Verbal said (paraphrased lightly, probably) “The greatest trick the Devil ever did was convincing people he didn’t exist.”
Considering the number of people who didn’t “get” the film until the end, I don’t think any of the mentioned issues are “faults” with the film. The thing I hate the most about some films with mysteries is that you don’t get any/enough real hints until the detective says “well clearly (blah blah blah all this stuff you’d never have a clue of knowing)” and then looks smug. The Sherlock Holmes stories were a big offender - sometimes you’d have no way of understanding what was meant by a particular clue, like a certain color of mud found, or other times you wouldn’t even be told what clues were found.
If a filmmaker is kind enough to not take this copout of a method, they deserve some slack for when some people figure it out before their detective does. Of course, that’s completely leaving out the times when you get a viewer insisting so-and-so did it, only to look silly at the end when that’s not the case at all. And personally I think the issue in the second-quoted spoiler box is a “false” clue; IMO that fit the situation completely.
The special edition of Star Wars does this, although it’s a very minor scene that’s spoiled. In the original, when Luke and Ben walk in to the hangar in Mos Eisley and see the Millenium Falcon for the first time, we’re seeing it for the first time, too. Try to remember how primative special effects had been, and what a revelation that movie was. Everyone in the audience is looking up at that big screen, mouths hanging open, and thinking “A spaceship. Cool.”
Then Luke says “what a piece of junk,” and it just instantly tells you a lot about their world. Space travel is common, some spacecraft are jalopies, and their pilots are like the truckers you see at a diner just off the interstate. It’s a good moment. By putting in the scene with Han and Jabba, we get a long look at the Falcon. We have a chance to take it in, and by the time Luke comes in and says his line, the magic has worn off and the moment is ruined.
Toy Story is a case of a later scene undercutting lots of earlier ones. Why can’t the toys talk to kids? I mean, I assumed it was some sort of outside force, magic or metaphysics or whatever, and I was cool with that. But then, when it’s convenient for them, they talk to Sid. What the fuck, they’re doing it by choice? You telling me that Andy wouldn’t rather have a walking, talking, living Woody and Buzz? But no, someone said “whenever a kid comes in, play dead.” What a bunch of sadistic little plastic bastards!
Find a movie called Murder by Death, you’ll love it.
The great Hitchcock movie Vertigo comes to an intense climax as Jimmy Stewart’s character, almost out of control with emotion, explains the murderous plot that’s he’s been an unwitting part of. A great scene – makes you wish they’d left out the scene midway through the movie where a character sits down to write a letter that explains the whole thing. The earlier scene broke the tension of the audience not knowing what was going on; as with a number of Hitchcock movies, it seems to work on the assumption that the audience just isn’t very bright.
Re: The Usual Suspects, the whole thing is ruined on the DVD just during the opening animation. They show the scene where Kevin Spacey starts walking straight. .
I was pissed.
Re: Fallen, that’s another one that’s ruined by the opening narration. The first line is Denzel Washington saying “Let me tell you about the time I almost died.” The mechanics of the cat just don’t matter. As soon as you know Denzels plan, you know Azazel beats him somehow.
This is what bothered me about Toy Story. Here you have Buzz Lightyear who, for most of the movie, does not believe he is a toy. Yet, whenever Andy or any other human is around, he obligingly pretends to be an inanimate object. Why? If he earnestly believes he is Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger and not a child’s plaything, what reason does he have to pretend to be a child’s plaything? sigh
Not to mention that the punch-in-the-gut reveal at the end of Empire is now rendered completely toothless because of the prequels. Someone watching the six movies “in order” would say “Yes, of course he’s Luke’s father. And…?”
I think in the case of some of these movies they stopped bothering to hide the “big twist” after so many years simply because it’d become that famous. More or less everyone knows the big twist in Empire Strike Back or The Usual Suspects.
What Lies Beneath. It seems to be written so that the audience will think that the neighbour is the killer, with the revelation of Harrison Ford the husband as killer coming as a surprise. Except that the tagline on the poster was “he was the perfect husband until his one mistake followed him home.” Kinda gives the game away. Road To Perdition. First line of the film is the kid’s voice saying “People ask me what kind of man my father was” WAS, past tense. One line into the story, and we know that he’s not going to survive the movie. It completely fails to have any impact when he’s suddenly killed. I was expecting it to happen.
Terminator 2.
If you watch the first 20-30 minutes, you are not meant to know which terminator is the good one and which is the evil one. They are both going after John Connor. The viewer only realises which is which in the dramatic shootout in the corridor. Except, for the fact that every ad and trailer for the movie makes the point that Arnie is the good guy in this movie!
I never thought it was pretense. It was always my impression that whatever magic animated the toys forced them into immobility whenever a human was looking at them.
As the entry above observes, however, the toys consciously violate this prohibition when they freak out Sid. So obviously they are participating. Besides, they are shown lying down and running into position in preparation for Andy’s coming into the room, so clearly it’s of their own volition.
I never really thought about how Buzz Lightyear’s behavior conflicted with this before,m though. I can live with it, for the sake of the movie, but it IS an inconsistency.
This is fairly common. It’s the child’s story. From the beginning, you know he’s been orphaned. The story is how he gets to where he is. The death of Hank’s character isn’t supposed to be a surprise.
When Woody talks Sid’s toys in to helping him free Buzz he says
“OK, we’re going to have to break some rules, but hopefully it will make things better for all of us.”
So they are rules, that under extreme conditions can be broken.
Still doesn’t change the fact that when the film called for emotional depth, it didn’t go there. Even though they did the dramatic ‘music video’ where Buzz, after seeing the commercial and “Not a Flying Toy” leaps from the staircase and breaks his arm…
Which reminds me of another movie that but most of it’s emotional scenes in little music videos and that film also starred Tom Hanks. Sleepless in Seattle. I was a projectionist at the time so I saw this film about 100 times. Several key scenes, they start in on a big moment, only to have the soundtrack swell up and the dialogue go out. It was like they wrote themselves into a corner and got out of it with a cheap trick, about half a dozen times.
I don’t think that this was meant to be a shocker.
Certainly when we get to the last scene in the beach house (or wherever that was), all white and heavenly, it’s more than obvious that he’s going to die there.
As I have pointed out before in similar threads, the prologue to the Humphrey Bogart version of “The Maltese Falcon”, gives away one of the big mysteries of the movie: why is everyone after “the bird”? Charles Laughton’s explanation mid-way through the movie loses its force because the prologue has already given it away. I’ll never understand why it was added to the movie.