Discussion question: predictable movies

[alexandra_thorn]

When you describe a movie as predictable, what does that mean? When someone tells you that a movie is predictable, what do you assume they mean?

Comments

[mik3cap]

Predictable to me usually means that I can tell what's going to happen next while I'm watching the movie. But it's a matter of degrees - if I see a trailer and get an idea of what a movie's about, I may speculate what the general plot is going to be, and how much the movie actually fits that speculation affects how predictable I think it ends up being. If it follows a lot of tropes, or heavily uses foreshadowing (like in 2001: A Space Odyssey - the sign warning about EXPLOSIVE BOLTS appears something like four times).

But also, if I'm watching a film, and something signals to me what's going to happen next (a piece of dialogue reveals something, or a scene unfolds a certain way); if that sign triggers a revelation about what the ending is going to be it can upset me a bit because it makes the finale of the movie utterly predictable. It's worse of course when it happens sooner rather than later.

I almost never take anything anyone says about a movie seriously because people rarely have the same movie experience that I do.