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“They Died?? I Thought They Fell Asleep!”: 50 Worst Cases Of People Misunderstanding The Plot
Some movies are too complicated for their own good. Some others aren’t, but they still might leave some viewers puzzled or completely missing the point of the plot. (If a movie popped into your mind right now, I’m pretty sure you’re not the only one, if that’s any consolation.)
To show you that there is no shame in not getting the main idea of the plot and that quite a few people don’t, we want to shed light on this thread, started by the redditor ‘FinalDemise’, who asked fellow members of ‘Ask Reddit’ to describe the worst cases of people misunderstanding a movie they have ever seen. Scroll down to find the netizens’ stories on the list below and use this as a chance to expand your must-watch list - it’s always a good idea to have one on hand in case the mind goes blank when it’s time for a movie night.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Me and some friends were watching James Bond Spectre while extremely drunk and got really confused by the repeated and overlapping sections. We were talking about how great the Memento style use of non-linear time was a great addition to the Bond films only to realise I had been sitting on the remote and rewinding it all night. I think we were watching it for about 4 hours.
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#2
The BEST is the famous TV Guide plot synopsis in 1998 for "The Wizard of Oz"
# Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.
#3
It was me. I am not a fan of superhero movies but I liked the Xmen when I was younger. So I thought I would check one out. I downloaded one that featured one of my favorites. I started watching it, they messed his whole back story up, there weren't any other mutants, basically no action. After about 30 minutes in I realized it wasn't a superhero movie.
So anyways, Jake Gyllenhaal was really good in Nightcrawler.
#4
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. 10 minutes into the movie she turned to me and said “I don’t think this actually happened”.
#5
Watching Titanic in a cinema in the West End of Glasgow. Ship hits the iceberg, girl behind me says "Aw, it's gonny sink.'
To which her date replied with absolute confidence 'Na, it willnae'.
#6
My FIL is a retired nuclear engineer and when he heard about the new show Big Bang Theory he literally canceled an appointment, prepared with snacks and drinks and sat down to watch "the science show."
His face was indescribable. What was icing on the cake was that he and Sheldon share quite a few traits.
#7
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 kind of forgot the whole "anthropomorphic talking animals with human like thoughts and morals" part I guess.
#8
My mom with every movie ever. It would drive me and my siblings nuts. 10 minutes into the movie she would say, "I know what they're gonna do. This, this and this. I can read movies like a book." She would be wrong 95% of the time and being wrong never stuck with her. Did it our entire lives. She was also the type that would ask us 20 questions about the movie we're all watching for the first time. Mom has been gone for a year now and these little annoyances become things you miss about them.
#9
Somehow, my dad completely missed that The Princess Bride is a comedy.
#10
TV, but the people that watch antihero shows like Breaking Bad or the Sopranos and their only takeaway is "whoa! Walt/Tony is a badass!".
Walter White, Tony Soprano, and characters like them are pieces of s**t. The entire story is about how their being a piece of s**t causes them to lose everything.
Luke Branwen 3 weeks ago
I've never watched The Boys, but I know there's a significant portion of the fanbase that idolizes a character who's supposed to be an embodiment of all the worst qualities of the USA.
#11
Watched Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers with an uncle. Asked him what he thought afterwards.
“Seems kind of far fetched.”.
#12
The people that think Blazing Saddles is "racist".
Honestly, these people are as dumb as a bag of rocks...
#13
My mom thought *Rogue One* had a happy ending because “they were hugging in front of a sunset” at the end of the movie.
#14
My brother's first in-theater movie was Disney's "Pocahontas" and he thought it was a story about the first Thanksgiving and completely missed the themes of racial tension and colonization. Part of the reason he thought it was about Thanksgiving was that there were lots of references to food, like "the song about sandwiches." The sandwiches song was his favorite and he sang it for weeks afterwards.
"Savages." The song is called "Savages.".
Janissary35680 3 weeks ago
What are these strange creations, stacked so high? / Bread and fillings—are they foe or ally? / Look at them, those who praise such snacks / Who needs lettuce or mayo packs? / They think they’re clever with their lunchtime twist / But this monstrosity should not exist!
#15
I don’t know if this counts, but my sweet angle of an aunt rented (years ago) Silence of the Lambs thinking it was a *Christmas* movie. This remains one of my favorite family stories.
When asked when she realized when it wasn’t a Christmas film, she simply stated “towards the end.”.
#16
Someone once told me they thought *The Matrix* was about a guy learning to code and getting really good at VR.
#17
My sister in law asked if 'The Martian' is based on a true story...
#18
I'm reminded of that time Ricky Gervais said when he was in school they watched Animal Farm and were discussing fascism etc and one other guy said 'you lot are ridiculous overthinking it, it was just a nice story about some animals'.
