Why is everything so predictable?

So this might seem like an odd question, but as long as I can remember pretty much every movie, game, book, etc. has been insanely predictable to me. It extends beyond just media, but it's the most reliable there.

I'll try to keep this spoiler free for the most part.

I know nowadays most major film plots are safe and inoffensive easy to follow to a fault, but it's been going on as long as I can remember.

Watching that dumb Matthew Mcconaughey movie Frailty a few weeks back (not my choice, some of the Mrs' friends were over) and within 5 minutes I jokingly described to a T the exact ending of the movie. Last chapter of the Dark Tower series, again, guessed at it by the end of book 1. The Last of Us, The Walking Dead both games, movies, and the few comics of it I've been through, Dumbledore? He had to go! Donnie Freakin Darko! I could go on all weekend listing examples but the most damning is probably Sixth Sense. that movie EVERYBODY said was the biggest twist ever in a movie, hell it spawned the whole WHAT A TWIST meme. A friend of mine told me I HAD to see the movie, I would love it, it was so crazy... I watched the trailer and knew Bruce Willis was a ghost all along.

If I never shared it with anybody else it would be easy to just say it was all hindsight playing tricks on me, but It gets annoying because it comes so naturally I mention it off hand all the time, and I'm almost always right. Watching TV or movies with the Mrs and i just can't talk because anything I say about it will always end up being right and ruining it for her.

Do I have the worst superpower in the world? Is every piece of media just poorly made and telegraphs everything way ahead of time? Am I making a big deal out of something that probably doesn't matter? Well sure, but I'm curious all the same.

Does anybody else end up like this? Or know anybody who does? Anybody have ideas why this happens?

@zfubarz: Why is everything so predictable? Well, there are patterns to how things play out and the way people think. And if you pay enough attention, you can predict quite a lot. For dealing with life situations, it can be useful, but for enjoying fictional tales written by people using their understanding of those patterns to construct compelling narratives, it can be a bit of a pain.

You just have to learn to experience some things more instead of over analyzing them. Not everything is a puzzle, and if you approach most things as such, you'll find that they're generally not as unpredictable as you may have hoped. It's good to be observant and analytical, but it's also important to be able to sometimes loosen up and just enjoy things.

Try watching a David Lynch film

Watch some less known films. Or watch some South Korean movies. Watch Old Boy. If you can predict that movie you've got issues dude.

@jasonr86: I feel like if you're really looking for it, you can guess the major twist. It's guessable.

However, if OP somehow guesses the villain's motivations in Oldboy, then he's some kind of fucking god. Like, you can only figure that out if your superpower is "mimic the screenwriter's brain exactly, and then figure out how he would write the villain".

Yeah, also maybe take a page from what these folks have said and look into films made by sick, twisted nuts. That way, you can't possibly understand them, and thus not be able to predict them. A descent into madness may be one of your only hopes for the confusion you desire.

@truthtellah True, if I ever really learned to focus it I could probably do pretty damn well in investing or stocks. I've always found it damn near impossible to focus on anyone thing which makes the whole experiencing the moment things pretty hard, but nothing ever slips past me either which is what makes the whole dichotomy even stranger. The only time I recall being utterly focused on a particular moment was skydiving, and even that only lasted for the freefall portion. You know the funny thing, I'm actually not great at puzzles, I don't have the patience to stick with them, the answer will usually pop into my head a day later though.

Edit: and the madness thing doesn't work, I like understanding the people who are literally insane, I'm in the field, talking to Schizophrenics is one of the most interesting things I do.

.... I may or may not have had some pretty good luck with regards to Oldboy. But I've spent some time in South Korea so I have an advantage most western people don't have. Korean movies are actually more predictable than most, they almost never stray from genre stereotypes. At least not in the ones I got exposed to. I'd imagine their indie scene has it's boundary pushing stuff as well, but it's been years since I was over there so I'm not sure what's big now.

@zfubarz: I used to struggle with it more, but I focused on improving my ability to loosen up a bit some years ago. Part of it is not caring so much even if you do see the patterns. It isn't bad when we understanding things like this; it's just bad when we focus on that understanding to the detriment of our experience.

Well, it depends. Do you enjoy the movie even despite knowing what the twist is? Sure when you look at a the most recent Nolan-Batman movies, it is somewhat predictable what is going to happen (hint: The Good Guys win) , but they are still fun to watch, or they have a message deeper than surprise twist ending.

A lot of movies tend to follow certain Tropes (if you haven't heard of TvTopes, have fun :D) or re-occurring ideals/themes/events that occur over and over. They can make some movies seem predictable, but at the same token enjoyable because they add enjoyment to the movie.

Orrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr if you think everything is predictable and not worth watching you could just ahead and spoiler yourself on what exactly all the twist ending are for a bunch of different movies/entertainment. Use TvTropes at your own risk!

