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selenakObviously more of them in days past when I was less genre wise, starting with the granddaddy of pop culture plot twists, so to speak: when I was a wee selenak sitting in the cinema and hearing Darth Vader say "Obi-Wan never told you the truth about your father, did he?", I had no idea. I also thought that was a fantastic twist and never doubted it for a second. Only a few years ago did I learn some viewers thought Vader was lying until Return of the Jedi was released, because Obi-Wan = hero and Vader = villain. That never occurred to me. Once I heard it, it suddenly made so much sense, put a whole new light on everything and galvanized my interest into the whole Star Wars saga to no end. The equation for young me was simple. Hero avenges dead father whom the audience has never met and hence doesn't care for on villain in their eventual showdown which of course the hero will win = predictable and boring. Dead father is not dead but villain himself? Previously ultra good dead mentor a liar about a key fact? INTERESTING.
Of course, that particular plot twist was so often repeated in other media and is now so well known that new watchers can't ever experienc e it in the same way. (It's good to have been born in 1969, sometimes.) Let's talk about some lesser known twists which still surprised somewhat older (but unspoiled) me in a good way.
The Sixth Sense one, for example, though of course that one led Shymalan down a road of diminishing returns and worse movies, ever trying to find twists. Still: in The Sixth Sense, it worked. Not least because if you rewatch it, the movie totally plays fair with the audience. There are enough hints, most pointedly that if the boy's mother had a famous child therapist at her disposal to testify for her, she would have asked him for help when she has to fear losing her son. "Rewatching" brings up one key criteria, I think: plot twists that really work for me aren't the only interesting thing about their narrative, on the contrary, the narrative grows richer when you reread/rewatch/re-listen.
Now you would think that in order to pull that off, the storyteller has to plan it from the get go, and the trade mark of "bad" plot twists which don't work is that they're improvised late in the game. Not necessarily. Take Farscape. Mid season 2, we find out that our hero, John Crichton, has a chip in his brain, complete with neural doppelganger of his arch enemy, Scorpius, which the later has implanted when he tortured Crichton in the season 1 episode Nerve. Not only does the entire s2 plot line that follows depend on this twist, especially the s2 finale with Crichton being taken over entirely, but you could argue the rest of Farscape does. Without the chip, without the events it causes, most of what follows would not have happened. And of course the Crichton/Scorpius relationship would have been quite different. So surely this must have been planed from late s1 onwards, right? Wrong. According to each and every Farscape writer, they didn't know about the chip until the s2 episodes Crackers don't matter, when Crichton hallucinates Scorpius for the first time. In retrospect, this is the neural clone Harvey's (as Crichton nicknames him) first appearance, but at the time the episode was written, it was simply meant to be another hallucination under the influence of this particular episode's plot device. It wasn't until the staff saw the daily rushes that the idea of the neural clone struck.
I can't imagine Farscape without this plot twist. I can't watch Nerve in season 1 without the knowledge of what Scorpius was doing off screen, without seeing hints of this, though at the time Nerve was filmed, no such hints were intended. So in this case: hooray for improvised plot twists! (And the twisted intimacy between hero and villain they created.) Again, proof of the greatness of the twist is that it wasn't just there to create a sensational turnaround but had consequences for the entire rest of the series, and that going back, rewatching, heightens instead of lessening the interest.
Naturally, improvised, rushed plot twists can also badly go wrong. See also: again, Farscape. The intelligence-heightening flowers in s4 for the Scarrans were just dumb and not surprisingly completely ignored in The Peacekeeper Wars. And then there's my never deceased equine to be flogged, i.e. John Crichton going "Aeryn! I was just pretending to be pissed off at you, because otherwise Scorpius would possibly guess I'm in love with you and would do anything for you! It's not like this wasn't obvious for the rest of the galaxy for the last three seasons..." and this ending the John/Aeryn s4 conflict, because the writers had grown tired of it and couldn't be bothered to write themselves out of it. (Lamest Farscape twist ever, y/y.)
