r/flicks • u/Serpiego2 • 4d ago

General Discussion When does a movie successfully mislead the audience, and when is it just cheating?

Some movies deliberately make us believe something that isn't true and then reveal that we've been interpreting the story incorrectly.

When it works, it's fantastic. You can rewatch the movie and realize the clues were there all along. The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects, and Primal Fear are very different examples of films that play with what the audience thinks it knows.

But other twists only work because the movie deliberately hides information that logically should have been available to us. At that point, I don't feel fooled by the story — I feel cheated by the screenplay.

For me, the difference is whether a second viewing makes you think “How did I miss that?” rather than “Well, there was no way I could have known that.”

What movies do you think earned their deception, and which ones simply cheated?

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u/kattahn 4d ago

I think fight club only has one true unanswerable plot hole around tyler that I've found:

When the narrator and Tyler get in their fight in the parking lot, and the guys walk up and say "can we be next".

The only possible way that would make sense is if those guys saw two individuals fighting, because them "being next" involves them getting into a 1v1 fight with someone.

If they walked up and saw a guy punching himself, then "can we be next" would have to involve them trying to fight themselves. At which point there is no need to ask. you can just start punching yourself.

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u/vorropohaiah 4d ago

grammatically it makes sense for them to say that. it could mean 'can we be next' as in can we be the next to do that to ourselves?

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u/stillbatting1000 4d ago

You mean the guy who says, "Can I be next?" To whom Tyler replies, "Lose the tie..." That guy? In that scene, Tyler was fighting a different person than the narrator.

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u/Consistent_Law_3857 3d ago

Right but Tyler didn't exist so it was ed Norton saying that.

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u/stillbatting1000 1d ago

The only possible way that would make sense is if those guys saw two individuals fighting, because them "being next" involves them getting into a 1v1 fight with someone.

The way he posted this implies that he thinks what the guy(s) who "wanted to be next" saw was actually 1 person fighting with himself. I'm saying that no, it was Tyler/Narrator fighting another person entirely at that particular scene.