I disagree wholeheartedly with this. It isn’t just hack movies, ones with a twist, etc that are spoiled by well…spoilers.
Movies are meant to occur sequentially. What the director means for you to know first is the first thing in the movie and so on. If you, for example, are supposed to know from the beginning that a character dies in the end, the director will tell you. It is storytelling, for goodness sake. When you know something about the movie, it affects your watching of it, your understanding and enjoyment of the story. To use your example, I would love to have the experience of watching Romeo and Juliet without knowing the end. Just imagine how much more powerful it would be to see that, not knowing if they are going to live happily ever after or not, hoping they will, fearing they will not.
This reminds me of an episode of The Simpsons where a teenage Homer annoys an entire line of moviegoers about to see The Empire Strikes Back by commenting awedly, “Wow! Who woulda guessed that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father?”
(I didn’t put this in a spoiler box, not only because the prequels make this common knowledge, but also “Luke, I am your father” has become a ending cliche often parodied, one of five that I know of. The others are Citizen Kane, Soylent Green, The Crying Game, and Planet of the Apes- like I said, Liberty’s on the freakin’ DVD box, for cryin’ out loud!)
Brynda, re: storytelling. Then I guess foreshadowing and symbolism are not valid storytelling techniques as far as you’re concerned. An alert reader or viewer will be able to anticipate a story line well in advance of a “twist” if these techniques are used. One of the reasons they are used is so that the audience doesn’t have a reaction of “BULLSHIT!” when the ending is different from what the main story would have you believe. The ending of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd often received criticism because the normal conventions of murder mysteries were flouted, which made some readers complain that Agatha Christie “cheated.”
I’m actually more frustrated by people who are the reverse of the OP; people who say, “I knew what the ending was going to be three nanoseconds after the beginning scene.” Not only do I not care how clever you are, I don’t care that you think something is boring or unoriginal because you can figure out the ending before the story gets that far. You’re doomed to a lifetime of disappointment in entertainment if you demand that the writer/director always conceal the ending from you. Not only is it close to impossible to do this in a plausible way, but it limits the possibilities of storytelling severely.
If knowing (or not knowing) the ending of something ruins it for you, there’s nothing else there. The story is just a setting for a clever trick that, once played, has no lasting appeal. Good storytelling lasts and is enjoyable even if you’ve already seen what happens next. Being surprised at the end may give extra punch to the story, but there has to be a story there in the first place.
Alert: “Hide and Seek” and “Secret Window” spoilers
[spoiler]I guess I need more help understanding this (and boy do I feel stupid since it’s considered a dumb movie). I thought it was a multiple personality thing, so why wasn’t his office unpacked? What is him on the headphones supposed to mean then? At least in Secret Window it’s just lost time when they show him “asleep”. If he’s just pretending to be sane in front of others, why act that way when it’s just he and Emily? What bugged me is people usually know about their own alters, so the good dad alter would know about Charlie.
There is a disturbed kid reveal at the end, and we can now anticipate her killing Famke Janssen.[/spoiler]
Nonsense. (Well, in most circumstances, it is.) This complaint is only likely to be raised about films that are intended to be driven by suspense. The enjoyment of suspense or mystery films comes from speculating about what’s going on – the viewer identifies with the investigator and spends the duration of the film playing with the puzzle pieces. A good suspense plot makes the solution apprehendable by the careful reader/viewer, and often makes subtle use of plausible red herrings in order to keep the audience engaged. The revelation of the mystery is the climax. If it comes in the first fifteen minutes of the film, there’s very little to keep the audience interested. Yeah, you can still enjoy the actors’ delivery of their lines, or take in the eye-candy, but it’s going to rankle every time they insult your intelligence by dangling another “provocative” clue or obvious misdirection.
Of course there are great movies where the denoument is fairly obvious at the outset. The difference is that these movies aren’t “puzzle” movies, and anticipating the end doesn’t eviscerate the movie.