But back to surprising-for-me twists that worked. Sadly, I was spoiled for the Spyparents on Alias before I ever watched the show (though even if I hadn't been, I think I would have seen the "Sydney's mother isn't dead, she's alive and a villain" coming, because Star Wars - I'm sure it's a shocking revelation to you, but J.J. Abrams is a fan), but I had no idea leading villain Arvin Sloane had faked his wife Emily's death and engineered his timely exit from SD-6, fooling the CIA and the Alliance simultanously (and making a handsome financial profit while he was at it). The reveal of that one is probably still my favourite unknown-to-me Alias plot twist and definitely one of my favourite scenes (good old Arvin strolling along the beach to an operatic tune and who is waiting at the hut at the end? Emily, that's who). It worked because it was entirely in character for Arvin Sloane whom the first season had established to be a clever manipulative bastard on the one hand, and on the other deeply in love with his wife, to solve the dilemma of having the supervillain organization he belonged to demanding his wife's death by not arranging a convoluted plot (Sloane never does simple plots) and using our heroine's laudable goal of bringing him and his organization down for it. He's just that kind of guy.
Babylon 5 's big s3 two parter, War without End, offers a whole barrel of twists and revelations, and they all work, though JMS had to improvise a lot in some scenes due to the change of leading man between seasons 1 and 2. "Sinclair is Valen, due to time travel, and he always was" not only wraps up Sinclair's dangling plot from s1 and solves the mystery as to why the victorious Minbari surrendered after having captured Sinclair in the show's backstory (finding out you just tortured your Messiah will do that to you), but it also means the show leaves it ambigous as to whether or not the Minbari belief in reincarnation is actually correct. (The Minbari think their device identifies Sinclair as the reborn Valen, but in fact, as it turns out, Sinclair is Valen, in the flesh, the first time around, due to the metamorphosis he undergoes at the end of this two parter, so maybe that the device detected wasn't anyone's sole but the genetic identity.) Which is important, because it's part of the show's ethos not to favour any religion as the "true" one.
Neat as this is from a storytelling pov, the big revelatation of this two parter to me is of course another one, since it concerns my favourite characters. Now we've known about Londo's death vision from the very first episode of Babylon 5 onwards (talk about long term planning!), and seen it on screen from season 1 onwards, and it always seemed pretty straight forward: old Londo and old G'Kar killing each other, as the logical culmination of a life time of feuding. Hatred reaching its final conclusion. And then, lo and behold, comes War without End and pulls the rug under us by revealing to the audience that no, Londo and G'Kar will NOT kill each other out of hatred. Their state of relationship will, in fact, be a very different one . My mouth, it dropped open and stayed there when I heard Londo mutter "Are you here, my old friend?" and G'Kar stopped forward. Of course, I was also busy whimpering because of the previous reveal that Londo had the ghastly Keeper implanted on his shoulder, controlling his every move unless he was drunk, and that he'd been living in this hell for many years. So Londo asking G'Kar to kill him before the Keeper could wake up again in order to save his people was almost comforting in addition to being tragic and what not.
Again, the greatness of this twist lies in the overall impact on the show: not only does it change the previously presumed meaning of the death vision for the audience (though not for present day Londo, who doesn't know) , it's also a mouthwatering challenge to watch the rest of the show, because at that point in season 3, present day Londo and G'Kar are the furthest from friends you an imagine. The last time they were in the same room together, drugged out of his mind G'Kar was busy mindraping and beating up Londo, who in turn had been responsible for a terrible war and occupation of G'Kar's people. So how do we go from there to "my old friend"? Naturally, I was dying to find out.
The other days
selenak sitting in the cinema and hearing Darth Vader say "Obi-Wan never told you the truth about your father, did he?", I had no idea. I also thought that was a fantastic twist and never doubted it for a second. Only a few years ago did I learn some viewers thought Vader was lying until Return of the Jedi was released, because Obi-Wan = hero and Vader = villain. That never occurred to me. Once I heard it, it suddenly made so much sense, put a whole new light on everything and galvanized my interest into the whole Star Wars saga to no end. The equation for young me was simple. Hero avenges dead father whom the audience has never met and hence doesn't care for on villain in their eventual showdown which of course the hero will win = predictable and boring. Dead father is not dead but villain himself? Previously ultra good dead mentor a liar about a key fact? INTERESTING. Of course, that particular plot twist was so often repeated in other media and is now so well known that new watchers can't ever experienc e it in the same way. (It's good to have been born in 1969, sometimes.) Let's talk about some lesser known twists which still surprised somewhat older (but unspoiled) me in a good way.
