dark Fate – is on the way this October, but many people like to think of the Terminator franchise as having ended with 1991’s Judgment Day. If you remember, Rise of the Machines totally soured fans, but Salvation went even further in being a complete and utter stinker. And then, well then there was Terminator: Genisys.

Going into the movie, we were all expecting to see John Connor heading a resistance force against the no-good, nefarious machines that were looking to wipe out mankind; that being what we'd been taught to expect since the franchise began way back in 1984. Only, that was far from what we ultimately got.

Terminator: Genisys took the foundations of what we knew about the franchise – that John Connor was set to lead the human fightback and save our future – and spun it totally on its head by revealing that *shock horror* John Connor was actually a T-3000.

It came as no surprise to hear that, post-Genisys, the Terminator series was again having a shake-up; Terminator: Dark Fate being a reboot of sorts that will ignore all three films since Judgment Day.

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Senior Writer

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