[spoilers request] Who is "Keyser Soze"?

[Celtavian]

re

Personally, I didn't figure out Fight Club,The Sixth Sense, or The Usual Suspects. I don't try the first time. I like to watch a movie with a surprise ending once without trying to figure out what's going to happen.

Then I watch the movie again to see what clues the writer left for me to figure out the ending prior to seeing it. In every movie, the clues were all present and easy to see. I thought all three movies were well-written because they kept you guessing if you weren't looking and yet laid it out on the table if you were. Whether or not you knew the ending, they still made the ride to the end enjoyable.

 

[LightPhoenix]

If I guess the ending of a story before I reach the ending, it's not MY fault -- it's the WRITER's fault. It's called, "Being a poor writer." Part of being a good story-teller is keeping the audience in the dark just the right amount, and revealing information just at the right moment. Something the writer of, say, Identity, was not very good at.

A little less undeserving condescension, please, sir. First, prove your superiority. Then flaunt it.

So if for some reason you figure stuff out, it's the terrible writer's fault? That's as big a load of bull as what reaper was preaching.

Just because you're too clever doesn't mean someone is a terrible writer, or something is a terrible movie. So don't blame your "problems" (if being good at deductive reasoning is a problem ) on someone else.

You mentioned that not everyone goes into the theater lobotomised. Well, I hate to break the news to you, but not everyone has good deductive reasoning skills. You're just going to have to accept that you're good at something that many other people aren't. In fact, assuming a standard bell curve, a whole 50% of people are below average with regards to deductive reasoning.

 

[Gnarlo]

I like strawberry. Vanilla is ok, too.

 

[Wicht]

What I hate are not movies where I can figure out the endings or who dunnit or things like that. I can usually deduce most endings half way through. What I hate are movies that telegraph to me in large letters what is going to happen in the movie ten to fifteen minutes into the future. The whole way through. Suspense movies that I cannot find suspensful because the whole things is so cliche or predictable that I can say, that guy will be shot in a few minutes, or that girl is going to kiss him in about ten minutes after fighting with him. To me that is poor writing. Logical clues that allow deductive reasoning of who is the guilty party is good mystery writing. It would be cheating to write a mystery with no clues.

 

[TiQuinn]

I think a couple of different things are at work here.

After hearing twenty times about a surprise twist at the end of "The Usual Suspects", it wasn't difficult to figure out. I was already prepared for it and couldn't help but look for it too. "The Sixth Sense", on the other hand, I saw a few days after it opened, and was very surprised by the ending. However, others who heard over the next several weeks "Wait til you see the ending, there's a big twist", had the same experience that I had with Usual Suspects.

Knowing that there's a twist in the movie can sometimes spoil the surprise.

Also, if I watch a romantic comedy movie, I don't think by any means that I'm being clever when I guess that "boy gets girl" in the end. It's almost like saying "James Bond is going to sleep with the Bond Girl by movie's end." Figuring out some movies isn't rocket science. And if the movie happens to be really bad, then the audience is all too aware of the plot and where it's going. Again, I don't think anyone's trying to show off their intellectual might in cases like that.

 

[barsoomcore]

So if for some reason you figure stuff out, it's the terrible writer's fault? That's as big a load of bull as what reaper was preaching.

If the story fails to entertain me for ANY reason, yes, that's the writer's fault. The writer's JOB is to entertain me.

Just because you're too clever doesn't mean someone is a terrible writer, or something is a terrible movie. So don't blame your "problems" (if being good at deductive reasoning is a problem ) on someone else.

Are you reading the same posts I'm reading? Did I use the word "terrible"? No. Did I claim any amount of cleverness? No. I said that being unable to maintain the proper level of uncertainty in order to keep things tense and exciting for your reader is being a poor writer.

This has nothing to do with my cleverness. No matter how clever I may or may not be, a writer who can keep their story exciting is a better writer than one who cannot. One way to tell an exciting story is to conceal a twist that the audience didn't see coming. If Writer A can do that and Writer B cannot, all other things being equal, Writer A is the better writer.

Liking strawberry is philosophically indefensible. Chocolate is the ultimate flavour.

 

[Numion]

According to one course in uni I took, the human mind is actually hardwired to have a certain degree of 'I told you so' thinking in it. People just tend to think that they knew something all along, even though they really didn't.

I'm not saying that those people who said they guessed movie plots in this threads are just doing it because of that. It's always a factor though - probably a statistical phenomenon.

Another point: I've noticed that you don't need go to the movies trying to guess the plot in order to guess it. Many movies just tend to follow the pattern that they introduce a seemingly insignificant detail at the beginning, and it's easy to guess that it'll become significant later. No trying involved, you'll just beging to see it automatically.

