3 Potentially Great Sci-Fi Movies That Were Ruined by a Single Twist

Not every great science fiction movie has a twist hiding from the audience, but there are quite a few that deploy them expertly, and as a result become classics. The original Planet of the Apes, while still a tremendous achievement in filmmaking and an eminently watchable movie, cemented its place in history with its final reveal. By that same notion, 2016’s Arrival is among Denis Villeneuve’s best, but the twist in the final moment is a cherry on top. Even Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey has a twist that makes it even better (not the star child, the reveal that HAL-9000 can read the lips of the astronauts while they’re hiding in the pod).

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Unfortunately, for every movie in the genre that blew our minds with its big surprise reveal, others aren’t as fortunate. Some films manage to keep us engaged and curious for most of their run time, only to get to that same point in the movie where the reveal happens, and for it to land like a deflating balloon that haphazardly traverses a children’s party. To make matters even worse, some of these movies might very well be classics of the genre if they didn’t give us that big surprise. Naturally, spoilers will follow.

3) The Gorge

The Gorge has an intriguing premise from the start, soldiers from rival countries are stationed across from each other in a massive gorge, and given the instruction to stand guard. There’s already an inherent mystery here, stand guard…for what? But as the movie progresses, what becomes clear is that the chemistry between stars Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy is the actual interesting element of the story, and not the mystery of whatever they’re protecting us from.

As a result, when the film reaches its midpoint and the pair have to make their way down into the gorge itself, and when they find some answers, it’s deflating. In the end, the Hollow Men that are trying to get out of the gorge are the result of World War II-era experiments gone awry, mixing human, plant, and animal DNA. The delivery of ‘s big twist is one that lets all the air out of the room, when in fact the mystery of what’s even going on is almost more interesting if we had only been given pieces of information and bite-sized teases about the origins. The Gorge has one more twist at the end, when it confirms that Teller’s Levi actually survived and reunites with Taylor-Joy’s Drasa. This twist isn’t as bad, but a gut-punch ending might have saved it after its expository deluge.

2) Hancock

Premiering the same year that the MCU started with Iron Man, and when DC made the highly influential The Dark Knight, a superhero movie that looked at the genre through a satirical lens was a movie ahead of its time. The Will Smith-starring Hancock was still a hit, though, grossing over $600 million globally, but everyone that saw it agrees that the film is at its best in the first hour, before its big twist is revealed.

Smith stars as the title hero, an alcoholic superhero who has a bad attitude and an even worse relationship with the public at large. That concept alone is honestly enough, but Hancock eventually deploys one of the worst twists in the genre when it confirms that both Hancock and Charlize Theron’s Mary are actually immortal beings with superpowers, once called “gods” or “angels” by other cultures, and the pair were romantically involved for thousands of years before he got amnesia. To make the twist even dumber, the two characters’ powers get weaker the closer they are.

A film that takes huge shots at superheroes years before The Boys became Prime Video’s biggest hit is something that shouldn’t be ignored, but Hancock wasted a lot of its potential by trying to explain far too much to the audience. Of course, there is no story if Hancock doesn’t learn to grow and change, but there had to be a better way of doing that than basically ruining the movie.

1) Signs

In Signs, aliens begin to slowly invade Earth, but M. Night Shyamalan keeps the perspective on a rural family in Pennsylvania, never going to the scale of War of the Worlds or Mars Attacks. With that, Shyamalan tells an intimate story about a broken family and how they’re able to come together and find new ground. The trouble, of course, is when the finale of the movie arrives and we learn that the alien invaders are allergic to…water. It’s a twist set-up from the beginning, as half-drunk glasses are scattered around the house and now act as land mines for the beasts; however, hen we have a planet that is 70% water and much of the atmosphere has water vapor, it’s a twist that makes everyone stop and think: huh?

When Signs was released and its big twist was revealed to the audience, it could have potentially been anything else and may have had the same effect culturally. When it arrived, the film marked Shyamalan’s third movie in a row to feature a major twist in the third act. Audiences had been trained to that point to expect a film from Shyamalan that pulled the rug out from under them, and when this one did, it didn’t enhance the viewing experience; it made viewers start questioning the logic of the entire film, and by extension, every other choice in the movie.

Had Signs eschwed its big reveal and maintained its vision of an intimate portrayal of a family caught in the crossfire of this global event, it could very well be a classic. In truth, it is still a great movie in the genre, but the fact that its twist causes such a headache is a net negative.