The Greatest Plot Twists of All Time

[IrishCanadian25]

*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*SPOILERS*​

Ok, movie buff's, let's have a little fun. Now, in cinema history, many of the greatest films of all time are remembered not only for strong characters and living up to expectations, but for giving us something we did NOT expect - a plot twist! An ending we never saw coming, but after we realized what the hell happened, left us thirsty for more.

In this thread, we will explore and debate the greatest plot twists of all time. I, as always, have taken the liberty of compiling a list.

Planet of the Apes. Weird land. Ship traveled through "space" and landed some humans on a world run by apes where humans have no rights. Plot twist - the ship traveled through time rather than space and it's Earth all along. The chilling image of the Statue of Liberty - awesome.

Se7en. As we are enthralled by Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt's collective character dynamic, we are also shocked not once, not twice, but three times. First, Kevin Spacey shows up unadvertised. Second, hot-ass Gwen Paltrow's head is in that box. And Third...wrath.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 Quentin's best (among my all time favs) allows us to see a woman lose her identity, her friends, her baby, and almost lose her life to betrayl. WHen Uma Thurman sits up in that hospital bed and writhes at the sight of her empty, fetus-less stomach, we know the baby couldn't have survived the head shot. Then, two hotties and 88 crazies later, we learn the baby is still alive. Holy hell.

Friday the 13th. Someone is killing off all of the camp counsellors at Camp "We're in Jersey" Crystal Lake. Has anyone heard of the legend of Jason, a young boy who drowned. Maybe it's him. Oh, hello Mrs...Voorhees, is it?

The Empire Strikes Back. "Luke, I am your father." 'Nuff said.

The Usual Suspects. As a seemingly innocuous conversation between Kevin Spacey and Chazz Palminteri sets the stage for an entire film and we learn of the urban legend Kaiser Soze, the twist at the end - the sotry was all made up and it's Kaiser Soze in from of Palminteri the whole time. PS - Soze is a turkish word for "talks a lot."

6th Sense. "I see Dead People." Well, I hear overused catch phrases. But nobody saw that shit comin', and credit Bruce Willis with "interacting" with the other characters without really interacting with them at all.

Psycho. Two plot twists. We saw Norman Bates as the killer coming, but the whole "possessed by mom" thing with her corpse in the room was a shocker. The other twist was Janet Leigh, the advertised heroine, being killed off not half way through the film. Hitchcock is a God.

Primal Fear. There never was an Aaron! Ed Norton is a genius, and one of the finest actors ever. Classic moment, had me going the whole time.

Silence of the Lambs. Ok, I defy you to tell me that the first time you saw that film, when Lecter peels off Sgt. Patricks face skin in that ambulance, that you didn't both cringe and cheer at the genius. Never thought the movie would stop and focus on the OTHER antagonist.

Godfather Part 2. "Oh, Michael you are blind. It wasn't a miscarriage. It was an abortion, Michael." WOW WOW WOW!

Citizen Kane. Wait, Rosebud was a fucking sled? Really?

Old Boy. Among the original great Asian revenge flicks, until our protagonist sleeps with a girl he met at a sushi bar...who turns out to b the daughter he thought he's lost. All of the build up to that realization and the main character cutting off his own tounge as a sacrificial promise to never speak of this again.

Fight Club. Tyler Durden, the whole time, was a figment of Ed Norton's imagination. Hey, if Norton dreams of Brad Pitt, that's his deal. "I haven't been fucked like that since grade school!" What a line.

Honorable mention: The Game, Crying Game, Shawshank Redemption, Mission: Impossible, 12 Monkeys, Jacobs Ladder.

What are some of your favorite plot twists? And which of these is the best and why? Send some opinions my way!

 

[brahma62]

The first Saw in my opinion. Seriously who really thought that the guy with supposedly his brains blown out in the middle of the floor was the dude that was conducting the whole thing. The whole movie i was thinking that Danny Glover was the killer, or that zep dude. But when i saw jigsaw wake up and take off the make-up from his head, i freaked out. One of those WTF moments.

 

[Y 2 Jake]

Old Boy is awesome. I can honestly say that never saw that ending coming. I probably like it most because it's the most fucked up. I'm gonna say this right now, there is not enough incest in movies today. Takashi Miike is the saviour of cinema. Park Chan-Wook is a close second.

Fight Club: I read the book first. So it wasn't a surprise to me.

6th Sense: Somebody told me the ending before I saw it.

Planet of the Apes & Empire Strikes Back: I'm not a sci-fi fan at all.

Godfather 2: It's ok. But if Michael was an alien. That would be awesome.

Primal Fear: I've had that on DVD for 5 years, I'm yet to watch it.

Usual Suspects & Se7en: Both good. But kinda spoiled because I was too young to fully appreciate the ending when I was 11. I really wished I'd watched them when I was more mature.

