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10 Recent Movies Let Down By Predictable Twists
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00:00Who doesn't enjoy a good plot twist that blows your mind?
00:03No matter how good the actions, special effects, or performances are in a movie,
00:08there is nothing that leaves you with the same impact as an unexpected revelation.
00:12But there is one pretty big problem with twists.
00:15They're really hard to pull off.
00:18With that in mind then, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com,
00:20and these are 10 recent movies let down by predictable twists.
00:24Number 10.
00:25Cole is Scorpion's Descendant, Mortal Kombat.
00:28The Mortal Kombat reboot could have chosen any of the game's iconic combatants to serve as the hero.
00:33You know, Liu Kang, Johnny Cage, Scorpion, even Robocop.
00:38Yes, Robocop has been the star of Mortal Kombat, alongside the cinemorph, but anyway.
00:44Instead, the writers cooked up a brand new character called Cole for the most recent film.
00:49Fans of the Blood and Guts beat-em-up immediately found this decision a little bit suspicious,
00:53believing that Cole must have a deeper connection with at least one of the fighters.
00:59Sadly, the trailer practically confirmed this by revealing way too much.
01:03In Mortal Kombat's teaser, we actually see Cole having visions of his ancestor, Hanzo Hisashi, aka Scorpion.
01:10Now, this shot may have been brief, but it was enough for entertainment sites to deduce Cole was a descendant of the gold-armored ninja months before the movie came out.
01:20What's annoying about this twist, though, is that it wouldn't have been so obvious if this single shot was removed from the trailer.
01:26We understand that promos do need to pump in as much action as possible to sell a movie, but come on, guys.
01:33Mortal Kombat probably already had the coolest trailer of the entire year.
01:37It already looked so awesome, so why did the filmmakers have to insert this one moment in there and ruin the whole surprise?
01:44I mean, it's not like Cole himself had much else going for him apart from this.
01:49Number 9. Tom's fate. Last Christmas.
01:51Last Christmas centers around a Grinch-like cynic called Kate who can't stand the holiday season.
01:58After encountering a mysterious man called Tom, though, her outlook on life changes for the better.
02:03As Kate begins to fall romantically for Tom as well, she worries that he's just too good to be true.
02:08He's too charming. He's too nice. He's too full of wisdom.
02:12And sadly, yeah, it turns out she's bang on the money.
02:15Because when she finds Tom's home, she learns that he actually passed away a whole year ago.
02:22Not only that, but the heart transplant which Kate received the previous year was from him.
02:27Although Last Christmas is obviously trying to outdo the sixth sense with this epiphany,
02:32most viewers actually put two and two together before the movie even came out, but initially as a joke.
02:38Considering the trailer shows Kate getting the transplant and the first line of the Last Christmas song is, of course,
02:44Last Christmas, I gave you my heart, the film is basically telling you immediately that Tom's a ghost and that he did indeed give Kate his heart.
02:54In a literal, literal sense.
02:56And that's not to mention the clues in the movie itself.
02:59For instance, in every scene, nobody else interacts with Tom save for Kate.
03:04He's always wearing the same clothes and the pair keep exchanging cryptic dialogue like,
03:09I've always been trying to find you and you keep disappearing and I don't know where you are.
03:15Also, instead of walking into a scene, Tom always just appears out with thin air.
03:19Nobody knows where he comes from or where he lives.
03:22He just is so obviously a ghost.
03:24Number 8, Mechagodzilla, Godzilla vs. King Kong.
03:28Godzilla vs. Kong has the simplest premise.
03:30You take the King of the Monsters and the Eighth Wonder of the World and you have them beat the crap out of one another for like two hours.
03:37Despite that setup though, many suspected that this Monsterverse crossover would conclude with the pair joining forces against a greater threat.
03:45And sure enough, the final battle has the Shaggy Ape and the Colossal Dinosaur teaming up against the alien-powered android Mechagodzilla.
03:53And because Mechagodzilla is among Toho's most iconic monsters, many fans already assumed that this robotic lizard would serve as the film's antagonist.
04:02But another reason why it was so obvious that Mechagodzilla would show up at all is because, well, he appears in the teaser's opening shot.
04:10Although it is a blink and you'll miss it moment, we live in a world now where we can just pause anything on social media with a flick of a button and pause fans did.
04:20By freeze-framing the trailer where Mechagodzilla burst through a city, the secret was officially out since his metallic visage and Terminator-like eyes are absolutely unmistakable.
04:31Even though the titular titans should have been enough to sell the movie, it was obvious that the studio execs panicked, urging them to shove Mechagodzilla in the trailer, spoiling the big reveal in the process.
