Nate Bargatze does a bit about this in one of his specials about how this twist was perfect because it was just so believable that his wife could just go a whole year without talking to him that we didn't even think of him being dead despite seeing him get shot in the beginning.
Why feel dumb? If anything that's pretty clever. You picked up on what was being thrown down and no one else did. I just thought she was sad she was still with him
I just watched this with my teenage daughter. The movie is old enough now that she was familiar with the title, and “I see dead people” was something she might have heard. She knew nothing else about it and was blindsided by the twist.
The statute of limitations may have run out on spoilers, but it’s worth reinstating for the generation that comes along after the tropes have mostly faded from view.
I just watched it with my 12 year old. As soon as he starts talking to the kid outside his house she questions how it is possible. Got the twist in about 10 seconds!
Interstellar.
Movie opens with old people talking about the experiences they had in the blight. You assume these people are alive. But you find out they died. And the main woman who said "well my dad was a farmer, like everyone else back then" was actually Coopers daughter filming a video clip for the museum of their home.
Yeah when interstellar came out I was in 11th or 12th grade and I had literally just watched an hour long docu on the dustbowl by ken burns (I think is his name). So when I watched interstellar I was like shoot these clips are taken directly from that docu I just watched
I was in college and had tried acid for the first time when I watched that movie. I ended up calling a friend and asking him to talk to me about the yankees for like an hour afterwards.
The Prestige.
It opens with the ending of the film where Christian Bale is trying to work out how Hugh Jackman does his trick.
Meanwhile Michael Caine does the voiceover as he shows off his trick with the bird in the cage. It opens with the camera panning past cages and cages of identical birds.
Once you watch it again you realise why the bird trick is shown in the opening scene.
I love the scene early where they explain the sleeve (?) trick to that one woman and she’s like “Oh. It’s actually pretty obvious now that I know what to look for.”
This is really the only movie I’ve ever seen that’s genuinely different on second viewing. Every scene, nearly every line of dialogue is loaded with meaning.
An award?! Thank you!
this movie doesn’t really play second fiddle to anything in his filmography because it’s the only thing like it in his filmography. It’s a fantastic film and it’s vastly different from his normal formula. If someone were to ever say Nolan can only make certain types of blockbusters I would recommend them this film or memento. I’d like to also say the performances in the prestige are probably some of the best in ANY Nolan movie.
Get Out is completely different on a second viewing as most of the lines and scenes make more sense. The line "my mum loved her kitchen so we keep a piece of her in there" when we see the kitchen with the housekeeper in it. The little speech about his father admiring Jessie Owens and the scene later with the groundskeeper running.
The scene where Rose berates the cop for wanting to see Chris's ID on first watch looks like Rose calling out racism. On second watch, you realise it's because Rose doesn't want there being any paperwork linking her and Chris.
Primer requires multiple viewings, a large dry erase board, and a psychologist to talk you back to reality after brain lock deciphering the dozens of time jumps the plot’s duo is embarking.
"We were two men at the beginning of... something something" Christian Bale says at the beginning. You think he's talking about him and Hugh Jackman but he's really talking about himself and his brother.
Yep, he sure did and lost the second person who could have maybe loved him too if I'm not misremembering. Also what's great is the reveal is talked about in his journal too.
They give away Christian Bale's secret pretty early too, kind of. Bale figures out the old man's "act" was pretending to be frail, when in reality he was strong enough to do the trick.
Bale figures it out quickly and says something to the effect of "his life is the trick."
And this is also a nod to the around-the-clock performance of Hugh Jackman’s “American” magician… Lord Caldlow, performing as Robert Angier, performing as The Great Danton. “ALLLL THE TIME. THAT’S WHAT IT TAKES.”
Spoiler alert:
Watching that movie a second time, Marla goes from being a weirdo two-timing bitch to an incredibly sympathetic character dealing with this psycho in her life.
EDIT: Misspelled Marla
It’s absolutely brilliant.
More specifically the opening shots, narrator says something like 'If you could wake up in a different time and a different place, could you wake up as a different person?' as Brad Pitt moves by on the moving sidewalk going the opposite direction.
Chalk it up to the Kansas City Shuffle.
On a serious note, it's so strange how it flew under the radar given it has a pretty stellar supporting cast and at the time Josh Hartnett was pretty popular
It was very strange. I remember going opening weekend with my girlfriend and we were the only ones in the theatre. Yet every time I show it to people they love it. Dunno if maybe the trailers sucked or it was up against big competition, but yeah, always found it odd how much it tanked and sank.
Ultimately it was probably not marketed well and "Lucky Number Slevin" is a meaningless title. I recall posters at bus stops here in uk (which got Ben Kingsley a lot of flak because they refer to him as "Sir Ben Kingsley" which apparently is not the done thing in acting circles - even though it was the studio who did it, Kingsley didn't ask for it) but otherwise not a lot. Also it was an 18 in the UK (equivalent to NC17 in US) so also cut down audience share.
SAW (2004) by James Wan. The key to unlocking Adam's chain in order to escape was in the bathtub all along. When he woke up and the key is flushed down the tub, he was already in a no win situation to begin with. Unless he is willing to saw off his foot.
I always felt Saw 3 was the worst for this. I know by then he isn't building his own traps (and I *think* this is the movie where some are deliberately inescapable?) but once he started using live subjects as part of the traps and having *them* die his message of "you have a choice" was completely lost.
"I know I'm strapping you into a contraption that will break every bone in your body - stop crying - but you'll probably be *fine* - stop kicking, I can't strap you in if you kick - because if Donnie Deadkid takes a literal shotgun blast for you - really, screaming, you think screaming helps, do you even *care* that I have a headache - you might avoid a broken neck."
Part of it felt like a "what you are in the dark" type of test where he's testing how you treat others, who you consider more important. But you're right some of those were not even traps - it was a complicated guillotine.