You could try making an original script of something yourself!

Because most people don't like uncertainty; it frightens them.

Also, you guessing the last of us' ending is so ridiculous that I dont think I believe you. That ending was unpredictable, and I dont care what anyone says.

@zfubarz: I think that you're telling yourself afterwards that you predicted every ending of those games and movies you listed.

I sorry, you have no superpower and you definitely didn't predict TLOU's ending. You only believe you did because it somehow disappointed you.

Most media especially the type targeted at mass market is very predictable in general. So it's nothing really surprising there. A lot of the examples you named (Last of US, Walking Dead, Dumbledore) are kind of rote by storytelling standards. They do the expected and most anyone with some degree of familiarity with common narratives could figure out where they were going quite quickly.

Shit story in games in general is more suspect to this failure then most, due to having rather weak storytelling overall. Same goes for 99% of movies.

Secondly going into a movie like your example Sixth Sense and knowing beforehand to look for and expect a twist automatically gives you a huge edge as you are now deliberately looking and trying to figure out the twist. People who saw it initially without any of the hype and just watching it as a normal movie not expecting anything had a very different experience.

If the unexpected development (i consider "twist" a bit too rigid a term) isn't set up or hinted at in at least some way by the author and just comes out of nowhere at all, then it frequently just becomes an empty twist devoid of meaning and the audience feels cheated. So most such things are hinted at anyway even in good works and if one is going over them with a magnifying glass you will find them, you're supposed to.

So really nothing too unusual here.

One thing I can suggest is if you are looking for less predictable stuff to not look for it in games or movies that are expected to make money. Some nice beefy books are your best bet. But if you are in the field of psychology then you really can't expect much, after all if understanding people, their thoughts/emotions/motivations is part of your job, then shit it kinda directly feeds into you naturally unraveling simple narratives that put all those things right in front of you.

Finally knowing the general strokes of how a story will go or end doesn't strip it of value. A good author can make it interesting just to see the particulars of how exactly the events play out.

@zfubarz, meet TVTropes (dot org). Specifically this page.

(edit: ah now I see that somebody have already mentioned it. Oh well!) I guess another recommendation I would give is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For the show that started the whole tropes thing, it's quite unpredictable at times.

@cptbedlam: The Last of Us overall narrative was deliberately headed into a particular direction the entire time. Some knowledge of decent post apocalypse survival and cure stories, combined with a father's loss into surrogate guardianship type of stories, is enough to very easily see that general direction and what the culmination at the end has to be.

Don't get me wrong I loved the story in The Last of Us because of how it unfolded and the emotions that the charters displayed and ordeals they had to go through. I cheered at the end of that story precisely because it did what I expected and wanted it to do. (see my last paragraph in the previous post)

So going around and accusing people (OP included) like you did, is uncalled for imo. And based on some pretty large assumptions that can be very wrong.

@tennmuerti: I don't think that vague guesses into what direction a story might head equals predicting the ending. Everyone knew the overall theme of the game but there's a lot of stuff happening in the end section of that game which really wasn't predictable.

@tennmuerti: Well then depends on what you mean by predicting the ending.

Predicting every single minor action? No of course not.

The ending's plot? Yep.

They were going to make it to meet the resistance. I knew for example that, the resistance was going to fuck Joel over in the end. I knew they would want to take Ellie away from him in some pretty final/permanent way (death being one of the options). I knew he was going to go against them an fight them, because he came to care for Ellie like his own daughter. He was going to rescue her. I knew Ellie was going to survive at the very least, if not both of them. Finally I expected Joel to lie to Ellie at the very end too.

And those are pretty much the beats. /shrug

There's a recent South Korean movie called Moebius by Kim Ki Dduk. Probably not that predictable. It depends, if you find US movies are pretty predictable and you're bored with them, try foreign movies. Due to cultural differences, we approach things differently.

You are a story-predicting savant.

I don't know, hollywood movies generally like to wrap things up in a neat little bow. If you watch enough of them, you will start to just get a sense of where and how they will conclude just based on how the building blocks are being put together. It's kinda like with popular music, where your ear will tend to know which chord / note will sound 'right' for the song to end on, even if you don't understand the music theory behind it.

you have psychic powers and you are probably a time traveler who has yet to awaken to his true abilities

Watch a bunch of reality tv or Tyler perry movies to numb your mind, then watch Blue velvet and eraserhead.

@zfubarz said:

BULLSHIT.

There is no goddamn way in hell you predicted how the Dark Tower ends by the end of the first book. At all. That series goes so off the rails utterly fucking insane that I don't think King had any idea what he was doing even while writing it.