04:42Number 7, Taskmaster's Identity, Black Widow.
04:45In Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff teams up with her stepsister Yelena to hunt down Dreykov, the sadistic criminal who created the Widow Assassins in the first place.
04:55But to reach him, the Widows need to get through his bodyguard and master assassin, Taskmaster.
05:01Because Taskmaster dons a mask, Natasha, as well as the audience, were trying to figure out the supervillain's true identity for the bulk of the film.
05:08So when Taskmaster pulls off her facial garb during the climax to reveal that she's actually Dreykov's daughter, it should have been a big deal since Natasha believed that she killed her years ago.
05:20However, many viewers already figured this out before they even saw the movie.
05:25Because the trailer has a shot of Dreykov huddled beside the skull-masked antagonist, a lot of people assumed that Taskmaster would be someone that he knew intimately, like a family member.
05:35But that's not all. Some viewers deduced Taskmaster's identity simply by reading the opening credits.
05:42When Olga Kolenko's name popped up in the beginning, this was an immediate red flag for some.
05:47And that's because the actress was absent from Black Widow's trailers and posters, despite being a well-known name.
05:53So because the promotions were hiding the fact that she was in the movie at all, many correctly surmise that she was the one behind the mask.
06:01Number 6. Is Affleck a killer? Deepwater.
06:04Gone Girl has a lot to answer for.
06:07While David Finch's thriller was exceptional, it ushered in an age of suburban-set twisty adult drama that so few directors or writers could pull off convincingly.
06:17Fast forward 9 years and we have yet another Ben Affleck-starring erotic thriller in Deepwater,
06:23where the Batman star plays Vic, husband to the free-spirited Melinda.
06:27The pair are married, but hardly happy in that marriage, with Melinda flaunting her various boyfriends in front of Vic and his friends at parties.
06:37More than a bit jealous though, Vic actually proceeds to threaten Melinda's conquests, even claiming to have killed one of her previous lovers.
06:45The movie then attempts to play with the audience, getting them to question whether Vic is just acting like the tough guy, or is actually a secret murderer.
06:54And that could be a cool premise, but the issue is, the film is pretty half-arsed about this mystery.
06:59And there's never any real doubt that Vic isn't telling the truth when he describes how he killed previous dudes.
07:06So, by the time it is revealed that, shock, he is a pretty nasty guy, it all lands with a whimper.
07:12And even this wouldn't be that bad, but the writers then proceed to do nothing to elaborate on this so-called twist.
07:19There's no further subversion, and the story just is played surprisingly straight, with no more notable tricks up its sleeve.
07:26Number 5, who is the shepherd, the King's Man?
07:29The King's Man follows Orlando Oxford during World War I, after he forms a British agency, which serves as the precursor to the King's Man.
07:37When Orlando learns the war was initiated by a cabal called the Flock, he and his companions try to uncover the identity of the group's leader, the Shepherd.
07:45And in the end, Orlando learns that the Shepherd is actually his own aide, Major Max Morton, who supposedly died in a submarine explosion earlier in the flick.
07:55However, most viewers saw this twist coming a mile off.
07:58First off, Morton's death actually just occurs off-screen, which was immediately suspect.
08:04Secondly, and far more importantly, Morton is portrayed by Matthew Goode.
08:08And over the years, Goode, as you may know, has proven himself to be a versatile actor on Downton Abbey, Watchmen, The Imitation Game, and countless other projects.
08:17So, because he's a pretty big name in Hollywood, it would make absolutely no sense to cast him in The King's Man, just for a big part.
08:25It would be like hiring Chris Hemsworth as a secretary that has, like, three lines.
08:29I mean, imagine doing that!
08:30So yeah, because Goode is an A-list actor, you could tell that his role would be bigger than it seemed, which is why Morton was obviously the Shepherd.
08:38Number four, The Illuminati, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
08:43The trailers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness showed all sorts of zany visuals, including our titular hero traversing through multiple realities, battling a cycloptic octopus, that is really hard to say, and Doctor Strange himself encountering an insidious variant of himself.
09:00But the one element that generated the most buzz and speculation, of course, was the Illuminati.
09:06After we heard Patrick Stewart's distinctive timber and saw his bald noggin in the Multiverse of Madness trailer, the X-Men founder, Professor X, had officially joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
09:16And within seconds of the trailer's launch, every comic book fan in the world theorized what other comic book characters would make up the rest of the Illuminati group.
09:26Would Black Bolt of the Inhumans finally be incorporated into the MCU movies?