The Sixth Sense one, for example, though of course that one led Shymalan down a road of diminishing returns and worse movies, ever trying to find twists. Still: in The Sixth Sense, it worked. Not least because if you rewatch it, the movie totally plays fair with the audience. There are enough hints, most pointedly that if the boy's mother had a famous child therapist at her disposal to testify for her, she would have asked him for help when she has to fear losing her son. "Rewatching" brings up one key criteria, I think: plot twists that really work for me aren't the only interesting thing about their narrative, on the contrary, the narrative grows richer when you reread/rewatch/re-listen.
Now you would think that in order to pull that off, the storyteller has to plan it from the get go, and the trade mark of "bad" plot twists which don't work is that they're improvised late in the game. Not necessarily. Take Farscape. Mid season 2, we find out that our hero, John Crichton, has a chip in his brain, complete with neural doppelganger of his arch enemy, Scorpius, which the later has implanted when he tortured Crichton in the season 1 episode Nerve. Not only does the entire s2 plot line that follows depend on this twist, especially the s2 finale with Crichton being taken over entirely, but you could argue the rest of Farscape does. Without the chip, without the events it causes, most of what follows would not have happened. And of course the Crichton/Scorpius relationship would have been quite different. So surely this must have been planed from late s1 onwards, right? Wrong. According to each and every Farscape writer, they didn't know about the chip until the s2 episodes Crackers don't matter, when Crichton hallucinates Scorpius for the first time. In retrospect, this is the neural clone Harvey's (as Crichton nicknames him) first appearance, but at the time the episode was written, it was simply meant to be another hallucination under the influence of this particular episode's plot device. It wasn't until the staff saw the daily rushes that the idea of the neural clone struck.
I can't imagine Farscape without this plot twist. I can't watch Nerve in season 1 without the knowledge of what Scorpius was doing off screen, without seeing hints of this, though at the time Nerve was filmed, no such hints were intended. So in this case: hooray for improvised plot twists! (And the twisted intimacy between hero and villain they created.) Again, proof of the greatness of the twist is that it wasn't just there to create a sensational turnaround but had consequences for the entire rest of the series, and that going back, rewatching, heightens instead of lessening the interest.
Naturally, improvised, rushed plot twists can also badly go wrong. See also: again, Farscape. The intelligence-heightening flowers in s4 for the Scarrans were just dumb and not surprisingly completely ignored in The Peacekeeper Wars. And then there's my never deceased equine to be flogged, i.e. John Crichton going "Aeryn! I was just pretending to be pissed off at you, because otherwise Scorpius would possibly guess I'm in love with you and would do anything for you! It's not like this wasn't obvious for the rest of the galaxy for the last three seasons..." and this ending the John/Aeryn s4 conflict, because the writers had grown tired of it and couldn't be bothered to write themselves out of it. (Lamest Farscape twist ever, y/y.)
But back to surprising-for-me twists that worked. Sadly, I was spoiled for the Spyparents on Alias before I ever watched the show (though even if I hadn't been, I think I would have seen the "Sydney's mother isn't dead, she's alive and a villain" coming, because Star Wars - I'm sure it's a shocking revelation to you, but J.J. Abrams is a fan), but I had no idea leading villain Arvin Sloane had faked his wife Emily's death and engineered his timely exit from SD-6, fooling the CIA and the Alliance simultanously (and making a handsome financial profit while he was at it). The reveal of that one is probably still my favourite unknown-to-me Alias plot twist and definitely one of my favourite scenes (good old Arvin strolling along the beach to an operatic tune and who is waiting at the hut at the end? Emily, that's who). It worked because it was entirely in character for Arvin Sloane whom the first season had established to be a clever manipulative bastard on the one hand, and on the other deeply in love with his wife, to solve the dilemma of having the supervillain organization he belonged to demanding his wife's death by not arranging a convoluted plot (Sloane never does simple plots) and using our heroine's laudable goal of bringing him and his organization down for it. He's just that kind of guy.