You can pretend all you want, but there is no goddamn way you saw THAT coda coming from the end of The Gunslinger. No goddamn way.

If your main criteria for a good movie is how twisted the ending is, perhaps you should expand your horizons a bit, man.

You're a wizard brah

Ever tried reading ASOIF ? I doubt anyone can predict some of the shit in that book, it's very non cliche and puzzle-like compared to any other fantasy book.

Yeah I know what you are talking about. I'm an inconsistent analyzer at best in general, but fiction is very easy to analyze. It's really gotten to the point where I don't really like movies unless they are visually interesting or SUPER DUMB, to the point where it doesn't matter at all if it's predictable. It's also the same reason I am a mechanics over story kind of guy in games, because the stories are generally not interesting enough to make me care. And mechanics can be analyzed and read without removing too much from the experience, sometimes even adding to it.

If you're telling the truth--which I highly doubt-- you should write a book. Write something utterly unpredictable. I bet it would be good.

Oh man, I forgot the first book was gunslinger. Yeah it seems highly implausible to make that prediction just by lack of information. Though I suspect rereading only the first novel now might give some cute hints that the ending was ready even that early. Note that I only mean the ending, I'm totally on your side when it comes to if King had any fucking idea what he was doing for most of the series.

I don't expect everyone to believe me, and everything has degrees of certainty to it of course, but yeah it's pretty much always there at least in the broad strokes. Fine details are less common because they don't matter all that much in the overall plot of a piece. The Dark Tower thing for example wasn't that hard to guess at the ending, It was a redemption/revenge story with a fatally flawed anti-hero and there was a time travel/multi-dimension conceit, Roland would never be able to achieve ultimate victory as the man he was, but King giving him essentially infinite chances for redemption? Sure. That being said I couldn't guess at random things like King writing himself in as a major plot point. Even still it's still one of my favourite book series despite what Rorie says.

I should clarify a few things, i still enjoy a lot of entertainment products, for movies and TV I tend towards comedy, excellent acting, or just interesting character pieces. Comedy doesn't need to be unpredictable to be funny. Good acting is always enjoyable to watch. Games I also like good mechanics or dumb fun gameplay more than most stories, the Idle Thumbs guys are a right, a good grenade rolling down a hill trumps damn near everything. To tie it to that Dark Tower bit above, it might sound cliche but usually the journey is the reward. It has to be because the destination can be seen from a mile away.

I have tried writing actually, not much though, as with most things it doesn't hold my interest for too long, although there's one I like and may got back to when I have more time some day. (I realize saying that while posting on a gaming message board sounds odd but everybody needs to veg sometimes.) One project i've always wanted to try was a choose your own adventure for an adult audience. That would take a hell of a lot to get done though, and with games being so good at that stuff lately (Telltale for example) it's getting less worthwhile to attempt, but it might still be interesting in a literary sense.

And screw you guys for trying to get me to go back to TV Tropes, that black hole of free time has been removed from my life long ago.

This.

I felt this way about a lot of narratives for a while, probably 'cause I grew up loving whodunits and got good at putting pieces together.

But eventually I realized, if simply knowing a twist is enough to ruin an experience for me, that story probably wasn't worth experiencing to begin with (and by that, I mean it's not my type of story, not that the story is terrible). At the risk of sounding super effin' cliche, there's so much more to everything than beginnings and ends.

If all that matters is the endgame then allow me to spoil something for everyone here:

It always ends with death. Always... And that's just boring.

No matter what, whether it would've been both of them dying, none of them dying or one of them dying (no spoiler b/c that's all of the possibilities) ... there would be people saying "that was predictable". It's because you have all those vague ideas in your head about how the story might progress and they become more concrete as you approach the ending. And when one of those ideas eventually is close to the actual ending you think "ha, I knew that!"

Yes he did care for Ellie. The game made that clear numerous times, it almost hits you over the head with it. It's the central theme. That doesn't mean you knew how the game's ending would turn out. Anything could've happened and I think Naughty Dog chose a very interesting outcome.

Here's what an actual predictable (lame) ending for TLOU would've been like:

Ellie gets in trouble, Joel rescues her because he cares for her and dies in the process. The game's actual ending with both of them surviving was actually rather refreshing.

@cptbedlam: Except that I just described all of the quite specific facets of the ending that I knew beforehand. Nor did i say that it was just predictable, but that I specifically predicted them. Not one of them turned out wrong and they were known to me long before the ending sequences (with the exception of the last one, which I knew after the rescue but before it occurred). Your first example doesn't apply, i said specifically she would always survive, that was the prediction and it was correct. Besides all the other ones. (i simply freely admit to not being sure about Joel staying alive)

Also that last beat you mention, is in my post. :/

If you want to keep telling yourself that "nah they just thought they knew, but it's just hindsight" go ahead. I know the difference between hindsight and foreknowledge. Keep not believing, even if The Last of Us is ultimately made up of very common tropes. There is nothing I can really say further to convince you, since it's just my word that like the OP, i knew most of it.