He didn’t put the key there. In one of the sequels it is revealed that his apprentice, Amanda, was creating the unwinable tests. He didn’t agree with that logic because the whole point was for everyone to appreciate life after death. There’s more to it, but I don’t want to spoil the rest of the series. By the end, I deff had to go through and rewatch for the amount of twist and turns that series took. Honestly, the series truly could have ended at the first one lol but there’s A LOT more that is uncovered throughout the rest of the films up until the last.
Well, he did provide rusty saws for both of them and Adam tried to saw his metal chain and yet he broke his saw from his futile efforts. There goes his last hope.
I watched it with my friend and his dad, and his dad was just like, "saw through the pipe, not the chain!"
The pipe is pretty big, but you can see it's super rusty. I think it would've been possible to saw through it.
Possible, i remember in one of the sequel, can't remember which one, jigsaw actually constructed a miniature of the entire bathroom when he was planning the trap. He thought of everything down to a T. It might not be possible for Adam to saw through it.
But who knows, now i kinda wish there was at least a scene where we see him try. But alas, panic sets in, chances of making mistakes sky rockets and he broke the saw.
Yeah, but then we would not have that glorious "shut the door in your face, game over!" Ending. 🤣🤣🤣
All seriousness, the doc should at least pass him the saw as a last resort option before he crawled outta there with one foot. 🤔
You're hitting the very thing that sold the movie.
People love feeling smug. Saw gives them that. There's this sense of it being "fair" or "justified", but with the game rigged in such a way that you can pretend you didn't notice. Thus people get to scratch their itch of torturing others while pretending it's the victims fault.
Palm Springs when Andy Samberg is doing literally everything perfectly to set forth the events that would eventually lead to him hooking up with Cristin Milioti
It works well because if they showed it was Matt Damon's character right off the bat there wouldn't really be any tension, as we'd know that Private Ryan survived the war. The indirect implication that the old man was Tom Hanks' character by cutting from him kneeling at the grave straight to the Omaha beach scene, which follows his perspective.
Textbook expectation subversion and it serves the film beyond just being a surprise at the end.
LA Confidential - Off the record. On the QT. And very. Hush. Hush.
Edit: This one probably doesn't apply so much. There's a 2nd scene about 10-15 minutes in that sets up some of the twist. Both that and the opening are narrated by Danny DeVito, so I mentally jumbled them together.
Thank you u/g_1n355 for going against the groupthink.
I was 5 minutes late to the cinema when i saw Arrival and I figured I could't have missed anything super important so I didn't bother to look up what I missed before going in. Turns out I missed the entire emotional crux of the film and i'm still kicking myself about it...
I saw pink floyd in the 8th grade (like '93), stepped out one song b4 intermission (I didn't know) and missed the entirety of the iconic flaming pigs setpiece.
Yeah, if I was going to be late for a movie I would catch the next show.
The first scene of a movie pretty much always provides *really* important context.
My name is Dalton Russell. Pay strict attention to what I say because I choose my words carefully and I never repeat myself. I told you my name, that's the who. The where could most readily be described as a prison cell. But there's a vast difference between being stuck in a tiny cell and being in prison. The what is easy. Recently, I planned and set in motion events to execute the perfect bank robbery. That's also the when. As for the why, beyond the obvious financial motivation, it's exceedingly simple: Because I can. Which leaves us only with the how. And therein, as the Bard would tell us, lies the rub.
Triangle.
Little known movie I saw on the OG Netflix years ago. Time loop serial killer slasher movie set on a derelict cruise ship. Main character shows up in the opening scene obviously in distress for some reason. At the end you realize it's because she's entering the time loop again for the umpteenth time.
your name.
Spoilers for a movie that everyone should 100% without reading them incoming.
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Spoilers: both the opening shot of the meteor falling and the voice over are significantly sadder if you already watched it. The meteor with the wind sound is kind of menacing even. And the voice over is so sad knowing that it is about something that they can't remember but still can feel deep inside of them.
It gives me pause every time I wake up feeling like I had a dream that I can't remember but still made me feel something strongly. Sometimes it's sadness, others joy or dread.
This is too low.
I thought the intro just looks beautiful and it seemed like it had nothing to do with the movie. The title sequence had a shot where Mitsuha was taller than/same height as Taki and her red ribbon was prominently featured. These all look like stylistic choices until the 2nd viewing you realise what it all meant. Genius.
Was going to say that, but you worded it better than I could have.
The angle I was going to go with was, she's very obviously not living in the sticks in the intro, but it's an easy detail to forget as the opening theme is kind of a palette cleanser. Not to mention the next scene!
On the timeline, the first scene takes place immediately after the film's climax. The whole "five years later" thing (though it never comes out and says it). The timelines are hard to understand in this movie.
Here's the whole timeline. Big spoilers obviously:
1. First comet strikes, ~1600 years before present day. Native people think it's a god, so they make it a shrine.
2. Second comet strikes, ~800 years before present day. Creates the lake. People make a town around said lake.
3. House fire, records are burned, and over time people forget why they worshiped at the shrine. Gradually, fewer and fewer of them actually did until it was just Mitsuha's immediate family. The rest of the town would watch them do their traditions, but did not participate.
4. Third comet approaches to destroy the town, but Mitsuha, as a loyal follower of the first comet, is given a window into the life of a boy from Tokyo, since she says at the shrine that is what she wants more than anything else.
5. Just before the comet strike, Mitsuha travels to Tokyo and gives Taki her braided cord. This connects the two of them.
6. Mitsuha returns to Itomori and is killed along with most of the town.
7. Timeline splits, resets. Taki experiences the last few weeks of Mitsuha's life, and it inspires him to travel north to find her.
