Bad Plot Twists vs Good Plot Twists (Writing Advice)

The twist from Fight Club is the best twist I've ever seen in a movie because when you watch it again you see like 500 clues and can't believe that you didn't notice them the first time around.

The Sixth Sense, The Prestige, and The Usual suspects all had great twists. The best thing is not only the twist, but when the audience realizes the clues were right in front of them all along... :)

„Everybody's a Skywalker” is the best summary of every Star Wars movie ever.

It doesn’t sound very impressive on paper, but The Sixth Sense’s plot twist got me. It’s one of those plot twists where you need to rewatch the movie and you can see the build up to it and things that now make sense. Any plot twist that has the viewer rewatching or re-reading the story is the sign of a good plot twist.

im not even a writer but these videos have helped me articulate to my friends and family my opinions on tv shows and movies.

Because so many people remember Norman Bates, they often forget that "Psycho" starts with a whole story starring Marion Crane. It's such a massive break in linear storytelling, especially for its time. It is THE definitive "main character switch" of filmmaking and I'd say it's a better example of exactly the style of the first season of "GoT."

I always loved the killer reveal(s) in the original Scream film. The whole story was about guessing who the villain was and basically everyone was suspected and dismissed at least once.

Surprised to see that Saw wasn't on here. Probably the best twist ending I've ever seen, and what makes it so great is that the reveal is right in front of your face the entire movie, and none of us suspected a thing. Also, I think the training day twist was okay. It wasn't the best twist of all time, but it was perfectly serviceable, inoffensive, and undeserving of being a bad example.

The Training Day example where you mentioned the twist came about from an overwhelming improbable event reminds me of the quote "the difference between fiction and real life is that fiction must make sense". Lest we forget about that time an assassin botched his job and hid out in a restaurant only for his target to decide to unwind from a failed assassination attempt in the same exact restaurant. The assassin then successfully kills his target and a chain of alliance makes this spiral into WWI.

I have to defend TRAINING DAY, and I'm glad to see that others are too. Yes, it is very coincidental that Smiley, the gang member, would happen to be that girl's cousin, but the movie is making a statement about karma and the nature of justice. Jake did a good deed near the start of the film and showed heroism that Alonzo would have ignored, and sure enough, that good deed is what came back to save him later. Jake can show empathy while Alonzo can't, and that's what makes him a hero.

12:40 The only unthinkable thing is expecting a character played by Sean Bean to not be killed off

Honestly most Twilight Zone episodes have great twists. The one where apparently aliens are invading an old lady’s house and it turns out she is the alien also the one where this girl is wrapped in bandages the whole episode and when then unwrap her and she looks normal and everyone else around her looks scary are some of the greatest episodes.

I love the plot twist in Dickens' "Great Expectations" when the protagonist (Pip) discovers his secret benefactor is not Miss Havisham (the wealthy spinster he works for) but a coarse convict named Magwich. When this twist is revealed, Pip refuses to accept any more of Magwich's blood money. As if that weren't bad enough, Magwich also turns out to be the father of Pip's first crush, Estella. While Pip thinks she has a noble background, she is actually from the lowest level of society. A big deal in the 1850s.

I always like twists like the end of Usual Suspects which make you rethink or recontextualize the entire movie you just watched.

The Wreck-It Ralph villain reveal scene gives me goosebumps every single time, it is INSANELY cool

My favorite plot twist is probably The Prestige. It changes the movie while also adding so much to it.

My favourite plot twist might be the revelation at the end of Memento. SPOILERS AHEAD Leanord, the film's lead, has anterograde amnesia and is searching for his dead wife's killer. The film has a non-linear narrative and opens on a photo of a dead body, making the viewer think that the person he killed was his wife's killer and the film will show the events leading up to it. However, in the final scene, we discover that he's ALREADY killed his wife's killer, but due to his amnesia, he wasn't content in just experiencing the moment once, so he intentionally adjusts his own evidence to make his search for someone else. This is a very surface level explanation but the execution of this plot twist is brilliantly done.

Palpatines return in Rise of Skywalker is like if Hitler was somehow releaved to be alive and in a robot body in the Arctic with ten thousand nuclear tipped U boats and zombie cyborg Nazi troops and announces himself like a WWE announcer. And gives a 24 hour timelimit to surrender or every nation gets nuked.

My favorite is The Sixth Sense. For one thing, it was so well stealth foreshadowed that on rewatching you can't believe you didn't see it coming. When it came out, this is what the buzz on it was about, the fact that it had this amazing plot twist. And it also completely reversed all of the relationships. But perhaps most of all, because although it was a complete sucker-punch surprise, it felt organic, and pieces held together better with the twist than without it. It felt like exactly the thing that would naturally have happened given the situation that the movie had set up. The twist resolved tension rather than created it.

The plot twist in Hoodwinked is still to this day my favorite, simply because all you have to do is pay attention the story of what everyone's alibi is and the culprit is someone you kind of push to the side. It has such good storytelling.