Some movie twists are outright awful, and not even hilariously so. The 9/11 connection in Remember Me is controversial, but we’re more talking stuff like the aliens’ weakness being water in Signs, Rey being Palpatine’s granddaughter in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the involvement of aliens in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Matthew McConaughey being an AI character in a video game (that doesn’t at all seem like a video game) in Serenity. But today we’re looking at the diametric opposite of those types of twists. Today, we’re looking at the best of the best of the best.
The following twists threw audiences for a loop at the time of release and continue to be effective, startling moments today. At this point, even people who haven’t seen the movies likely know the twists, but that just goes to show just how great they are.
7) Vulture Is Liz’s Dad in Spider-Man: Homecoming
Image courtesy of Marvel Studios
It’s hard to forget watching Spider-Man: Homecoming in theaters and feeling our jaws drop as soon as Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes aka Vulture open the door as soon as Peter shows up to begin his prom night with Liz. It’s a twist that really helps the film, which feels more personal to the protagonist than the average MCU adventure, have its stakes raised. It also allows Toomes’ criminal activities being for the good of his family to hit home with the viewer.
6) Verbal Kint Is Keyser Söze in The Usual Suspects
image courtesy of gramercy pictures
Like how any number of TV shows and movies parodied the bullet time sequences in The Matrix, loads of projects made reference to the final moments of The Usual Suspect, when it’s revealed that Verbal Kint has been picking objects out of the interviewing detective’s office and making up one big BS story that saves his own skin. He weaves a tale of a sadist criminal named Keyser Söze who killed all his partners, and that name is the only true part of the story, because as it turns out Verbal is Keyser and vice versa.
5) It’s Not a Different Planet in Planet of the Apes
image courtesy of 20th century studios
Leave it to Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, to deliver one of the best film climaxes of all time. Thanks to the hierarchy of ape over human, we really do buy that the planet in Planet of the Apes is not Earth, even though none of its fauna or atmosphere seems different from the world we know. But, of course, it is Earth, thousands of years later.
4) The Narrator Is Tyler Durden in Fight Club
image courtesy of 20th century studios
The Narrator and Tyler Durden are such distinct individuals in Fight Club that you really don’t see the twist that they’re one and the same coming. As long as you haven’t read the book, anyway. The split personality twist has been done a few too many times by this point, but never as well as it was done here.
3) Bruce Willis Is a Ghost in The Sixth Sense
image courtesy of buena vista pictures distribution
It’s ranking third here, but Dr. Malcolm Crowe being a ghost in The Sixth Sense flat-out is the most famous movie twist of all time. And deservedly so; no one was expecting it back in ’99. To this day it still works, because the whole time we’re captivated by his interactions and relationship with young Cole Sear, regardless of whether he’s a ghost.
2) “What’s In the Box?!” in Se7en
Image Courtesy of New Line Cinema
In Jaws, the shark is scary before we ever see it. In Halloween, we get the brutality of Michael Myers’ crimes without seeing a bucket of blood. And, in Se7en, we understand just how horrible a sight awaits Detective Mills should he look into the box left for him by John Doe. From the lengthy set-up to the moment to Detective Lt. Somerset’s (Morgan Freeman) frantic alternating cries that Mills give him his gun and that Doe shut his mouth, this may very well be the most intense scene ever shot.
1) The Identity of Luke’s Father in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
image courtesy of walt disney studios motion pictures
After a few hints about Darth Vader’s past life as a Jedi and his time spent with Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original film, viewers got a real humdinger of a revelation in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. As soon as we learn that Vader is actually Luke’s father, the stage is set for a very complicated rematch between the two. Fortunately, Luke’s ultimately successful attempts at saving the soul of his father was one of the stronger elements of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.