Imagine you're watching Repo Men. Jude Law's character Remy has spent the film fighting against the evil corporation that repossesses people's organs when they can't make payments. He's fallen in love with a woman, they've infiltrated the company's headquarters, and they're heroically destroying the corporate database to free everyone from debt. They go to the beach, happy and safe—but then the screen glitches.Remy is suddenly lying unconscious, hooked up to a neural net. The entire romantic subplot, the corporate infiltration, the heroic finale didn't happen.Congratulations, you've just experienced what many audiences rank as the most hated plot twist in cinema. It was all a dream. - YouTube www.youtube.com Despite being universally despised by moviegoers, this lazy screenwriting device still somehow persists in Hollywood.What Is the "It Was All a Dream" Trope?The "it was all a dream" trope reveals that previous events in the story were just part of a character's dream, hallucination, coma, or some other escape from reality. What makes this particularly infuriating is how it retroactively erases everything the audience has just experienced. Sometimes the twist is included because the writer feels stuck and needs to fix something about the plot. If you don't have an ending, just tack this on!Other times, it's just included for shock value. As Maxim notes in their analysis of movie twist endings, Hollywood has "no faith in their restless audiences, whom they assume demand bigger and stupider twist endings with every passing summer."But it rarely works. Professional editors agree. Alyssa Matesic, a...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Friday, 26 September