# Which 2017 movies had the most surprising-to-you plots? (please use spoiler boxes) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 10, 2018, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-2017-movies-had-the-most-surprising-to-you-plots-please-use-spoiler-boxes/806284 "2018-01-10T04:16:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-2017-movies-had-the-most-surprising-to-you-plots-please-use-spoiler-boxes/806284/1 "2018-01-10T04:16:31Z")
I’m really asking about movies you were surprised were a lot better or worse than you anticipated, but that’s a valid reason you consider it surprising. What I’m trying to get at are which movies did you go into thinking that they’d be a lot different than they actually turned out to be, based on things you read about them, saw in trailers, or simply assumed? ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-2017-movies-had-the-most-surprising-to-you-plots-please-use-spoiler-boxes/806284/2 "2018-01-10T04:21:34Z")
I know that spoiler boxes can show up in thread previews so I’m skipping down to here. There were two 2017 movies that did not match my expectation of the plots, and they were both big surprises to me. **What Happened to Monday?** I didn’t see a trailer for this movie, but I did read a few articles about it. I really, really didn’t anticipate that most of the sisters would be dead by the end of the movie. From the write ups I got the impression that it was going to be much more light-hearted than it turned out to be. **The Book of Henry** I know most people hated this movie, but I liked it well enough. I saw the trailer, but… …I didn’t realize that Henry was going to die. The way they used the voice overs in the trailer lead me to believe he was simply off screen, not dead of cancer You? ---
**Author:** ![SpoilerVirgin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SpoilerVirgin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpoilerVirgin)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-2017-movies-had-the-most-surprising-to-you-plots-please-use-spoiler-boxes/806284/3 "2018-01-10T04:24:18Z")
**Downsizing** From the trailers and ads, this looked like a hysterical comedy about people being shrunk, similar to _Honey I Shrunk the Kids_. Instead it turned out to be some sort of bizarre environmental diatribe, about how we are spoiling the planet with our consumerism. The first 30 minutes were the fun part about the invention of the shrinking process and the main character actually going through it, and then for the rest of the movie, it didn’t even really matter that these were tiny people – they were just a bunch of people living on some kind of commune and lamenting the destruction of the planet. I actually agree with some of the ideas that were presented, but the heavyhanded tone, and the bait and switch that made me think I was going to see a comedy really annoyed me. If I wanted to see a movie about environmental tragedy, I’d have gone to see _An Inconvenient Sequel_, not a Matt Damon comedy. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-2017-movies-had-the-most-surprising-to-you-plots-please-use-spoiler-boxes/806284/4 "2018-01-10T13:58:32Z")
_Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri_ didn’t proceed as I expected. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-2017-movies-had-the-most-surprising-to-you-plots-please-use-spoiler-boxes/806284/5 "2018-01-10T15:26:59Z")
**Power Rangers** I am slightly too old to have been in to the Power Rangers as a kid. My friend was really in to them and asked me to come along. I’d seen the trailer once I think but it wasn’t memorable. I totally expected the movie to suck and be super cheesy. To my surprise, it was a nice teen action hero movie and other than the battle scene at the end seeming too long, I didn’t have any problems with it. In fact, I enjoyed it. ---
**Author:** ![HubZilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@HubZilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HubZilla)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-2017-movies-had-the-most-surprising-to-you-plots-please-use-spoiler-boxes/806284/6 "2018-01-10T22:58:54Z")
Star Wars: The Last Jedi **Snoke’s** sudden death. He appeared to be more powerful than the Emperor and Yoda. Then, boom, he’s dead halfway through the trilogy. ---
**Author:** ![Lamoral](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lamoral/32/16078_2.png) [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2018, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-2017-movies-had-the-most-surprising-to-you-plots-please-use-spoiler-boxes/806284/7 "2018-01-10T23:06:43Z")
One word: _ **MOTHER.** _ ---
**Author:** ![Mavic\_Chen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e56c9b/32.png) [@Mavic\_Chen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mavic_Chen)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-2017-movies-had-the-most-surprising-to-you-plots-please-use-spoiler-boxes/806284/8 "2018-01-11T10:31:53Z")
Split (2016 film but not released until Jan 2017) The closing scene reveals it to be set in the same universe as Unbreakable ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanub/32/132_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUB)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2018, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-2017-movies-had-the-most-surprising-to-you-plots-please-use-spoiler-boxes/806284/9 "2018-01-11T14:28:52Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > _Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri_ didn’t proceed as I expected. Very much agree with this. There were a lot of surprises , from beginning to end. The biggest one, for me, was The sheriff’s suicide. You could hear a collective gasp throughout the theater. > [@Jacquernagy](#): > > ``` > One word: > > ``` > > MOTHER. Oh, hell yeah. I knew going in it would be odd, and Jennifer Lawrence gave away the main theme in an interview so I got the story it was trying to tell. Nothing prepared me for the third act. I didn’t realize _The Shape of Water_ would be quite that literally a love story. Regarding _Lady Bird_, I thought a lot more would happen or there would be a stronger issue / conflict. While excellent, it really is just a run of the mill character study made great by some fabulous performances BTW, I enjoyed all of the above. They just turned out to be different than I expected.