10 Recent Movies Let Down By Predictable Twists
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00:00 Who doesn't enjoy a good plot twist that blows your mind?
00:03 No matter how good the action, special effects, or performances are in a movie,
00:08 there is nothing that leaves you with the same impact as an unexpected revelation.
00:12 But there is one pretty big problem with twists.
00:15 They're really hard to pull off.
00:18 With that in mind then, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com,
00:20 and these are 10 Recent Movies Let Down by Predictable Twists.
00:24 Number 10. Cole is Scorpion's descendant, Mortal Kombat.
00:28 The Mortal Kombat reboot could have chosen any of the game's iconic combatants to serve as the hero.
00:33 You know, Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Scorpion, even Robocop.
00:38 Yes, Robocop has been the star of Mortal Kombat, alongside the Cinemorph.
00:43 But anyway, instead the writers cooked up a brand new character called Cole for the most recent film.
00:49 Fans of the Blood and Guts beat 'em up immediately found this decision a little bit suspicious,
00:54 believing that Cole must have a deeper connection with at least one of the fighters.
00:59 Sadly, the trailer practically confirmed this by revealing way too much.
01:03 In Mortal Kombat's teaser, we actually see Cole having visions of his ancestor, Hanzo Hisashi, aka Scorpion.
01:10 Now this shot may have been brief, but it was enough for entertainment sites to deduce Cole was a descendant
01:16 of the gold-armoured ninja months before the movie came out.
01:20 What's annoying about this twist though is that it wouldn't have been so obvious if this single shot was removed from the trailer.
01:26 We understand that promos do need to pump in as much action as possible to sell a movie, but
01:32 come on guys, Mortal Kombat probably already had the coolest trailer of the entire year.
01:37 It already looked so awesome, so why did the filmmakers have to insert this one moment in there and ruin the whole surprise?
01:45 I mean it's not like Cole himself had much else going for him apart from this.
01:49 9. Tom's Fate - Last Christmas
01:51 Last Christmas centres around a Grinch-like cynic called Kate who can't stand the holiday season.
01:58 After encountering a mysterious man called Tom though, her outlook on life changes for the better.
02:03 As Kate begins to fall romantically for Tom as well, she worries that he's just too good to be true.
02:08 He's too charming, he's too nice, he's too full of wisdom.
02:12 And sadly, yeah, it turns out she's bang on the money.
02:15 Because when she finds Tom's home, she learns that he actually passed away a whole year ago.
02:22 Not only that, but the heart transplant which Kate received the previous year was from him.
02:27 Although Last Christmas is obviously trying to outdo The Sixth Sense with this epiphany,
02:32 most viewers actually put two and two together before the movie even came out, but initially as a joke.
02:38 Considering the trailer shows Kate getting the transplant and the first line of the Last Christmas song is of course
02:44 "Last Christmas I gave you my heart", the film is basically telling you immediately that Tom's a ghost
02:51 and that he did indeed give Kate his heart. In a literal, literal sense.
02:56 And that's not to mention the clues in the movie itself.
02:59 For instance, in every scene, nobody else interacts with Tom save for Kate.
03:04 He's always wearing the same clothes and the pair keep exchanging cryptic dialogue like
03:09 "I've always been trying to find you and you keep disappearing and I don't know where you are."
03:15 Also, instead of walking into a scene, Tom always just appears out of thin air.
03:19 Nobody knows where he comes from or where he lives. He just is so obviously a ghost.
03:24 Number 8 - MechaGodzilla - Godzilla vs. King Kong
03:28 Godzilla vs. Kong has the simplest premise.
03:30 You take the King of the Monsters and the 8th Wonder of the World,
03:33 and you have them beat the crap out of one another for like two hours.
03:37 Despite that setup though, many suspected that this Monsterverse crossover would conclude
03:42 with the pair joining forces against a greater threat.
03:45 And sure enough, the final battle has the shaggy ape and the colossal dinosaur
03:49 teaming up against the alien-powered android of MechaGodzilla.
03:53 And because Mecha-G is among Toho's most iconic monsters,
03:57 many fans already assumed that this robotic lizard would serve as the film's antagonist.
04:02 But another reason why it was so obvious that MechaGodzilla would show up at all is because
04:07 well, he appears in the teaser's opening shot.
04:10 Although it is a blink and you'll miss it moment, we live in a world now where we can just
04:14 pause anything on social media with a flick of a button and pause fans did.
04:20 By freeze-framing the trailer where MechaGodzilla bursts through a city,
04:24 the secret was officially out since his metallic visage and terminator-like eyes
04:28 are absolutely unmistakable.
04:31 Even though the titular titans should have been enough to sell the movie,
04:34 it was obvious that the studio execs panicked, urging them to shove MechaGodzilla in the trailer,
04:40 spoiling the big reveal in the process.
