Tuesday, September 17, 2013

He Was Luke's Father?!!?!??



I need to watch a more predictable movie or TV show.  I feel like I’m losing my touch


Poor Jeremy didn't see the ending coming on a recent movie he watched.  It's really quite heart breaking or something.  


It's common knowledge that I'm a genius.


For certain values of "Genius."


One of the areas in which I excel and take a lot of pride in is the ability to not be surprised by twist endings.  I spent enough time in film classes and with film students and in movie theaters to know a little bit about how movies are written and made.  This can be a mighty hindrance in my ability to just enjoy a film, but it can also be very helpful.  One of my favorite movie-watching experiences (Not to be confused with one of my favorite movies, mind you) was watching the film "Hancock" starring Will Smith and others.  Very early on in the film, a character was shown on the screen for no more than 10 seconds when I turned to one of the people I was with and explained what the big twist ending involving that character was going to be.  To some, it was a mere character introduction, but to me, it was a film term called "mise en scene" which foreshadowed coming events with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the groin.  Needless to say, about an hour later, I was proven entirely correct, when the exact plot twist I described actually occurred.  It was a partly a shining moment for me, and partly a realization that I didn't just watch movies anymore.  To this day, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.  

All that said, recently, I've found myself struggling.  It's a well-known fact that good television is hard to come by these days, and it's very quickly getting harder.  Good shows are ending at an alarming rate.  The Office ended in the spring (Though you could argue that it hadn't been a really good show in 2 or 3 years, and I'd have to admit that you had a point), Dexter's final episode is 6 days away, We just Met The Mother, so we get one more season of that show before it wraps up, Michael Weston got Burned for the last time last week, Chuck wrapped up a couple seasons ago, Breaking Bad will be breaking hearts in two weeks when we say a final goodbye to Heisenberg, Psych can't have much more left in the tank, same for Shameless.  In almost all of these shows, there have been fairly major plot twists recently...and I can safely say that I saw precisely zero of them coming.  Well...can make one exception for one of the multitude of twists in Dexter, but that's hardly worth mentioning.  

I thought I could end my losing streak by watching a movie.  What's more predictable than a Hollywood star-laden blockbuster?  Well...forget that idea, as the twist ending of "Now You See Me" caught me completely off guard.  What the crap?!

I have a hard time believing that writers have gotten this much better at this stuff lately, but that would lead to the inevitable conclusion that I'm slipping.  I don't want to believe that, so I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place right here.  I need to watch something that will be a little more predictable just to break out of my slump.  Has M Night Shayamalan done anything new recently? 

No comments: