The Gaming Den

let's get this out in front. I'm not at all a big M.Night SHyamalan fan. In fact, I've said that he makes me sad that he's the major representative of Indian-Americans in Hollywood and especially because he is a director.

Aside from his first three movies, I don't think M.Night has really offered anything substantial in any of his movies that followed.

The twist is pretty much what he does.

Let us define The Twist.

The Twist is a plot device that when Plot X happens and resolution Y is expected, then Climax Z comes out of right field and gives you resolution A instead.

Let's have an example. Superman is fighting Zod and he is losing badly. In fact, Zod is almost ready to kill him. But then you suddenly have a flashback sequence where Wonder woman gave Zod a kiss after a phantom zone release. Zod remembers this and repents at the last second and realizes the error of his ways.

Zod is a pretty nefarious guy. I mean he's a racial supremacist. That's the kind of evil that is often given the Black hat. So to have Zod repent and recant at the last second is left field.

That's The Twist. You also have the opposite of the Twist. The straight shooter is pretty much the generally expected and often delivered ending.

Let us define the Straight Shooter.

Straight Shooter When Plot X happens, an expected Climax X happens, and the resolution is the expected Resolution X.

It's almost ordained and predestined. Often this is labeled the fate card. Even if it isn't fate, this goes by the rules of Good/evil, Law/Crime, etc...

We normally see directors like James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, George lucas direct Straight Shooters. I mean those are the big names. But most people play Straight Shooters. The military was supposed to lose in Avatar. The Rebellion was supposed to win against the empire. Humans win/survive the Dinosaur outbreak

You have the occasional outlier to these two outcomes. But it's not very likely.

But, I've lately been thinking. If those are the two options, then why is The Twist hated? We see numerous movies that are Straight Shooters and aside from throwing our hands up, we don't complain too much. But The Twist, when it happens four times in a row from the same director, we roll our eyes.

All of the Lucas movies have been Straight Shooters. So have most SPielberg and Scorsese, Cameron movies.

So what's up?

Are there other options that are common and I'm just not seeing them?


edit: Somehow submitted before I was done posting.
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Well, "Things don't end as expected" and "Things do end as expected" pretty much sums up all endings ever.

There is "It looks like things aren't going to end as expected but then they do", but usually that's when someone runs out of something halfway through The Twist.

Well, you have various versions of the dilemma. That's where you're offered two apparently reasonable choices and the movie could end either way. You could be Team Edward or Team Jacob. It doesn't really matter, because both choices are valid. So the movie can introduce new revelations and introduce new plot elements to make one option or the other have the ascendancy, but the suspense is maintained because either ending remains plausible until just before it actually happens.

Then we have the Great Sorting. This happens in a lot of chick flicks. You have some sort of arbitrary potential endings available for a lot of different characters or groups, and then by the end they just sort of arrange themselves in some satisfactory (or not) manner. The classic example would be some Hugh Grant vehicle where a bunch of characters are going to be paired off, but you don't specifically know who is going to be paired off with who until the end. There don't need to be any momentous twists, and indeed often there are not, but suspense is still maintained because the Great Sorting could shake out in possibly hundreds of different ways, and may literally have been decided by dice rolls or focus group questionaires.

-Username17

If we look at the examples you give the twist example is a almost blatant deus ex machina. Twists that don't involve deus ex machina are less likely to be hated than those that do. Twists that involve slight of hand tricks with the audience (that is that the plot is actually a straight shooter, only the audience is not aware of a key element and therefore it looks like a tiwst. "The Sting" is a good example of this; at the climax it looks like everything has gone wrong and both men killed each other, where it was actually a part of the con.

Morevoer in the straight shooter, the extreeme example is that there is no uncertainty in the outcome whatsoever.

I'm reminded of a old roller coaster ride that was mediocre at best. The only memorable thing was it had a rumble strip about 50' from the end, just as you were approaching the exit point, something happened. I think that it is key to any good plot, tease, tempt, throw doubt, even hide the plot in a shell game, but deus ex machina is definitely out.

All Roads to Rome: You know from the very beginning how it will end. CF New Star Wars, many romances.

Achilles' Choice: You know from the beginning there are only two ways it can end. See: Twilight sequels

One Thing Lead To Another: You can generally tell what will happen next. You can see the end coming from the start of Act Three, but not from Act One. See: A lot of thrillers and mysteries.

Deus Ex: You get an unexpected ending because of the intervention of something you knew nothing about. See: turns up everywhere

The Twist: You get an unexpected ending because you had *incomplete* information that lead you to misinterpret something. This difference between this and Deus Ex is that if it's the Twist makes you reconsider the first half of the film and the Deus Ex doesn't.

There's also a mythical fifth category that writers generally shoot for, the Untwist: this is where your audience does not predict the ending, but feels that they could have. Whether this is actually possible, or just deluding your audience, is left as an exercise to the reader.

Orion wrote:There's also a mythical fifth category that writers generally shoot for, the Untwist: this is where your audience does not predict the ending, but feels that they could have. Whether this is actually possible, or just deluding your audience, is left as an exercise to the reader.

That's sort of how I felt about The Prestige. Or rather, that I predicted it before the reveal due to foreshadowing, but not really early in the movie.

Oh, there's also "Each plot point is itself a shocking twist" AKA Zahn's independent books, especially the Quadrail series. It is way better than it sounds.

The Twist isn't necessarily hated, it's just M. Night Syamalamalamalaman's version of it that is. And that's because his twists are fucking retarded. The Village does not speak for all Twist endings.

I think that Schmamlyayn's problem is that people have started to expect the twist from him. He tries to make good The Twist plots, but people are actually treating the movie as a Straight Shooter, he optimizes for the wrong criteria, and the movie fails miserably. Plus he's out of good ideas.

Also, agreed on Zahn's stuff. His books never get boring because the characters are always doing something that you totally didn't expect. It's not very deep, but it's definitely entertaining.

Orion wrote:There's also a mythical fifth category that writers generally shoot for, the Untwist: this is where your audience does not predict the ending, but feels that they could have. Whether this is actually possible, or just deluding your audience, is left as an exercise to the reader.

I think that the Disk 1 plot of Baten Kaitos falls into this category. Almost every plot conversation on the entire disk provides something to back the untwist up. When they untwist it's like a cluebrick to the forehead, but it's so far out of left field that there's no way you'd actually spoil it.

Surgo wrote:The Twist isn't necessarily hated, it's just M. Night Syamalamalamalaman's version of it that is. And that's because his twists are fucking retarded. The Village does not speak for all Twist endings.

Lady in the Water was incredibly awful, too.

Here's the problem: People must take on roles they are suited for.

Here's the twist: The guy assigned the wrong roles at first. He thought a movie critic would be able to see the messages and figure what they should do next (hint: The movie critic doesn't, and dies horribly).

Seriously. That's the twist. They sort out the confusion, the evil is vanquished promptly.

I just finished playing Prototype. That game has a better twist than what M. Night shits out these days. It's actually worth of a spoiler.

The guy you're playing as isn't a guy infected with a virus which makes him stronger and faster and lets him shape his body and take the identities of others. He's an actual living mass of the virus itself, but it moved into a dude's body. He's not human, just something that looks like it is and thinks it is and was fooling itself.[