I sorry, you have no superpower and you definitely didn't predict TLOU's ending. You only believe you did because it somehow disappointed you.

Getting back to the reason I replied in the first place. My point initially was to say that the above is not a valid rebuttal, because I quite definitely loved the ending and that's something unarguable. :)

@zfubarz: As you mentioned, the journey can be the reward: Seek stories that don't have twist/romance endings. Stories like The Picture of Dorian Gray or The Catcher in the Rye have a focus on character and setting that make them engaging whether you know where the plot is headed or not.

You might enjoy Roald Dahl's adult short stories (the collected works), even though some of his tales are ultimately predictable, I find his style and characters to be wonderful.

I've got to call bullshit on this. The first book was written 22 years before the last book, and the author himself had no bloody idea what he was going to do with the story. You really guessed that King was going to make himself a character in his own series, and then make the characters in that series save him so he could finish their story? No one could predict such a terrible ending to an otherwise decent series.

I do think that foreshadowing has gotten out of control in a lot of media lately. Way too often movies intentionally telegraph things and I guess it's supposed to be clever, but it never feels that way to me. And the callback quotes, where a line from earlier in the movie comes back in a key moment towards the end, ugh.

Well generally speaking, its because stories and characters have to actually make sense. Which you can often predict.

The "twist reveal" of a villian halfway through has to be at least sorta telegraphed. You can't have a puppy doctor who spends his free time helping old ladies cross the street turn into a sadistic terrorist out of no where. It just doesn't make sense. You need motivation, character development, that sorta stuff.

Same thing with plots. It's usually gotta be a build up to something, a linear progression of events eventually leading to a climax and conclusion. If it was just random twist after random twist you'd get some grade A shit.

I think the last movie that gave me that "OH SHIT!" twist towards the end was "Old Boy". (no one spoil it, its fantastic) But i'm also fairly good at predicting what happens in movies / tv shows. Especially romantic comedies. Cus they're all the god damn same.

If you think everything is so predictable I have some anime for you to watch. There are plenty of series where the first episode and last episode are so different that you'd never figure out how they even connect.

@zfubarz: I will leave you with a quote from a modern day poet: "No idea's original." - Nasir "Nas" Jones

Your superpower is that you consume too much of the same kind of mainstream, high concept, easily digested entertainment. Not saying it's anything wrong with that stuff but maybe you should change it up if it bores you

@tennmuerti: I'm pretty sure halfway through TLOU, you had no idea who would survive or die. Also, the specific situation at the very end ... you didn't know about it until it happened and the question was asked. Of course you then could make a good guess what the reaction of the character might be based on what you experienced before because the characters and the narrative in TLOU are grounded in reality. Characters behave naturally, they are selfish and not knights in shining armor trying to save the world. At least that's breaking up with videogame conventions.

I'd love to watch a bunch of movies with you, stop at the half-hour mark, exchange predictions and see the house of cards crumble ...

Just about every story follows a pretty traditional structure, whether we're talking stuff with hollywood endings or foreign films with downer endings, there are just about always the same general structure, and if you keep your predictions general/non-specific enough you will be able to guess them (i.e., predicting the overall conclusion, like who's gonna live or die after the main cast and conflict has been established, and not say, the exact lines of dialogue that will be spoken in the final scene, even if there are tropes for those too). You never really go into details about how your supposed superpower works, if it's just the general beats (in which case A Clockwork Orange and The Dark Knight Rises essentially are the same), or if you predict very specific character exchanges and scenes.

@cptbedlam: Yes to the first part, i knew, with exception of Joel like I said. His partner I knew at the very start she is just that sort of character, same for his daughter, Ellie, the pair of people they travel with for a while. To the second, of course that's a large part of why i liked it.

As for conventions, that part is not quite so clear cut for me, lazy video game conventions sure, but not overall narrative conventions outside of just games and even games with better narrative (many good RPGs) don't adhere to that mold frequently enough.

And while characters and personal narrative in TLOU is grounded in reality, the overreaching narrative is anything but (im referring to logical consistency not the setting itself). But that's beside the point.

You don't have a super power because you don't atcually predict all these movies correctly. You're bullshitting. To me you just sound like you're trying to be intellectually superior.

Well they obviously gave it away by telling you there was a big twist.

Hardly "the most damning" example.

You sound like you'd be a fan of Nolan. He loves to throw untelegraphed, meaningless twists into his films. "I GOT YOU! YOU DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING! ADMIT IT!" Well, yeah, because it doesn't matter and it doesn't make any fucking sense.