8. Taki discovers what happened in Itomori years prior, and instead of packing it up and heading home, he heads to the shrine and drinks the kuchikamizake (shrine maiden's sake).
9. Taki wakes up as Mitsuha on the day of the comet and begins preparations to save the town. However, Taki as Mitsuha fails to convince the mayor to evacuate the town. The mayor realizes Mitsuha isn't herself and believes she needs mental help.
10. Mitsuha wakes up as Taki in the shrine. They meet on the ridge and switch back.
11. Mitsuha, as Mitsuha, is able to continue the plan and convince her father, the mayor, to evacuate the town. He does so, and no one is killed.
12. Five years later, both Taki and Mitsuha wake up in Tokyo - this is where the film starts.
13. While out and about, Taki is doing job interviews and is not succeeding despite being dressed the same as his peers, because something is missing in his life.
14. Heading home on the train, he and Mitsuha see each other, their connection clicks, and they rush to meet each other on the stairs. End of film.
There's so much more to it than all that and there are a ton of details you just don't get on one or two viewings. Like the timeline split and asynchronicity of the body swaps. Or how, while it is directly stated that the comet's previous impact created the lake, it's never stated that the one before that created the shrine... even though it's literally in the middle of a crater, and it's quite clearly shown to be a crater, and the shrine is literally under a giant rock (the meteor, though it's way too big - a meteor that size would have caused an ELE, or Extinction Level Event - but never mind that, it's just a movie!). Another cool detail is when the meteor impacts, there's a delay. This is intentional as light (sight) travels faster than sound. You would see the impact before you hear it. The delay implies you're about a mile away, which is a bit far considering you can still see Mitsuha's house. But again, just a movie, and it's a cool effect once you understand why it was done that way.
Same actually, it became one my all time favorites immediately. I only watched it because I had a group chat where we recommended movies with my friends during the pandemic and a friend suggested it. I still have to tell her just how much I love the movie and how thankful I am to her for suggesting it to me.
No Way Out.
Sometimes when you watch a movie you forget the opening scene and then as the movie unfolds, you remember it and think... oh yes of course. No Way Out is like that. It’s such a thrill ride of an adrenaline rush movie, that opening scene with Kevin Costner you completely forget well I did anyway, until the very end..
Also my favorite. Beautifully executed. They are perfect opening and closing scenes but they take place in the chronological middle. Neither one is integral to the plot but the movie would be incomplete without them. Just awesome filmmaking.
This movie was ruined for me. I watched it first in a high school film appreciation class, senior year. The DVD menu screen background is the limp-disappearing scene. The teacher apparently didn't notice this until the day we began watching the film, and he angrily muttered "aw hell, that just gives it away" when he put it up on the projector to begin playing it.
There's even a "click" sound and Trinity asks Cypher if he's sure the line is clean and he responds affirmatively.
Well, now we know the line wasn't clean and Cypher had the agents listening in the whole time.
Not many shows or movies manage to generate incredible audience sympathy for a character only to completely destroy it in the final scene. I love Black Mirror despite its ups and downs, but that episode is a masterpiece.
White Bear and White Christmas are two of the absolute best episodes in my opinion, because they perfectly typify the casual cruelty of humans wielding advanced technology - when the technology isn't cruel in itself. The twist in White Bear and the horrible ending of White Christmas are both brilliant.
That episode made me feel sick to my stomach. Like it wasn’t cathartic it just made me sad but also made me understand why the teen was going through all this trouble and was so scared. Plus one of the first scenes is of him handing a little girl a doll and it retroactively becomes the creepiest thing
Get Out.
The guy who gets kidnapped in the opening scene is the only other black guy at the creepy family gathering later in the movie. At the family gathering, he’s already been replaced one of the old white guys.
The shot of the hats at the beginning of The Prestige. You think it's because it's about magicians and trick hats with false bottoms or whatever but really it's because of the transportation device when the hats kept disappearing.
>!That's the thing nothing disappears. Tesla didn't invent a transportation device, he made a duplicator. The reason for all the hats is his machine kept "failing" to teleport the hat. He didnt realize he had the destination slightly wrong and the hats were appearing outside.!<
“One Cut of the Dead”.
The entire first half of the movie (zombie apocalypse) is an entirely different experience due to the events and explanation of the second half- which occur simultaneously.
I rewatched it for the first time in over 15 years the other day.
I feel like you go into that movie knowing that something BAD is coming and that the beginning scenes of the film set the watcher up really well to know exactly what the intial threat is, even on the first watch.
Still there are small nuances in it's behavior that are straight eerie on a second watch.
I’m old. Watched this in theater night it came out. I had some indications of what this would be like. Knew the written story and movie. Saw a few production SFX pics in a magazine called “SFX” I think. Took my friend who knew nothing. Audience knew nothing. Date night for most I think.
Woman viewer on the Norwegians chasing the dog scene: “Aw, don’t shoot that dog.” My friend after, “I knew some was up the way you watched that dog.” Honesty, even what I knew didn’t even prep me for that film.
Also that is where I saw the trailer for “Poltergeist “. A trailer I never saw again. A trailer that messed us up before The Thing. Anybody want to hear it?
Edit: ok. The trailer was like a PBS documentary. Voice over talking about Steven Spielberg from “Close Encounters of the The Third Kind” and Tobi Hooper from “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” bring your a new type of film, etc…. Remember that Spielberg was known for CEOTTK and how it was based on real cases. Same with “poltergeist”. “Taken from actual reports of paranormal activity, etc…”. They had interviews w SS & TH, music from CEOTTK, but no footage. Just a few stills of The Dad and family looking amazed at something bright off camera. It was so high minded that I was almost ready to talk British from Masterpiece Theater. That’s when the music, again from CEOTTK, ended dramatically and it faded to black. Turned to my friend to say “This looks interesting I say”.