04:42 7. Taskmaster's Identity - Black Widow
04:46 In Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff teams up with her stepsister Yelena to hunt down Dracov,
04:51 the sadistic criminal who created the Widow Assassins in the first place.
04:55 But to reach him, the Widows need to get through his bodyguard and master assassin, Taskmaster.
05:01 Because Taskmaster dons a mask, Natasha, as well as the audience,
05:04 were trying to figure out the supervillain's true identity for the bulk of the film.
05:09 So when Taskmaster pulls off her facial garb during the climax to reveal that she's actually
05:14 Dracov's daughter, it should have been a big deal since Natasha believed that she killed her years ago.
05:20 However, many viewers already figured this out before they even saw the movie.
05:25 Because the trailer has a shot of Dracov huddled beside the skull-masked antagonist,
05:29 a lot of people assumed that Taskmaster would be someone that he knew intimately,
05:34 like a family member.
05:35 But that's not all. Some viewers deduced Taskmaster's identity simply by reading the opening credits.
05:42 When Olga Kalenko's name popped up in the beginning, this was an immediate red flag for some.
05:47 And that's because the actress was absent from Black Widow's trailers and posters,
05:51 despite being a well-known name.
05:53 So because the promotions were hiding the fact that she was in the movie at all,
05:57 many correctly surmised that she was the one behind the mask.
06:01 Number 6 - Is Affleck a Killer? Deepwater
06:04 Gone Girl has a lot to answer for. While David Fincher's thriller was exceptional,
06:10 it ushered in an age of suburban-set twisty adult drama that so few directors or writers
06:15 could pull off convincingly. Fast forward nine years and we have yet another Ben Affleck-starring
06:20 erotic thriller in Deepwater, where the Batman star plays Vic, husband to the free-spirited Melinda.
06:28 The pair are married but hardly happy in that marriage, with Melinda flaunting her various
06:33 boyfriends in front of Vic and his friends at parties. More than a bit jealous though,
06:39 Vic actually proceeds to threaten Melinda's conquests, even claiming to have killed one
06:44 of her previous lovers. The movie then attempts to play with the audience, getting them to
06:49 question whether Vic is just acting like the tough guy, or is actually a secret murderer.
06:54 And that could be a cool premise, but the issue is, the film is pretty half-arsed about this
06:59 mystery, and there's never any real doubt that Vic isn't telling the truth when he describes
07:04 how he killed previous dudes. So by the time it is revealed that shock he is a pretty nasty guy,
07:10 it all lands with a whimper. And even this wouldn't be that bad, but the writers then
07:15 proceed to do nothing to elaborate on this so-called twist. There's no further subversion,
07:20 and the story is just played surprisingly straight, with no more notable tricks up its sleeve.
07:26 5. Who is the Shepard, the Kingsman?
07:29 The Kingsman follows Orlando Oxford during World War I, after he forms a British agency,
07:34 which serves as the precursor to the Kingsmen. When Orlando learns the war was initiated by a
07:39 cabal called the Flock, he and his companions try to uncover the identity of the group's leader,
07:44 the Shepard. And in the end, Orlando learns that the Shepard is actually his own aid,
07:50 Major Max Morton, who supposedly died in a submarine explosion earlier in the flick.
07:55 However, most viewers saw this twist coming a mile off. First off, Morton's death actually just
08:00 occurs off-screen, which was immediately suspect. Secondly, and far more importantly, Morton is
08:06 portrayed by Matthew Goode. And over the years, Goode, as you may know, has proven himself to
08:11 be a versatile actor on Downton Abbey, Watchmen, The Imitation Game, and countless other projects.
08:17 So because he's a pretty big name in Hollywood, it would make absolutely no sense to cast him in
08:22 the Kingsman, just for a bit part. It'd be like hiring Chris Hemsworth as a secretary that has
08:28 like three lines, I mean, imagine doing that! So yeah, because Goode is an A-list actor,
08:33 you could tell that his role would be bigger than it seemed, which is why Morton was obviously the
08:38 Shepard. Number 4 - The Illuminati - Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
08:43 The trailers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness showed all sorts of zany visuals,
08:48 including our titular hero traversing through multiple realities, battling a cycloptic octopus,
08:54 that's really hard to say, and Doctor Strange himself encountering an insidious variant of
08:59 himself. But the one element that generated the most buzz and speculation of course was
09:04 the Illuminati. After we heard Patrick Stewart's distinctive timber and saw his bald noggin in the
09:10 Multiverse of Madness trailer, the X-Men founder, Professor X, had officially joined the Marvel
09:15 Cinematic Universe. And within seconds of the trailer's launch, every comic book fan in the
09:21 world theorised what other comic book characters would make up the rest of the Illuminati group.
09:26 Would Black Bolt of the Inhumans finally be incorporated into the MCU movies? Would Captain
09:32 Peggy Carter make her live-action debut? Would John Krasinski finally confirm that he's playing
09:37 the fantastic full leader Reed Richards by making an appearance? Would all of this happen? Well,
09:44 yeah. Yes, yes, and yes in fact. Even though we assumed the reveal would catch us unaware,
09:49 most fans actually correctly guessed every single member of the Illuminati before they went to see
09:55 it. And sadly, it wasn't just leaks that informed this, but actual footage from the trailers
10:00 themselves. Although fans definitely hyped the Illuminati's unveiling a tad bit too much,
10:06 we were still expecting someone a little bit, well, more unexpected.
10:10 Number 3 - The film keeps telling you who the bad guy is - Red Notice
10:15 Red Notice follows an FBI profiler called John Hartley, played by Dwayne Johnson,
10:19 who's forced to team up with a thief called Northern Booth to catch the elusive criminal,
10:24 the Bishop. But in the end, we learn that John Hartley and the Bishop are actually lovers,
10:28 and have been in cahoots the whole time. This revelation is a surprise to no one though,
10:34 since the spy thriller won't stop dropping clues like every 5 minutes. Now, to be fair,
10:40 we understand why the film leaves hints. I mean, after all, if it didn't, this twist would just
10:45 come out of nowhere and not be satisfying. But still, Red Notice only really had to leave one
10:50 or two clues in there, not all of them, every couple minutes. I mean, immediately after he
10:56 appears, the inspector learns that Hartley never worked for the FBI despite what he told her,
11:02 and he tells Booth that he knows how the con scheme works and even shoots his own men,
11:06 much to Booth's own confusion. And if that wasn't enough, considering that he introduces himself to
11:12 Booth in their first scene by saying "I'm the bad guy", you can't really call the shocking
11:17 reveal in the last scene a twist. Number 2 - Who is John Lark - Mission Impossible Fallout
11:23 After Mission Impossible churned out half a dozen movies, it would've been easy for the
11:27 property to become stagnant. But the 6th entry, Mission Impossible Fallout actually reinvigorated
11:33 the spy franchise with its death-defying stunts and mesmerising fight choreography. But that
11:39 doesn't change the fact that this sequel is pretty predictable when it comes to the story.
11:43 Throughout the movie, Ethan Hunt teams up with the bicep-cocking, moustache-sporting agent
11:48 August Walker, played by Henry Cavill, to find the mysterious terrorist John Lark before he
11:54 activates a plutonium core. So when it's revealed that Lark and August Walker are one and the same,
12:00 viewers let out a collective "yeah, so?" And that's because it was absolutely, incredibly obvious
12:06 that Walker was Lark because, well, there's no one else it could be. There was genuinely not one
12:12 single character in the story that would've fit the bill, other than this newcomer. And let's be
12:18 honest, the studio was never going to hide Cavill at the height of his career just to play a second
12:22 fiddle, were they? No, he's very clearly an arrogant bad guy from the very beginning.
12:27 1. Shank is Jigsaw - Spiral, The Book of Saw
12:31 If there is one series renowned for catching viewers out, Saw wins no contest. The films
12:36 themselves range from masterful to mediocre, but there's no question that every entry concludes
12:42 with a jaw-dropping twist. I mean, many of us are still reeling from the climax of the original
12:47 movie despite being released nearly two decades ago now. But the latest in the franchise Spiral
12:53 had such a predictable climax that even the iconic Saw theme couldn't help it feel grand and earned.
13:00 This soft reboot focuses on Detective Zeke Banks and his partner William Shank,
13:04 hunting a Jigsaw copycat who's killing corrupt police officers. When Zeke discovers the serial
13:09 killer has murdered Shankville, he vows to avenge his partner. Consequently, when he learns that
13:15 Shank has actually been Jigsaw all along, he's absolutely gobsmacked. However, it's too bad
13:20 that viewers didn't feel the same way. And that's because Shank is the only "victim" murdered off
13:26 screen, so we knew he was the cop killer straight away. We never actually see him die, despite seeing
13:33 everyone else who bites it in the movie suffer their traps. It was so evident in fact that many
13:38 suspected that the detective's disappearance was just a red herring to throw us off the scent.
13:43 Even the worst entries in this franchise still managed to blindside us, so surely Spiral wouldn't
13:50 conclude so predictably, right? Well, sadly, that ain't what happened. So that's our list,
13:57 I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below. Did you get caught out by these
14:00 twists, or did you see them coming a mile off like I did? While you're down there as well,
14:04 could you please give us a like, share, subscribe, and head over to wotculture.com for more lists
14:08 and news like this every single day. Even if you don't though, I've been Josh, thanks so much for
14:12 watching and I'll see you soon.