Koalafied to komment 3 weeks ago
My parents let me watch it once when I was young, thinking it's just another cartoon 😆
#19
I saw the movie Outbreak at a dollar movie theater in my college town a few weeks after it came out.
The movie was entertaining but what I remember most is the woman sitting near me who couldn't bear to actually look at the screen when there was any tension at all in the scene.
Highlights were her buying her face in her hands and screaming, at different points:
"THAT MONKEY GONE EAT THAT LITTLE GIRL!"
And, later:
"OH MY GAWWD! THEY GONE KILL THAT MONKEY!"
I wish sitting near that lady was an option every time I go to the movies.
#20
My friend being critical of Apollo 13 saying, "They just want their Hollywood ending with that finish"....WOOSH!!!!!!
#21
Guy who said the hunger games series was about how evil liberals are because the people in the capitol have unnaturally colored hair.
#22
My adult siblings were watching a movie at my mom's house. My mom falls asleep, always. In the move they were going extract a person from someplace. My young niece asks what extract means, my mom wakes up briefly at that time and says" they are going to pull all his teeth out". So from that point on, everyone was waiting for that to occur.
Panda Kicki 3 weeks ago
That was hilarious. "Have you extracted the agent? Not yet, but the dentist is on standby!"
#23
I watched Les Miserables 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.
Koalafied to komment 3 weeks ago
Well to be fair, prisoner Valjean looks very different to bourgeois Valjean. One of my favourite musicals ❤️
#24
My friend's grandad saw that Beethoven was playing in theaters whilst reading the newspaper. He thought it was a film about the composer. Well, he bought tickets to see it, and if you don't know, it's a movie about a dog. He was like the only adult there without a kid.
Koalafied to komment 3 weeks ago
I guess germans were aware of that problem, because the german title was "a dog called beethoven"
#25
Back when the first The Matrix was new, a group of us watched it in one of the science rooms. A girl in my class after it was finished said “yeah it was good but a bit unrealistic”.
I still think about this about once a year and get annoyed. .
Kyra Heiker 3 weeks ago
I had no idea what the matrix was about when I first watched it and I don't even remember how I came about watching it but I am forever grateful that I knew nothing going into it. It made for a very exciting movie.
#26
I watched the Fellowship of the Ring in the cinema when it first came out. As I got up to leave at the end, two teenage girls who had been sat behind me started talking to each other:
“So, did they get rid of the ring or not?”
“Yeah, they threw it in the fire right at the start”.
kansasmagic 3 weeks ago
I especially like the part at the end when Aragorn says "Welp, guess the fellowship is broken! So long everybody!" And then takes up distance running so he has something to do.
#27
My ex girlfriend only realised 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, the hero of a film about the Holocaust being an enthusiastic Nazi casually murdering people and being generally evil.
Anna Losonczy 3 weeks ago
Almost same, my colleague thought that Leo DiCaprio and Matt Damon are the same character in "The Departed", and didn't understand the whole plot. :D
#28
Back in the '80s, a "big event" TV movie was "The Day After," a doomsday movie about the aftermath of a nuclear bomb being launched on the US. We were watching it with extended family. More than halfway through the movie, a relative suddenly said, "You mean there was radiation in that bomb?".
#29
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!” .
#30
A friend of mine on watching Dracula: "What's the point, you know who the vampire is from the start".
#31
Watched Fried Green Tomatoes with my very conservative antiqued grandfather. He thought it was just a wholesome movie about friends. To be fair, the movie is pretty friendwashed, but I thiught it was funny how much the movie leans on your preconceived notions of what’s happening between the two mains. That I could watch a heartwarming/breaking movie about some lesbians, while he’s watching a movie about female friends empowering each other, and we’re watching the same movie. .
#32
I was once running late to see The Bourne Identity with friends. I came in about five or ten mins after it started.
I got most of the movie from context clues, but afterwards, I was completely confusing my friends with questions like, "Ok so why was he a hobo?" and "Why didn't he remember anything?" My friends were like, what are you on about? I just didn't realise that Bourne had been in the ocean in the first few mins, or that he'd been shot. I saw him first in Switzerland. He looked homeless. I just thought he was in a disguise, you know cos he's a spy. I went back and forth between thinking he had some sort of unexplained amnesia, to thinking maybe he was faking the amnesia to escape from the government for some reason? (fake amnesia made sense to me since how else did he know about the safe deposit code? But also if he was faking then why was he so shocked to see the contents of the safe deposit box??) Maybe the government had made him go on a mission as a hobo but then he really became a hobo and so he was mad at them? (and later in the movie) What's with the yacht, though? How do boats come into it? How did he get from being thrown off a yacht to being a hobo in Switzerland with amnesia?? It was very disorienting, and I spent most of the movie trying to puzzle through my lingering questions.