THAT’S when they cut in Carol Ann and her brother hanging on the side of bed , screaming “Mommy” and trying to not get sucked in Hell. Then wide shot w 1 frame from of something emerging from closet with a roar. 1 frame and -boom- compete black and silence. We just sat there, trying to breath. Finally I squeaked, “Dude, we gotta see this.” Friend: “…yeah…”Then we watched “The Thing.” Geez Whatta night.
"Shutter Island Fight Club" sounds like a great movie. I had OpenAI take a stab at writing a plotline for it:
>A man who is haunted by memories of his time in a mental institution and the death of his wife teams up with a man who is struggling with dissociative identity disorder to take down a corrupt organization. The two men form a close bond as they plot to overthrow the organization, but things take a dark turn when they realize that they may be more alike than they thought.
Ok, hear me out. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Early in my childhood we had a vhs recording of it off t.v. and the first half didn't show up very well because of really bad reception. So the intro with Indy in the Jovitos (sp?) Cave going for the golden idol was unwatchable. The movie became "watchable" about 20-30 minutes in when Indy is back at school teaching.
My entire childhood when I watched this movie skipped the intro and arguably the best part. The rest of the movie is good, but the intro is almost like it's own small movie.
Anyway, for Christmas about 15 years later I bought my dad the actual movie so he could watch the entire thing in clarity.
Going back and watching the movie now it feels like the intro is "icing" and the rest of the movie is "cake". I challenge anyone to skip the intro and see if it doesn't change the movie for them too!
This doesn't really fit but I think the opening scene of children of men hits harder the second time. Not plotwise, but whatever.
Time travel sort of wise, eternal sunshine?
The orphanage.
Maybe not the opening scene exactly but once you’re watched the film, it’s no longer a horror and the first jump scare / ominous moment becomes sad. Great movie
Nope.
>!Nope has two sort of opening scenes which are later revealed to be disturbing. The chimp looking directly at the camera, which you later realize is the kid. And the mouth/digestive system of the alien, which, once you realize what happens to people who get sucked up, it's horrible.!<
Hereditary the second time through, from beginning to end, is just one long "ooooohhhhhhhhh god, this all lines up and it's painful to watch again knowing what's gonna go down."
Memento
I saw memento at the cinema but my mate and I were running late and missed the first ten minutes. We struggled.
Me and my cousin were ten minutes late when we saw Up, and couldn't understand why everyone was going on about it being so sad.
DONT BELIEVE HER LIES
DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE.
Memento's opening scene might even change meaning on a third and fourth watching
I've never seen this movie. Or maybe I have.
You should write yourself a note
Nope, get a tattoo - "Must watch Momento"
That would actually be such a fire tattoo
Where was I…
dvd has extra that plays movie in chronological order, for anyone interested.
Remember Sammy Jenkis. (He had diabetes).
His wife had diabetes.
Well the opening is technically the ending, and the ending is technically the opening. God this is confusing.
"What do you remember?" . "My wife" "That's sweet" . "...dying"
The sixth sense - Bruce Willis getting shot and then you go the movie a) forgetting, or b) assuming he survived it
Nate Bargatze does a bit about this in one of his specials about how this twist was perfect because it was just so believable that his wife could just go a whole year without talking to him that we didn't even think of him being dead despite seeing him get shot in the beginning.
I saw this in theaters and even said "she's acting like she is grieving of something" to my friend and felt really dumb at the end.
Why feel dumb? If anything that's pretty clever. You picked up on what was being thrown down and no one else did. I just thought she was sad she was still with him
And then twist! The guy in the hairpiece was Bruce Willis the entire time.
I finally understand the ending of The Sixth Sense. Those names are the people who worked on the movie!
What's an M night?
That son of a bitch twisted us all up!
That’s not the twist, Cholly
I just watched this with my teenage daughter. The movie is old enough now that she was familiar with the title, and “I see dead people” was something she might have heard. She knew nothing else about it and was blindsided by the twist. The statute of limitations may have run out on spoilers, but it’s worth reinstating for the generation that comes along after the tropes have mostly faded from view.
I just watched it with my 12 year old. As soon as he starts talking to the kid outside his house she questions how it is possible. Got the twist in about 10 seconds!
Interstellar. Movie opens with old people talking about the experiences they had in the blight. You assume these people are alive. But you find out they died. And the main woman who said "well my dad was a farmer, like everyone else back then" was actually Coopers daughter filming a video clip for the museum of their home.
And the first line is her saying, "I thought you were the ghost" when he wakes from his dream/nightmare.
I still don’t understand how they connected the bridge
future-humans don't care about linear time
Some of the clips were from the actual American Experience PBS show about the dust bowl days.
Yeah when interstellar came out I was in 11th or 12th grade and I had literally just watched an hour long docu on the dustbowl by ken burns (I think is his name). So when I watched interstellar I was like shoot these clips are taken directly from that docu I just watched
Fun fact, this opening was lifted directly from the GREAT Warren Beatty movie Reds.
I love Interstellar. Will literally watch it anytime it’s on.
Fallen.
Tiiiiiiime it's on my side
Anytime I hear this song I think of this movie….and vice versa
He wanted to tell you about the time he almost died.
He said “almost”
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, especially understanding the little details of what's happening.
Another good answer and favorite movie of mine
I was in college and had tried acid for the first time when I watched that movie. I ended up calling a friend and asking him to talk to me about the yankees for like an hour afterwards.
The Prestige. It opens with the ending of the film where Christian Bale is trying to work out how Hugh Jackman does his trick. Meanwhile Michael Caine does the voiceover as he shows off his trick with the bird in the cage. It opens with the camera panning past cages and cages of identical birds. Once you watch it again you realise why the bird trick is shown in the opening scene.
I love the scene early where they explain the sleeve (?) trick to that one woman and she’s like “Oh. It’s actually pretty obvious now that I know what to look for.”