 

[LightPhoenix]

If the story fails to entertain me for ANY reason, yes, that's the writer's fault. The writer's JOB is to entertain me.

No. The writer's job is to write. Entertainment is a subjective thing, and guaranteeing it is impossible. The writer wrote a story, he did his job. It's not his fault you didn't like it, because he isn't writing a story for you, and he's not psychic, so even if he were he wouldn't know what you were like.

Are you reading the same posts I'm reading? Did I use the word "terrible"? No. Did I claim any amount of cleverness? No. I said that being unable to maintain the proper level of uncertainty in order to keep things tense and exciting for your reader is being a poor writer.

No, you didn't claim anything. I assigned cleverness to you, based on the people I know who are also good at figuring out movies. Deductive reasoning is a skill, you possess it in better than average degree, I would assume.

However, there are a distinct amount of people who were surprised by the ending, and there was uncertainty for them, and therefore he was a successful writer, assuming your definition for the sake of argument, though it is incorrect.

This has nothing to do with my cleverness. No matter how clever I may or may not be, a writer who can keep their story exciting is a better writer than one who cannot. One way to tell an exciting story is to conceal a twist that the audience didn't see coming. If Writer A can do that and Writer B cannot, all other things being equal, Writer A is the better writer.

It's all about your cleverness, and that of other people with skills similar to yours in deductive reasoning. You were dismayed by the movie because you figured it out. You are not "the audience", you are one person.

Liking strawberry is philosophically indefensible. Chocolate is the ultimate flavour.

I would agree.

 

[barsoomcore]

The writer's job is to write. Entertainment is a subjective thing, and guaranteeing it is impossible. The writer wrote a story, he did his job. It's not his fault you didn't like it, because he isn't writing a story for you, and he's not psychic, so even if he were he wouldn't know what you were like.

I don't even know where to begin to respond to this. So when you see a movie, and it sucks, what's your response to that? Do you congratulate the people who made it for doing their job?

I'm not asking anyone to be psychic -- I'm just asking them to tell me a good story. If they fail at that, they are failing at their jobs.

Take computer programming. You might say it's a programmer's job to write code, and in a certain sense you'd be right -- but the code has to work. It has to be sufficiently well-designed. It has to not suck. If the programmer types a thousand lines of code that fail to execute any of the required functionality, do you think he's done his job?

Of course not. The "job" of a writer isn't to write. That's nonsense. It's to write well. Anybody can put words on a page and be writing. We pay writers for their ability to do it better than we can. And when they fail to do it well enough to entertain us, we are right to say they are failing at their jobs. I mean, if your definition of writer includes "everyone who puts words on a page", then I guess if they write they ARE doing their job -- but can we at least agree that there are degrees of success? That somebody might "do their job" and still suck?

All this is beside the point. My argument actually wasn't that it WAS the writer's fault, it was that it's NOT the audience's. If the audience figures out the ending of the story and thus loses interest in the story, that's not THEIR fault. If it must be somebody's fault, there's pretty much only one fall guy hanging around -- the writer.

Look, I know it's not fair. I'm a writer myself. It sucks. One person watches your film and says, "Oh, well, I figured that out. What a boring movie." and hey! presto! you just failed. Back to the drawing board. But then another person says, "That was awesome. When's the next part coming out?" and boom! pow! you rock. Which of those people was right? Both of them. That's the nature of art -- and if you're serious about your art, you'll spend some time listening to both of them and figuring why they felt how they did, and wondering how to improve your own work.

An artist not prepared to be told they failed has no business putting their work in the public view.

You were dismayed by the movie because you figured it out. You are not "the audience", you are one person.

What are you talking about? What movie? I never figured out anything. Where are you getting this from?

Are we even having the same conversation?

I would agree.

Well, thank heavens we agree on something.

 

[reapersaurus]

What are you talking about? What movie? I never figured out anything. Where are you getting this from?

He's getting it from your own words (about Identity):

If I guess the ending of a story before I reach the ending, it's not MY fault -- it's the WRITER's fault. It's called, "Being a poor writer." Part of being a good story-teller is keeping the audience in the dark just the right amount, and revealing information just at the right moment. Something the writer of, say, Identity, was not very good at.

I'd love to be able to search these boards for the discussion about Identity -
in it, the couple people who espoused a similar view to barsoom's were pretty convincingly shown to be incorrect, if memory serves.
A paraphrase I remember:
"Come on, you're telling me that

Spoiler

you guessed that the action was all happening inside one of the character's MINDS?!?"

And as much subjective proof as it serves:
The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Usual Suspects and Identity were 92% and 65%, respectively. Not the sign of a movie that didn't do what it set out to do.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/TheUsualSuspects-1064751/
and http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/Identity-1121977/