In a film like Hide And Seek, it’s clear that the revelation in the third act is intended to be a surprise. Unfortunately, the writers approached it so ham-handedly that very few people are likely to be surprised – and most will probably have figured it out within twenty minutes to a half hour – leaving them rolling their eyes every time they’re spoon-fed another ridiculously obvious “clue.” When you finally get to the reveal, about which no doubt has remained for over an hour, it’s accompanied by the usual paintbox of cinematic cues that you’re supposed to be SHOCKED! Instead, you’re sitting there thinking, “You’re kidding me, right?”
It’s not a “Oooh, look at me, I’m so smart I figured it out right away,” thing. It’s “Dear god, the screenwriter didn’t even try.” Even if the actors hit every one of their marks, the score is fantastic, the special effects are groundbreaking, the sound design is brilliant, the overall effect is going to be disappointing, and it will seem like a lot of people put in a great effort to bring a poor script to the screen. Silk purses & sow’s ears.
The Usual Suspects is a good example of how that sort of a film is supposed to work. There are lots of clues as to what’s really going on presented, but they’re subtle enough that they don’t insult you. If you do happen to figure it out before it becomes explicit, you’re probably not going to feel that it’s because it was poorly written, and it doesn’t really spoil the effect. Instead, you’ll probably be pleased to have figured it out – because the puzzle was presented satisfactorily. If you kept getting hit with flashing fluorescent hints about Keyser Soze, so that it was fairly plain what was going on near the beginning of the film, then there’s no way that it would be so highly regarded – it would have gone directly to the dustheap of crap films that squander the talents of the people who worked on them and insult the intelligence of people who watch them – just like Hide and Seek.
That being said, about kung fu lola and Diogenes’ spoiler criticism of Dakota Fanning’s character’s motivation: (Geez, enough possessives there?)
I think we were supposed to gather that De Niro’s character had been a distant father, very cold and analytical. His manic alter is a stark contrast to this – he plays with the girl. She says specifically that she likes Charlie because he plays with her “like mommy used to.” It makes a certain amount of sense that she would keep this secret. On a simple level, Charlie could be both fun and comforting – and probably preferable to her Dad’s usual morose self. When she began to realize that something was seriously wrong with him, she would also be motivated by anxiety about losing her only remaining parent. She tries to discourage people from coming around because she at last understands that they “could get hurt,” but she doesn’t feel personally threatened. Her creepy behaviour and reticence to reveal the situation are adequately explained from the point of view of a child whose primary concern is preserving what little remains of family life, while not wanting to see anyone get unneccessarily hurt. This is plausible enough, especially when you consider the typical responses from small children who witness a parent’s mundanely monstrous behaviour. It’s possible to be frequently terrified of someone, but still love them and be afraid of losing them.
Don’t bother: it sucks, and is the worst thing I’ve seen him in in years. Without the spoiler, we’d predicted the ending pretty early on; and without the twist, the movie’s got precious little going on in it.
When I watched The Village, I honest to Og didn’t know the “twist” was supposed to be a twist. I assumed it from the beginning, although I don’t know why.
Af for Fight Club, that one hit me right between the eyes the first time, but I still enjoy re-watching it and enjoying how the movie was made from a different perspective.
Sorry for the delay, I have been offline for a while.
Uh, big difference between foreshadowing by the author and some yo-yo telling me what he wants to about a movie. If the screenwriter or director choose to foreshadow or use symbolism, good for them, thanks a lot, no problem. That’s part of the storytelling, for goodness’ sake. I just object to some person who had nothing to do with the creation of the movie doing the “foreshadowing.” That ain’t foreshadowing, it’s spoiling. Don’t do it.
True enough, but Romeo and Juliet is not a suspense thriller. Also, although it may have been just another romantic tragedy when it came out, people don’t go to see Shakespeare plays only because of the plot.
If a (in my opinion) crappy as hell movie like Unbreakable has its “surprise” ruined, there isn’t much left to recommend it. That is hardly true of most Shakespeare plays.