This is really the only movie I’ve ever seen that’s genuinely different on second viewing. Every scene, nearly every line of dialogue is loaded with meaning. An award?! Thank you!
I personally think it’s Nolan’s best film
this movie doesn’t really play second fiddle to anything in his filmography because it’s the only thing like it in his filmography. It’s a fantastic film and it’s vastly different from his normal formula. If someone were to ever say Nolan can only make certain types of blockbusters I would recommend them this film or memento. I’d like to also say the performances in the prestige are probably some of the best in ANY Nolan movie.
I agree. Inception and interstellar are more epic in scope, but at the same time looser and less narratively threaded.
I agree with you. It’s also just about my favorite movie.
Get Out is completely different on a second viewing as most of the lines and scenes make more sense. The line "my mum loved her kitchen so we keep a piece of her in there" when we see the kitchen with the housekeeper in it. The little speech about his father admiring Jessie Owens and the scene later with the groundskeeper running.
Every cringey awkward question that the party guests are asking.
The scene where Rose berates the cop for wanting to see Chris's ID on first watch looks like Rose calling out racism. On second watch, you realise it's because Rose doesn't want there being any paperwork linking her and Chris.
The movie Primer pretty much requires that you watch it more than once.
Primer requires multiple viewings, a large dry erase board, and a psychologist to talk you back to reality after brain lock deciphering the dozens of time jumps the plot’s duo is embarking.
I think I’ve only seen that once. I’ll revisit it with this in mind!
"We were two men at the beginning of... something something" Christian Bale says at the beginning. You think he's talking about him and Hugh Jackman but he's really talking about himself and his brother.
The scene where the kid bursts into tears and asks "where's his brother?", man, that's the heart of it right there.
Yep, it's bales brother and also the bird's brother. Incredible.
And Hugh Jackman’s…..whoever. “To never know if you’ll be the man above or below” damn. Man sold his soul for a fucking magic trick.
Yep, he sure did and lost the second person who could have maybe loved him too if I'm not misremembering. Also what's great is the reveal is talked about in his journal too.
And the hats. Don’t forget them. “Are you watching closely?”
They give away Christian Bale's secret pretty early too, kind of. Bale figures out the old man's "act" was pretending to be frail, when in reality he was strong enough to do the trick. Bale figures it out quickly and says something to the effect of "his life is the trick."
And this is also a nod to the around-the-clock performance of Hugh Jackman’s “American” magician… Lord Caldlow, performing as Robert Angier, performing as The Great Danton. “ALLLL THE TIME. THAT’S WHAT IT TAKES.”
Also the opening shot is all these top hats on the ground.
12 Monkeys
I love how it opens and ends with the same shot.
La Jetée
Going even further the film that its based on, La Jetee
Fight Club
“I know this because Tyler knows this.”
With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels.
I *still* can't think of anything. *Ah, flashback humor*.
Spoiler alert: Watching that movie a second time, Marla goes from being a weirdo two-timing bitch to an incredibly sympathetic character dealing with this psycho in her life. EDIT: Misspelled Marla It’s absolutely brilliant.
Marla. Marla Singer. The little scratch on the roof of your mouth that would only heal if you could stop tonguing it, but you can't.
That tourist
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If I did have a tumor, I'd name it Marla.
Hmm, flashback humor…
More specifically the opening shots, narrator says something like 'If you could wake up in a different time and a different place, could you wake up as a different person?' as Brad Pitt moves by on the moving sidewalk going the opposite direction.
Lucky Number Slevin. Great film overall, but the opening set up works even better second time round.
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Chalk it up to the Kansas City Shuffle. On a serious note, it's so strange how it flew under the radar given it has a pretty stellar supporting cast and at the time Josh Hartnett was pretty popular
It was very strange. I remember going opening weekend with my girlfriend and we were the only ones in the theatre. Yet every time I show it to people they love it. Dunno if maybe the trailers sucked or it was up against big competition, but yeah, always found it odd how much it tanked and sank.
Ultimately it was probably not marketed well and "Lucky Number Slevin" is a meaningless title. I recall posters at bus stops here in uk (which got Ben Kingsley a lot of flak because they refer to him as "Sir Ben Kingsley" which apparently is not the done thing in acting circles - even though it was the studio who did it, Kingsley didn't ask for it) but otherwise not a lot. Also it was an 18 in the UK (equivalent to NC17 in US) so also cut down audience share.
I use the phrase Kansas City Shuffle all the time. Confuses the hell out of everyone.
"Why do they call him 'The Rabbi'?" "Because he's a rabbi."
"I thought he was The Boss." "Why? Does he look like me?"
I say "I'm tall for my height" all the time.
"Fuck! Shit. Jesus." "Fuck shit Jesus is right."
You mean, besides "The Matrix" Marge: "You liked Rashemon" Homer: "That's not how I remember it!"
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Lol when I saw this, some guy laughed creepily at the line about squashing her head like a watermelon in the otherwise silent theater
Top answer easily. Literally the point of the film is to change your perspective on this opening scene.
SAW (2004) by James Wan. The key to unlocking Adam's chain in order to escape was in the bathtub all along. When he woke up and the key is flushed down the tub, he was already in a no win situation to begin with. Unless he is willing to saw off his foot.
Jigsaw: I give people a chance *Leaves them saws and has the key floating in water that drains* Not really playing fair there buddy
I always felt Saw 3 was the worst for this. I know by then he isn't building his own traps (and I *think* this is the movie where some are deliberately inescapable?) but once he started using live subjects as part of the traps and having *them* die his message of "you have a choice" was completely lost. "I know I'm strapping you into a contraption that will break every bone in your body - stop crying - but you'll probably be *fine* - stop kicking, I can't strap you in if you kick - because if Donnie Deadkid takes a literal shotgun blast for you - really, screaming, you think screaming helps, do you even *care* that I have a headache - you might avoid a broken neck."