Babylon 5 's big s3 two parter, War without End, offers a whole barrel of twists and revelations, and they all work, though JMS had to improvise a lot in some scenes due to the change of leading man between seasons 1 and 2. "Sinclair is Valen, due to time travel, and he always was" not only wraps up Sinclair's dangling plot from s1 and solves the mystery as to why the victorious Minbari surrendered after having captured Sinclair in the show's backstory (finding out you just tortured your Messiah will do that to you), but it also means the show leaves it ambigous as to whether or not the Minbari belief in reincarnation is actually correct. (The Minbari think their device identifies Sinclair as the reborn Valen, but in fact, as it turns out, Sinclair is Valen, in the flesh, the first time around, due to the metamorphosis he undergoes at the end of this two parter, so maybe that the device detected wasn't anyone's sole but the genetic identity.) Which is important, because it's part of the show's ethos not to favour any religion as the "true" one.
Neat as this is from a storytelling pov, the big revelatation of this two parter to me is of course another one, since it concerns my favourite characters. Now we've known about Londo's death vision from the very first episode of Babylon 5 onwards (talk about long term planning!), and seen it on screen from season 1 onwards, and it always seemed pretty straight forward: old Londo and old G'Kar killing each other, as the logical culmination of a life time of feuding. Hatred reaching its final conclusion. And then, lo and behold, comes War without End and pulls the rug under us by revealing to the audience that no, Londo and G'Kar will NOT kill each other out of hatred. Their state of relationship will, in fact, be a very different one . My mouth, it dropped open and stayed there when I heard Londo mutter "Are you here, my old friend?" and G'Kar stopped forward. Of course, I was also busy whimpering because of the previous reveal that Londo had the ghastly Keeper implanted on his shoulder, controlling his every move unless he was drunk, and that he'd been living in this hell for many years. So Londo asking G'Kar to kill him before the Keeper could wake up again in order to save his people was almost comforting in addition to being tragic and what not.
Again, the greatness of this twist lies in the overall impact on the show: not only does it change the previously presumed meaning of the death vision for the audience (though not for present day Londo, who doesn't know) , it's also a mouthwatering challenge to watch the rest of the show, because at that point in season 3, present day Londo and G'Kar are the furthest from friends you an imagine. The last time they were in the same room together, drugged out of his mind G'Kar was busy mindraping and beating up Londo, who in turn had been responsible for a terrible war and occupation of G'Kar's people. So how do we go from there to "my old friend"? Naturally, I was dying to find out.
The other days
no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-06 10:45 pm (UTC)My very favorite B5 twist--or at least answer--was "I saw nothing." Londo will ever be a favorite of mine.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 08:37 am (UTC)Same here. I mean, I had heard back in s1 that JMS had said he had five years planned, but I didn't really believe it until this episode, and WOW.
Londo is my favourite tv character of them all. And the character arc to compare all others to which tackle the themes of fall and redemption.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-08 05:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-01-07 11:26 pm (UTC)As for B5, I love War Without End and so your choices are spot on, but I also love the moment when we find out that Delenn was the one who called for the war.
no subject
Date: 2016-01-08 07:17 am (UTC)Yesterday I pitched The Americans to a friend of mine, and she said: "So, it's like if Jack and Irina had both been Russians and remained together?" I hadn't thought of it this way, but it explains part of the appeal to me. :)
I also love the moment when we find out that Delenn was the one who called for the war.
Yep. It had been prepared for, in retrospect, but it still added another great layer. (And made me regret even more we got so few Londo and Delenn scenes, though those few we got were all first rate. I have my problems with Peter David's Centauri trilogy, but his novelization for In the Beginning contains one bit that became my headcanon, i.e. that Londo knows all this stuff about Delenn he tells to the kids because she told him during her time as a prisoner on Centauri Crime. To this David imagined explanation, I add my own fanon that back in s3 in Ceremonies she didn't solely want him to participate in the Minbari ritual for the good of his own soul, but because she had been planning to tell him her secret about having called for war. (Remember, in the episode Delenn never tells anyone a secret herself.) Which she finally does on Centauri Prime. Because if anyone isn't in a position to judge you an starting a genocidal war and simultanously gets what it means to become emotionally involved with a member of the race you nearly destroyed after the fact, it's Londo Mollari.