10 Terrible Plot Twists From Otherwise Awesome Movies

Conclave, which centres around the Papal election of a new Pope, has been a divisive movie since its release. Why? It seems to be primarily because of the film's final twist and that is more than understandable. 

At the end of the picture, Mexican Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz) is elected as Pope in a surprise result, and just before he goes to introduce himself to the crowds, protagonist Thomas Lawrence discovers that Benitez was hiding a secret: he's actually intersex. He had been planning to get his female organs removed but decided not to, saying "I am as God made me." Lawrence agrees to keep the secret and Benitez still becomes Pope. 

Inevitably, the usual suspects have decried this twist as being 'too woke', and as usual, they are missing the point of why the twist doesn't work. It was a really interesting idea, but deployed terribly in the final film. It isn't built to and thus comes out of nowhere in the final five minutes, so there's no time to actually explore it. 

More than anything else, this reveal was unintentionally hilarious. At the screening your writer attended, the audience burst out into laughter when Benitez dropped this bombshell. Conclave, with its sharp technical values and outstanding acting, is a good thriller overall, so it's a shame it didn't stick the landing a bit better.