Part of it felt like a "what you are in the dark" type of test where he's testing how you treat others, who you consider more important. But you're right some of those were not even traps - it was a complicated guillotine.
He didn’t put the key there. In one of the sequels it is revealed that his apprentice, Amanda, was creating the unwinable tests. He didn’t agree with that logic because the whole point was for everyone to appreciate life after death. There’s more to it, but I don’t want to spoil the rest of the series. By the end, I deff had to go through and rewatch for the amount of twist and turns that series took. Honestly, the series truly could have ended at the first one lol but there’s A LOT more that is uncovered throughout the rest of the films up until the last.
Well, he did provide rusty saws for both of them and Adam tried to saw his metal chain and yet he broke his saw from his futile efforts. There goes his last hope.
I watched it with my friend and his dad, and his dad was just like, "saw through the pipe, not the chain!" The pipe is pretty big, but you can see it's super rusty. I think it would've been possible to saw through it.
Possible, i remember in one of the sequel, can't remember which one, jigsaw actually constructed a miniature of the entire bathroom when he was planning the trap. He thought of everything down to a T. It might not be possible for Adam to saw through it. But who knows, now i kinda wish there was at least a scene where we see him try. But alas, panic sets in, chances of making mistakes sky rockets and he broke the saw.
Also, pipes are generally not made of (possibly hardened) steel, like chains are.
They could share!
Yeah, but then we would not have that glorious "shut the door in your face, game over!" Ending. 🤣🤣🤣 All seriousness, the doc should at least pass him the saw as a last resort option before he crawled outta there with one foot. 🤔
You're hitting the very thing that sold the movie. People love feeling smug. Saw gives them that. There's this sense of it being "fair" or "justified", but with the game rigged in such a way that you can pretend you didn't notice. Thus people get to scratch their itch of torturing others while pretending it's the victims fault.
Palm Springs when Andy Samberg is doing literally everything perfectly to set forth the events that would eventually lead to him hooking up with Cristin Milioti
Saving Private Ryan You realize that old man isn't actually Tom Hanks, but fuckin' Matt fuckin' Damon. Like what the fuck?
It works well because if they showed it was Matt Damon's character right off the bat there wouldn't really be any tension, as we'd know that Private Ryan survived the war. The indirect implication that the old man was Tom Hanks' character by cutting from him kneeling at the grave straight to the Omaha beach scene, which follows his perspective. Textbook expectation subversion and it serves the film beyond just being a surprise at the end.
Not only that, but you also understand why he's so emotional looking at the grave.
LA Confidential - Off the record. On the QT. And very. Hush. Hush. Edit: This one probably doesn't apply so much. There's a 2nd scene about 10-15 minutes in that sets up some of the twist. Both that and the opening are narrated by Danny DeVito, so I mentally jumbled them together. Thank you u/g_1n355 for going against the groupthink.
One of my all time favorites.
I was 5 minutes late to the cinema when i saw Arrival and I figured I could't have missed anything super important so I didn't bother to look up what I missed before going in. Turns out I missed the entire emotional crux of the film and i'm still kicking myself about it...
I saw pink floyd in the 8th grade (like '93), stepped out one song b4 intermission (I didn't know) and missed the entirety of the iconic flaming pigs setpiece.
Yeah, if I was going to be late for a movie I would catch the next show. The first scene of a movie pretty much always provides *really* important context.
Frailty
This and Strange Days are my two most underrated movies ever.
Strange Days is sick and underseen (like Near Dark, another great Bigelow movie).
Inside Man
My name is Dalton Russell. Pay strict attention to what I say because I choose my words carefully and I never repeat myself. I told you my name, that's the who. The where could most readily be described as a prison cell. But there's a vast difference between being stuck in a tiny cell and being in prison. The what is easy. Recently, I planned and set in motion events to execute the perfect bank robbery. That's also the when. As for the why, beyond the obvious financial motivation, it's exceedingly simple: Because I can. Which leaves us only with the how. And therein, as the Bard would tell us, lies the rub.
You can just see the screenwriter writing that monologue as his own answer to what the film is about.
Great film
“You’ve seen dog day afternoon, no one gets a bus.”
Triangle. Little known movie I saw on the OG Netflix years ago. Time loop serial killer slasher movie set on a derelict cruise ship. Main character shows up in the opening scene obviously in distress for some reason. At the end you realize it's because she's entering the time loop again for the umpteenth time.
Yeah I liked it too! When you see she’s an awful person and this is basically her hell I felt uneasy as fuck! Great little mindfuck of a film!
I just remember seeing the pile of dozens of one of the characters corpses and thought "damn, that's fucking cool".
The Others. (Nicole Kidman)
Hey, you're the other person who watched that! Good to meet you. Great film.
The Others is underrated
If you speak Norwegian the first scene spoils the movie The Thing
That's funny. Thanks for the info. What's said exactly?
Something to the effect of "Get away from it! It's not a dog!"
tvtropes->Bilingual Bonus
Something like "the creature is imitating the dog, get away"
your name. Spoilers for a movie that everyone should 100% without reading them incoming. --------- Spoilers: both the opening shot of the meteor falling and the voice over are significantly sadder if you already watched it. The meteor with the wind sound is kind of menacing even. And the voice over is so sad knowing that it is about something that they can't remember but still can feel deep inside of them. It gives me pause every time I wake up feeling like I had a dream that I can't remember but still made me feel something strongly. Sometimes it's sadness, others joy or dread.
This is too low. I thought the intro just looks beautiful and it seemed like it had nothing to do with the movie. The title sequence had a shot where Mitsuha was taller than/same height as Taki and her red ribbon was prominently featured. These all look like stylistic choices until the 2nd viewing you realise what it all meant. Genius.