09:31Would Captain Peggy Carter make her live-action debut?
09:34Would John Krasinski finally confirm that he's playing the Fantastic Four leader Reed Richards by making an appearance?
09:41Would all of this happen?
09:43Well, yeah.
09:45Yes, yes, and yes, in fact.
09:46Even though we assumed the reveal would catch us unaware, most fans actually correctly guessed every single member of the Illuminati before they went to see it.
09:56And sadly, it wasn't just leaks that informed this, but actual footage from the trailers themselves.
10:01Although fans definitely hyped the Illuminati's unveiling a tad bit too much, we were still expecting someone a little bit, well, more unexpected.
10:10Number three, the film keeps telling you who the bad guy is, Red Notice.
10:15Red Notice follows an FBI profiler called John Hartley, played by Dwayne Johnson, who's forced to team up with a thief called Nolan Booth to catch the elusive criminal, the Bishop.
10:24But in the end, we learn that John Hartley and the Bishop are actually lovers and have been in cahoots the whole time.
10:31This revelation is a surprise to no one, though, since the spy thriller won't stop dropping clues like every five minutes.
10:39Now, to be fair, we understand why the film leaves hints.
10:43I mean, after all, if it didn't, this twist would just come out of nowhere and not be satisfying.
10:48But still, Red Notice only really had to leave one or two clues in there, not all of them, every couple minutes.
10:55I mean, immediately after he appears, the inspector learns that Hartley never worked for the FBI despite what he told her,
11:02and he tells Booth that he knows how the con scheme works and even shoots his own men, much to Booth's own confusion.
11:08And if that wasn't enough, considering that he introduces himself to Booth in their first scene by saying,
11:14I'm the bad guy, you can't really call the shocking reveal in the last scene a twist.
11:20Number two, who is John Lark, Mission Impossible Fallout?
11:23After Mission Impossible churned out half a dozen movies, it would have been easy for the property to become stagnant.
11:29But the sixth entry, Mission Impossible Fallout, actually reinvigorated the spy franchise with its death-defying stunts and mesmerizing fight choreography.
11:38But that doesn't change the fact that this sequel is pretty predictable when it comes to the story.
11:43Throughout the movie, Ethan Hunt teams up with the bicep-cocking, mustache-sporting agent, August Walker, played by Henry Cavill,
11:51to find the mysterious terrorist John Lark before he activates a plutonium core.
11:56So when it's revealed that Lark and August Walker are one and the same, viewers let out a collective, yeah, so?
12:03And that's because it was absolutely, incredibly obvious that Walker was Lark because, well, there's no one else it could be.
12:10There was genuinely not one single character in the story that would have fit the bill, other than this newcomer.
12:17And, let's be honest, the studio was never going to hide Cavill at the height of his career just to play second fiddle, were they?
12:23No, he's very clearly an arrogant bad guy from the very beginning.
12:27Number one, Shenk is Jigsaw, Spiral, The Book of Saw.
12:30If there is one series renowned for catching viewers out, Saw wins no contest.
12:36The films themselves range from masterful to mediocre, but there's no question that every entry concludes with a jaw-dropping twist.
12:44I mean, many of us are still reeling from the climax of the original movie, despite being released nearly two decades ago now.
12:50But the latest in the franchise, Spiral, had such a predictable climax that even the iconic Saw theme couldn't help it feel grand and earned.
12:59This soft reboot focuses on Detective Zeke Banks and his partner, William Shenk, hunting a Jigsaw copycat who's killing corrupt police officers.
13:08When Zeke discovers the serial killer has murdered Shenkville, he vows to avenge his partner.
13:13Consequently, when he learns out that Shenk has actually been Jigsaw all along, he's absolutely gobsmacked.
13:18However, it's too bad that viewers didn't feel the same way.
13:23And that's because Shenk is the only victim murdered off-screen, so we knew he was the cop killer straight away.
13:30We never actually see him die, despite seeing everyone else who bites it in the movie suffer their traps.
13:36It was so evident, in fact, that many suspected that the detective's disappearance was just a red herring to throw us off the scent.
13:43Even the worst entries in this franchise still managed to blindside us, so surely Spiral wouldn't conclude so predictably, right?
13:53Well, sadly, that ain't what happened.
13:56So that's our list.
13:57I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below.
13:59Did you get caught out by these twists, or did you see them coming a mile off like I did?
14:03While you're down there as well, could you please give us a like, share, subscribe, and head over to whatculture.com for more lists and news like this every single day.
14:10Even if you don't, though, I've been Josh.
14:12Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.
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