Top 10 Predictable Movie Plot Twists – And How To Twist Them Again!

Let’s face it, Hollywood: Every story has been told and, in all likelihood, told better than anyone else could probably tell it. However, that doesn’t stop Hollywood from trying to surprise their audience. And what better way to do so than through the utilization of the ever popular twist ending? M. Night Shamalyan is a particular fan of them, which should make his upcoming 2010 live-action adaptation of the cartoon series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, very… interesting.

However, there’s another truth that Hollywood needs to face and that truth is that when every twist is the same, they cease being twists and become cliches. Waking up to discover that the entire plot was just a dream (see the double-feature episode of Family Guy titled “Stewie Kills Lois / Lois Kills Stewie”; The Matrix; The Wizard of Oz) is a popular one. Then, of course, there’s the realization that reality as the narrator knows it is actually fake, like Bruce Willis realizing that he is a ghost at the end of The Sixth Sense or Edward Norton discovering that he is Brad Pitt at the end of Fight Club. Along that same vein is the surprise of discovering that the killer/villain of the tale was actually the protagonist all along, much to the protagonist’s surprise, as in The Number 23 with Jim Carrey and the Uninvited with Emily Browning.

The list goes on and on as Hollywood continues to hide the lack of creativity by making it their mission to shock us before the movie is through. This can, in movies like The Book of Eli and Orphan, work out for the better. Or, like in The Village or Hide and Seek, feel like a cheap way to end what was an otherwise boring hour and thirty minutes. At some point, one will find oneself looking at the movies that are coming out and wonder when Hollywood just stopped caring.

So how to put a new spin on the same old song? How about instead of the narrator waking up to discover that this was all a dream he had, he figures out that he himself is trapped in someone else’s dream and he has to choose between being trapped there forever or waking the person up and disappearing forever. Or, perhaps, the narrator and someone else from his dream are having the same dream in the real world and need to work together to wake themselves up.

Instead of discovering that his perception of reality is incorrect, maybe another movie in the vein of Cry Wolf, in which the narrator’s perception of reality is the correct one – but no one believes him because he has been manipulated into being unreliable by the antagonist.

Instead of the protagonist discovering that he was the villain all along, how about a clever movie from the point of view of the villain actively masquerading as the hero? If Hollywood really wants to test their skill, they can try and keep the audience from discovering that the hero is actually the killer.

Whatever they decide, it’s a fact that plot twists just aren’t what they used to be. Come on, Hollywood. It’s 2010. Time to step up your game.