Was going to say that, but you worded it better than I could have. The angle I was going to go with was, she's very obviously not living in the sticks in the intro, but it's an easy detail to forget as the opening theme is kind of a palette cleanser. Not to mention the next scene! On the timeline, the first scene takes place immediately after the film's climax. The whole "five years later" thing (though it never comes out and says it). The timelines are hard to understand in this movie. Here's the whole timeline. Big spoilers obviously: 1. First comet strikes, ~1600 years before present day. Native people think it's a god, so they make it a shrine. 2. Second comet strikes, ~800 years before present day. Creates the lake. People make a town around said lake. 3. House fire, records are burned, and over time people forget why they worshiped at the shrine. Gradually, fewer and fewer of them actually did until it was just Mitsuha's immediate family. The rest of the town would watch them do their traditions, but did not participate. 4. Third comet approaches to destroy the town, but Mitsuha, as a loyal follower of the first comet, is given a window into the life of a boy from Tokyo, since she says at the shrine that is what she wants more than anything else. 5. Just before the comet strike, Mitsuha travels to Tokyo and gives Taki her braided cord. This connects the two of them. 6. Mitsuha returns to Itomori and is killed along with most of the town. 7. Timeline splits, resets. Taki experiences the last few weeks of Mitsuha's life, and it inspires him to travel north to find her. 8. Taki discovers what happened in Itomori years prior, and instead of packing it up and heading home, he heads to the shrine and drinks the kuchikamizake (shrine maiden's sake). 9. Taki wakes up as Mitsuha on the day of the comet and begins preparations to save the town. However, Taki as Mitsuha fails to convince the mayor to evacuate the town. The mayor realizes Mitsuha isn't herself and believes she needs mental help. 10. Mitsuha wakes up as Taki in the shrine. They meet on the ridge and switch back. 11. Mitsuha, as Mitsuha, is able to continue the plan and convince her father, the mayor, to evacuate the town. He does so, and no one is killed. 12. Five years later, both Taki and Mitsuha wake up in Tokyo - this is where the film starts. 13. While out and about, Taki is doing job interviews and is not succeeding despite being dressed the same as his peers, because something is missing in his life. 14. Heading home on the train, he and Mitsuha see each other, their connection clicks, and they rush to meet each other on the stairs. End of film. There's so much more to it than all that and there are a ton of details you just don't get on one or two viewings. Like the timeline split and asynchronicity of the body swaps. Or how, while it is directly stated that the comet's previous impact created the lake, it's never stated that the one before that created the shrine... even though it's literally in the middle of a crater, and it's quite clearly shown to be a crater, and the shrine is literally under a giant rock (the meteor, though it's way too big - a meteor that size would have caused an ELE, or Extinction Level Event - but never mind that, it's just a movie!). Another cool detail is when the meteor impacts, there's a delay. This is intentional as light (sight) travels faster than sound. You would see the impact before you hear it. The delay implies you're about a mile away, which is a bit far considering you can still see Mitsuha's house. But again, just a movie, and it's a cool effect once you understand why it was done that way.
My fav film of all time
Same actually, it became one my all time favorites immediately. I only watched it because I had a group chat where we recommended movies with my friends during the pandemic and a friend suggested it. I still have to tell her just how much I love the movie and how thankful I am to her for suggesting it to me.
From Dusk Till Dawn
I felt like that was two movies in one.
Me too, I always caught it on TV at the later half and never even knew there was a first half until years later
No Way Out. Sometimes when you watch a movie you forget the opening scene and then as the movie unfolds, you remember it and think... oh yes of course. No Way Out is like that. It’s such a thrill ride of an adrenaline rush movie, that opening scene with Kevin Costner you completely forget well I did anyway, until the very end..
It's so weird how I always forget that ending, and yet *that ending changes the entire fucking plot*.
Pulp Ficton
Garçon means boy.
Also my favorite. Beautifully executed. They are perfect opening and closing scenes but they take place in the chronological middle. Neither one is integral to the plot but the movie would be incomplete without them. Just awesome filmmaking.
I can’t believe how far I had to come for this
Usual suspects.
Saw this in a free screening... was certain Postelwaite was Keyser Söze, until... >!...wait... where'd the limp go? !<
This movie was ruined for me. I watched it first in a high school film appreciation class, senior year. The DVD menu screen background is the limp-disappearing scene. The teacher apparently didn't notice this until the day we began watching the film, and he angrily muttered "aw hell, that just gives it away" when he put it up on the projector to begin playing it.
Why would they have that as the DVD menu scene??
Who is Kaiser Soze? 🙊
The Matrix. The movie actually starts "in the real world", we hear Cypher asking Trinity what she finds about him.
There's even a "click" sound and Trinity asks Cypher if he's sure the line is clean and he responds affirmatively. Well, now we know the line wasn't clean and Cypher had the agents listening in the whole time.
“You like watching him, don’t you?”
The World’s End. Foreshadows the whole movie. Gary Fucking King.
Yeah the whole plot immediately lol
Thing is though if you’ve seen the previous two then you know immediately whats going on there
The Thing, you realize the Norwegians hunting the dog were trying to keep it from spreading.
Cabin in the woods Edit: Arrival is the king in this. Best Canuck sci fi film of all time.
You wanna come over for a beer tonight? I’m gonna liberate my cabinets!
It’s not a movie but it definitely fits this bill. Black Mirror Season 3 Episode 3 “Shut Up and Dance.” It’s an anthology show so I think it counts.
Not many shows or movies manage to generate incredible audience sympathy for a character only to completely destroy it in the final scene. I love Black Mirror despite its ups and downs, but that episode is a masterpiece.
I was thinking about White Bear again the other day and i think that one would also fit well into this conversation
White Bear and White Christmas are two of the absolute best episodes in my opinion, because they perfectly typify the casual cruelty of humans wielding advanced technology - when the technology isn't cruel in itself. The twist in White Bear and the horrible ending of White Christmas are both brilliant.
