Is it just me, or are movies predictable
 

I was watching "the day after tomorrow" and after watching only about a minute of the movie I was able to predict much of it. "Lets see, thats the main character, main female character and thus love interest. Most likely they hold a pre-existing relationship. Either they are often on opposite ends of something or have dated and broken up,"

and at a later point. "Ok leaving to save her is obviously dangerous, main character will go out anyways" hears one of his friends saying they will go with him "ok now they will go with him. Atleast one being injured or killed, main character will remain unharmed and do to his actions they succeed"

And of course I was correct. Though originally I said the others would die, and didn't include injury.

I'm not using this to say its a crappy movie, I am merely using it as an example. I see this all the time in movies. So either I have gained a great insight into movies, or movies now basically use the same template. A leads to B which causes C. Only thing you change are the names of people and the places. Even a "twist" is so common you can easily see it coming.

Ah that's why I watch crazy arthouse movies. I can't even understand, let alone predict, what's going on most of the time. Good fun.

Watch enough movies and you'll understand the patterns of them. Then, as time goes on, you'll even be able to see that even watching a preview for a movie, in a short one minute and thirty seconds of that preview, you can often figure out most of what is going to happen in the film. If not the entire beginning of the film, main problem and the conclusion (which isn't even shown but is usually only one of a few logical or common hollywood endings).

Its kind of why now adays I've gone into watching movies and, sub-conciously, tricked myself and blinded myself to allow the producers of the movie to do their 'magic'. I will let them play their game and, unless the movie is really bad and horribly obvious about where it is going (Disney movies, a formula I have seen before many times like Star Wars, comidies, etc), I will allow myself to be tricked as if I don't know where the movie is heading.

I wouldn't say that all movies are predictable, but most of them are. Its because many are written with the same time tested framework, and don't bother to really do anything original.

Romance flicks are especially guilty of this.

SWB

Again why indepedent films are generally much better :).

I dare you to predict Memento. I dare you.

Other than that, though... yeah. I can tell you who's going to die, who the villain is, how the villain will eventually be killed, and how everyone is going to die in any given horror movie far in advance of any of those things actually happening. Even the 'mystery horror' ones. So goddamn formulaic.

I think the more appropriate title for this thread should be "Is it just me, or are certain genres predictable".

I mean, I'm not going to be impressed that you could foresee the plot to a survivor movie, because survivor movies tend to favor the people who have their names on the billboard. But to say that all movies are as predictable as the latest Final Destination is just ignorance.

Also, to Sycophant, it again depends on the genre, although it's generally on a case by case basis. I pretty much can't stand indie romcoms...I mean, Me and You and Everyone We Know hurt.

Really at this point I expect exactly what will happen in the end less, and I focus more on what happens to get to that point. I'm sure I already know the ending. If I don't, it's because there's a damn good plot in the making, IE, Memento.

Otherwise all superhero movies succeed in the same way, romance movies get the guy and the girl, comedies end up with the stoners getting more pot, and whatever. The journey itself is less important than the destination.

I think that's a bit too deep of an expression for having just mentioned stoner comedies.

EDIT:
Oh come on, it lends itself to advantages sometimes. We all watched House of Wax because we knew Paris Hilton was going to die.

Paris Hilton dies?

I'm tempted to watch that now.


Transformers was hideously predictable.

There does seem to be a certain predictability to Hollywood films.
Sadly about halfway through Memento, I had guessed it Krylo :)
The only thing I could recommend is to hit the World Cinema section of your local dvd place. I'm a big fan of Japanese films and there's no way you could predict what happens in say, Old Boy, The Eye or Versus.