 

[twiztid_lestat]

Well Saw one was great. Classic even..

But it pales in comparison to 'The Mist' After ALL that time and ALL that surviving that Thomas janes character and co. did. They watch a HUGE towering alien life form walk over their cares and walk well into a once normal neighborhood....

They run out of gas.

TJ's character looks around, all hope lost. He, a woman, an elderly couple and his son sit in the car. Not knowing what to do. He has his gun.....5 people ....4 bullets....He made a promise to his son that he would ''Not let the monsters get him'' So he kept his promise when he put a slug in EVERYONE except himself.

Then..as he screams waiting to be killed by the creatures...

Out of the mist comes...

(SPOILER)















The army. And EVERYONE that was left. If he had waited two more minutes they would have been saved. But instead, he killed four people, including his young son. He screams to heavan as a woman whom he refused to assist early in the movie rides by with her kid that she rescued.

This is the best twist in a movie ever. In my opinion of course

 

[nomonksinmyband]

Primal Fear. There never was an Aaron! Ed Norton is a genius, and one of the finest actors ever. Classic moment, had me going the whole time.

I have to agree witht that 1000%, Edward Norton played that role so well that you believed that he truly had split personalities.

I think Norton is the most underappreicated actors of our time but thats off topic.

 

[Papa Shango]

Usual Suspects and Se7en almost go hand in hand with each other in that they were released the same year, feature Kevin Spacey in two breakout, career-defining roles, launched the careers of both films directors (Bryan Singer and David and have enough plot twists and turns to keep everyone watching. But I don't know if I would consider Se7en as having a twist ending, so much as it was another plot twist, and an insane one at that. But the ending to The Usual Suspects MAKES the movie. It completely redifined twist endings and unreliable narrators in film. I remember being completely blown away when I first saw the film. It is one of my favorite movies of all time.
Another movie that deserves mention is Memento. Showing the events unfold backwards is brilliant, because you literally have no idea what is going on throughout the entire movie. I don't want to spoil the movie for everyone, I'd rather you take my word for it that it's brilliant. But here's the spoiler for those of you who can't resist.

Spoiler

All you know is that you saw that Teddy was killed by Guy Pierce's character. you assume the movie is about how this guy with short term memory loss finds his wife's killer. By the end we find out that Teddy was the detective working on Pierce's wife's case, that he helped Pierce track down the real killer, but Pierce forgot that he had killed him, so Teddy set up a drug dealer to be killed so that Pierce can rest. But when Pierce finds all this out, right before his short term memory loss kicks in, he takes a picture of Teddy and writes "Don't trust him", lying to himself in order to exact revenge on Teddy for manipulating him.

I'm not sure if I explained too well, so really, just watch the movie. Although the DVD is frustrating because in order to play it, you have to break a code, and I can't remember what the code is, so you may have to look it up online.

 

[Davi323]

I think it has to be The Empire Strikes Back. Darth Vader telling Luke Skywalker that he was his father is absolutely MESSED up. I remember as a kid, having full blown arguments during recess about whether Vader was lying or not about it...Even James Earl Jones assumed Vader was lying when he read the lines, and that the truth would be revealed in the next film...it was...but it wasn't the truth anyone wanted to hear, and we get the most dysfunctional family in the galaxy.

 

[Colamania]

Ermmm... tell you the truth, all the good ones are gone. The one that immediatly springs to mind is Sixth Sense (great film) and Saw (the dead guy isn't dead, he's Jigsaw? Classic) but there's one left, I guess.

Secret Window.

Minor Plot Spoilers:

The film is about a writer, whose name I forget, who is followed by a man called John Shooter. Shooter says that the writer (hereby referred to as Depp, as Johnny played the writer) plagarised one of his books. Depp is driven mad by this, and a seemingl impossible set of events, such as pages being torn out of a package which is sealed. However, at the end of the film...

Spoiler: Secret Window

We discover that Depp has split personalities. "Shooter" is carved all over his house, and when his ex wife goes in, we discover that it actually means "Shoot Her". He then kills her grusomly. Not by shooting her. He uses a spade. Nice... he then buries her outside his house, in a little patch beneath a Secret Window. It's adapted from a great Stephen King story.

Good twist ending in my opinion.

 

[klunderbunker]

For me there's two, one of which I doubt will get many votes. First is Hard Candy, which is my all time favorite movie. The movie consists of a man basically being interrogated for being a pedophile, which he later admits to. At the end he agrees to tell the girl his partner's name in exchange for mercy. The girl says his partner's name, saying she's known the truth the whole time. The look on the pedophile's face is absolutely amazing.

The other is Empire Strikes Back. I saw the rerelease of these what I was about 8, and when Vader says that line, i literally dropped my coke and fell out of my chair in shock. Amazing scene that no one saw coming. I can't imagine what it must've been like in the original screenings.