29 Times People Really, Totally, And Truly Misunderstood The Point Of A Movie (And It Was Embarrassing)
Recently, Reddit user FinalDemise posed the question, "What's the worst case of someone misunderstanding the plot of a movie you've ever seen?," to the folks over at r/AskReddit. And their responses are some of the funniest things I've read in a while. Check it out:
Note: Some spoilers ahead, but a lot of these movies are old, so...
1."I watched Les Misérables in the theater with my parents. At the very end of the movie, my dad whispered, 'Wait, Hugh Jackman was the prisoner at the beginning?!' He had no idea...the whole movie why Javert had beef with this apparent random character."
2."I knew someone that thought Thanos snapping his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War just sent a bunch of people back to their home planet."
3."My wife is a big history buff, especially US history. She also doesn’t like campy vampire/zombie/monster movies. I made her watch Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Ten minutes into the movie, she turned to me and said, 'I don’t think this actually happened.'"
4."Some friends and I were watching the James Bond movie Spectre while extremely drunk and got really confused by the repeated and overlapping sections. We were talking about how the Memento style use of non-linear time was a great addition to the Bond films, only to realize I had been sitting on the remote and rewinding it all night. I think we were watching it for about 4 hours."
5."I once watched Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery with my much younger brother, and at the end, he said, 'This would be such a cool movie if they would just take things seriously.' He had never seen James Bond and thought the movie was real, but everyone was just bad at acting."
6."I watched The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers with my not-yet-wife, and she was like, 'This movie makes no sense; it starts with a bunch of people running and then...what's happening?' I didn't realize she never saw the first movie."
7."My favorite part about watching The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring in the theater was at the end when a guy yelled out, 'That's it?!' I guess he didn't realize it was the first of a trilogy and was a little upset at the lack of closure."
8."I am not a fan of superhero movies, but I liked the X-Men when I was younger. So, I thought I would check out one of the X-Men movies. I downloaded one that featured one of my favorite characters. I started watching it; they messed up his whole backstory; there were no other mutants and no action. After about 30 minutes in, I realized it wasn't a superhero movie. So anyways, Jake Gyllenhaal was really good in Nightcrawler."
9."My mom thought Rogue One had a happy ending because 'they were hugging in front of a sunset' at the end of the movie."
10."My mom loved The Prestige. I expressed surprise because it didn't seem like her kind of movie (she considers Jumanji a horror movie). She was surprised at my surprise and asked why I thought she wouldn't like it. I said it was pretty dark with all the jealousy, revenge, betrayal, and murder. She was even more surprised and said she didn't pick up on any of that stuff. She just 'liked the magicians doing their fun tricks.'"
11."My ex-girlfriend only realized halfway through Schindler's List that Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes were different people, which I found so hilarious as the film must have seemed totally different in her mind. So yeah, to her, the hero of a film about the Holocaust was an enthusiastic Nazi casually murdering people and being generally evil."
12."This reminds me of a similar post where the OP's wife didn't realize Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio were two different people in The Departed."
13."Watching Titanic in a cinema in the West End of Glasgow. Ship hits the iceberg, the girl behind me says, 'Aw, it's gonna sink.' To which her date replied with absolute confidence, 'Na, it willnae.'"
14."I watched Elvis in the theater, and when the paper showed his death, an older woman behind me gasped and sadly whispered, 'Oh no, he died.' Earlier, when he took a pill from his doctor, the same lady gasped, 'No Elvis, don't take that!' One would think someone so devoted to Elvis would know the end of this movie."
15."My sister-in-law asked if The Martian is based on a true story..."
16."I remember someone once saying that Scar from The Lion King isn't evil because he is a lion. 'Wild animals can't be evil, they're just acting on their nature.' Bro, I kind of forgot the whole anthropomorphic talking animals with human-like thoughts and morals part, I guess."
17."Someone once told me they thought The Matrix was about a guy learning to code and getting really good at VR."
18."I saw The Matrix Reloaded (the second movie) with a guy who was way outside the pop culture loop and hadn't really heard anything about either movie. He thought the characters entering/leaving the Matrix were being disintegrated, and was at a total loss, thinking the movie was displaying a non-sequential timeline."
19."My dad thought Memento was in chronological order and didn't have a fucking clue what was happening the whole time."
20."When I was a kid, and I saw The Hunt for Red October, I didn't know the definition of 'defect. So, I had no idea what was going on the entire time."
21."Somehow, my dad completely missed that The Princess Bride is a comedy."
22."My adult siblings were watching a movie at my mom's house. My mom falls asleep, as she always does. In the movie, they were going to extract a person from someplace. My young niece asks what extract means, and my mom wakes up briefly and says, 'They are going to pull all his teeth out.' So from that point on, everyone was waiting for that to occur."
23."My Dad thought This Is Spinal Tap was a documentary. He couldn't see why they'd been successful."
24."It’s not the entire plot, but when we watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, a friend thought Snape wanted to see Harry’s green eyes again as he died because they were the color of Slytherin's house."
25."My friend, being critical of Apollo 13, said, 'They just want their Hollywood ending with that finish.' WOOSH!!!!!!"
26."Someone on here talked about his friend hating on District 9. When he asked his friend why? His friend said they are just some disgusting bugs. 'Who cares if they die?'"
27."Someone I was watching Planet of the Apes with said at the end, 'They had a statue of liberty too?'"
28."My father-in-law fell asleep while we were all watching Groundhog Day. Woke up at the end and said, 'So the whole thing was a dream.' Yes and no, I guess."
29.Finally, "In my high school history class we were talking about The Notebook one day. Someone mentioned the couple dying at the end, and a girl started SOBBING. 'They died?? I thought they fell asleep!'"
Do you have a funny story about someone COMPLETELY missing the point of a movie (or getting really confused)? Tell us about it in the comments below or via this totally anonymous form, and maybe we'll do a part two!