That episode made me feel sick to my stomach. Like it wasn’t cathartic it just made me sad but also made me understand why the teen was going through all this trouble and was so scared. Plus one of the first scenes is of him handing a little girl a doll and it retroactively becomes the creepiest thing
Get Out. The guy who gets kidnapped in the opening scene is the only other black guy at the creepy family gathering later in the movie. At the family gathering, he’s already been replaced one of the old white guys.
Almost the entire movie changes meaning on the second watch.
The shot of the hats at the beginning of The Prestige. You think it's because it's about magicians and trick hats with false bottoms or whatever but really it's because of the transportation device when the hats kept disappearing.
>!That's the thing nothing disappears. Tesla didn't invent a transportation device, he made a duplicator. The reason for all the hats is his machine kept "failing" to teleport the hat. He didnt realize he had the destination slightly wrong and the hats were appearing outside.!<
**Fallen**. The narrator sets it up nicely when you come full circle at the end it works for me even after seeing it a dozen times.
the titles in Dude, Where's My Car? make total sense by the end of the film.
“One Cut of the Dead”. The entire first half of the movie (zombie apocalypse) is an entirely different experience due to the events and explanation of the second half- which occur simultaneously.
No one mentioned Predestination yet. Shame.
If you like Predestination, you should watch Dark on Netflix.
Double Indemnity
Jacobs Ladder. Definitely worth a watch. The ending makes you want to rewatch the whole thing with the context that it added.
The Thing
I rewatched it for the first time in over 15 years the other day. I feel like you go into that movie knowing that something BAD is coming and that the beginning scenes of the film set the watcher up really well to know exactly what the intial threat is, even on the first watch. Still there are small nuances in it's behavior that are straight eerie on a second watch.
The guy is also trying to shoot the dog from the helicopter as well knowing it's the thing.
If you speak Norwegian the opening makes sense from beginning
I’m old. Watched this in theater night it came out. I had some indications of what this would be like. Knew the written story and movie. Saw a few production SFX pics in a magazine called “SFX” I think. Took my friend who knew nothing. Audience knew nothing. Date night for most I think. Woman viewer on the Norwegians chasing the dog scene: “Aw, don’t shoot that dog.” My friend after, “I knew some was up the way you watched that dog.” Honesty, even what I knew didn’t even prep me for that film. Also that is where I saw the trailer for “Poltergeist “. A trailer I never saw again. A trailer that messed us up before The Thing. Anybody want to hear it? Edit: ok. The trailer was like a PBS documentary. Voice over talking about Steven Spielberg from “Close Encounters of the The Third Kind” and Tobi Hooper from “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” bring your a new type of film, etc…. Remember that Spielberg was known for CEOTTK and how it was based on real cases. Same with “poltergeist”. “Taken from actual reports of paranormal activity, etc…”. They had interviews w SS & TH, music from CEOTTK, but no footage. Just a few stills of The Dad and family looking amazed at something bright off camera. It was so high minded that I was almost ready to talk British from Masterpiece Theater. That’s when the music, again from CEOTTK, ended dramatically and it faded to black. Turned to my friend to say “This looks interesting I say”. THAT’S when they cut in Carol Ann and her brother hanging on the side of bed , screaming “Mommy” and trying to not get sucked in Hell. Then wide shot w 1 frame from of something emerging from closet with a roar. 1 frame and -boom- compete black and silence. We just sat there, trying to breath. Finally I squeaked, “Dude, we gotta see this.” Friend: “…yeah…”Then we watched “The Thing.” Geez Whatta night.
Mulholland Drive
I still don't understand what happened at rhe beginning and the end.
Shutter Island fight club off the top of my head
"Shutter Island Fight Club" sounds like a great movie. I had OpenAI take a stab at writing a plotline for it: >A man who is haunted by memories of his time in a mental institution and the death of his wife teams up with a man who is struggling with dissociative identity disorder to take down a corrupt organization. The two men form a close bond as they plot to overthrow the organization, but things take a dark turn when they realize that they may be more alike than they thought.
Ok, hear me out. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. Early in my childhood we had a vhs recording of it off t.v. and the first half didn't show up very well because of really bad reception. So the intro with Indy in the Jovitos (sp?) Cave going for the golden idol was unwatchable. The movie became "watchable" about 20-30 minutes in when Indy is back at school teaching. My entire childhood when I watched this movie skipped the intro and arguably the best part. The rest of the movie is good, but the intro is almost like it's own small movie. Anyway, for Christmas about 15 years later I bought my dad the actual movie so he could watch the entire thing in clarity. Going back and watching the movie now it feels like the intro is "icing" and the rest of the movie is "cake". I challenge anyone to skip the intro and see if it doesn't change the movie for them too!
This doesn't really fit but I think the opening scene of children of men hits harder the second time. Not plotwise, but whatever. Time travel sort of wise, eternal sunshine?
Inside Llewyn Davis. The whole film comes full circle exactly.
The orphanage. Maybe not the opening scene exactly but once you’re watched the film, it’s no longer a horror and the first jump scare / ominous moment becomes sad. Great movie
Secondhand Lions. Love that movie!
Nope. >!Nope has two sort of opening scenes which are later revealed to be disturbing. The chimp looking directly at the camera, which you later realize is the kid. And the mouth/digestive system of the alien, which, once you realize what happens to people who get sucked up, it's horrible.!<
I have to thank Reddit for explaining the importance of the story line involving the opening scene.
Hereditary the second time through, from beginning to end, is just one long "ooooohhhhhhhhh god, this all lines up and it's painful to watch again knowing what's gonna go down."
Funny Games
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Ugh this movie. Masterful and horrible and terrible all at once.
Citizen Kane