Twisted plots - Cypher
January 30th, 2008 by The Fan
Modern Hollywood movie making has contributed a lot to more elaborate CGI, more intense action scenes, but in the detriment of the most important aspect of any movie: the Story. Movies are getting more and more predictable. I haven’t seen a real unexpected twist since… well, since Cypher.
An article I found at this address presents some of the greatest plot twists in movie history. Let us see:
Movie: The Planet of the Apes (1968)
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner
The Setup: A group of American astronauts crash land on a world where apes talk and rule, while humans are primitive slaves with no voting rights.
The Twist: The planet is actually Earth; the space ship traveled in time instead of space.
Fun Fact: The script was actually written by twist-loving Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling.
Movie: Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Director: Irvin Kershner
The Setup: After blowing up the Death Star in 1977’s Episode IV — A New Hope, Luke Skywalker trains to become a Jedi while Vader and the Empire strike back, frequently.
The Twist: Darth Vader is Luke’s father. Though as we learned later, he was also Princess Leia’s father and, in a way, C-3PO’s father. Which kind of makes him the Sith version of K-Fed.
Fun Fact: In an attempt to keep this twist a secret, the scene was originally shot with actor David Prowse — who was the guy in the Darth Vader suit — saying to Mark “Luke” Hamill, “Obi-Wan killed your father.”
Movie: 12 Monkeys (1995)
Director: Terry Gilliam
The Setup: After a deadly virus nearly wipes out humanity, the last remaining scientists send James Cole back in time to find out how they can stop the Army of the 12 Monkeys, who they believe to have spread the virus.
The Twist: The Army of the 12 Monkeys was actually a PETA-like animal rights group that released animals from a New York City zoo on the same day the virus was released by some jerk.
Fun Fact: Like Christopher Lee and The Wicker Man, Bruce Willis agreed to star in 12 Monkeys for free, though he was eventually paid after the movie came out.
But the greatest twist in any movie I have seen is presented in Vincenzo Natali’s Cypher.
A quick synopsis, by beansproutlord@yahoo.com.au (taken from IMDb):
Hoping for a more exciting life than the suburban drawl he currently inhabits, nerdy salaryman Morgan Sullivan (Jeremy Northam) takes a job as an industrial spy at Digicorp, a global computer corporation. Digicorp assigns him the duty of flying to various conventions around America, recording the speeches that are made. But when Sullivan meets a mysterious woman (Lucy Liu) he begins to realize that his job may not be what it seems, as he descends into a dark underworld of brainwashing and struggles to maintain his own identity.
But there’s a twist. Morgan Sullivan gets a treatment to prevent brainwashing. He is recruited by Digicorp’s competitors to find out more of their secrets, but he also has a hidden agenda: deleting the mistery woman’s file from a guarded secret supercomputer - thus revealing to the spectator his true true identity: that of the best (and most wanted) industrial spy in existence.
This movie builds up slowly, from the boring life of a clerk to conspiracies and industrial spies, with enough twist and paranoia to have kept me stuck to the screen for 90 minutes.
To wrap up, here is a comment by lavatch from Twin Cities, Minnesota (IMDb): “In 1949, George Orwell suggested in his famous novel “1984″ that the future would be ruled by the totalitarian State, which would control minds and diminish human liberty. It was interesting that in this intriguing futuristic film, it was not the State, but rather the corporate world that controlled and devalued the human worker”.
Vincenzo Natali also directed Cube and several episodes of Earth: Final Conflict and one epidode of Psi Factor.