Lesson: If you ever think "surely the first five mins can't be that crucial to the plot", you might be wrong. Especially for The Bourne Identity.
#33
My mom spent all of Edward Scissorhands pointing out all of the things that were not available in the 60’s.
She missed that it was a satire of suburbia in general.
Cathy Roberts 3 weeks ago
Satire seems to fly over a lot of people's heads.....see the Blazing Saddles post.
#34
When I was young I watched the first 15 minutes of Zoolander from the hallway when I was supposed to be in bed. For many years after, I thought people regularly died in freak gasoline accidents.
Serial pacifist 3 weeks ago
That and quicksand, serious issue humanity has with those two hazards.
#35
My step-dad paid so little attention to Fight Club that he thought it was a murder mystery about who’d killed Robert Paulson.
#36
Someone on here talked about his friend really hating on district 9. When he asked his friend why? His friend said they are just some disgusting bugs. Who cares if they die.
#37
I once watched Austin Powers 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.
#38
My wife and I decided to watch The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019, Dev Patel), and about halfway though, she turned to me and asked, “so when does he start doing magic?”
She thought the movie, which takes place in the 1800’s, was about the magician, not based on the novel by Dickens.
We will never forget that movie night.
Edit: movie year.
#39
I remember when Life of Pi came out, I was listening to an episode of Joe Rogan, and he was going off about how silly the movie was because there's no way some skinny kid would be able to fight off a tiger.
While opinions can't necessarily be wrong, having a strong opinion about something based on not understanding gets pretty close imo.
#40
One time we were watching O Brother Where Art Thou and my weed guy said that he liked the tint they shot the movie in. About five minutes later I said “I can’t believe they shot this whole movie in a tent” 😭 i still think about this occasionally and snort.
#41
Lord of the Rings, the two towers. My dad forgot most of the first movie. He didn’t realize there were 4 hobbits. He thought it was the same 2 hobbits in every scene. We didn’t take him with us to see the 3rd film.
#42
I knew someone that thought Thanos snapping his fingers just sent a bunch of people back to their home planet.
#43
It’s not the entire plot, but when we watched the last Harry Potter movie a friend thought Snape wanted to see Harry’s green eyes again as he died because they were the color of Slytherin house.
#44
when i was a kid and i saw Hunt for Red October and i didn't know the definition of "defect" ... i had no idea what was going on the entire time.
#45
A girl I used to know went to see The Village and thought she figured out M. Night’s twist when she leaned over halfway through the movie and whispered to her friends “*I think she’s blind!*” about Bryce Dallas Howard’s character. She thought it was a secret because she wasn’t wearing sunglasses.
Meanwhile, she figured out the ACTUAL twist and thought it was “common sense”. People on the spectrum will always surprise and amaze me….
#46
Years ago I took my nana to see “Failure to Launch” about a grown man (Matthew McCaughnehy) who still lives at home with his parents. So they hire this woman (Sarah Jessica Parker) who gets man babies to move out. For a living. My nana had a small drinking problem. And I’d come pick her up for the movies and she would be tipsy. Then she would always sober up halfway through the movie and be confused about the plot. This particular movie only had like 4 or 5 people in the theater. Including us. So when she sobered up and started asking questions, everyone could hear. This time she said.
“Oh I get it. She’s like a hooker?”.
#47
On the Podcast This American Life, they told this story of a woman whose favourite movie was Sound of Music. Her family watched the VHS tape at a cabin that was left behind. Later as an adult, some friends were talking about Nazis in the movie and she replied, “what Nazis?” She had only seen the first half of the movie, up until the wedding. The second VHS tape was missing from the cabin. It was just a lovely romance to her.
Ariom Dahl 3 weeks ago
This movie was based on a true story. I hope she managed to see the rest of it eventually.
#48
When I was a child I watched the first tobey maguire spiderman and there's a scene where after he gets his powers he has his shirt off for the first time and is muscular. My mum was like "I don't think that's his real body" and I thought that meant he wore another human's skin over his so that he could have muscles for that scene. I thought it was literally a dead person's preserved skin.
Carl Roberts 3 weeks ago
"When I was a child I watched the first Spider-Man". You were child in 2002. Thanks for making me feel ancient.
#49
My mom watched Breaking Bad and then promptly forgot most of it, then watched El Camino. She thought Todd was a cop and Jesse was being imprisoned for selling meth, but didn't understand why his cell was a hole in the ground instead of an actual prison.
#50
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.
What do you think ?
Emma S 3 weeks ago (edited)
I was embarrassingly far into the movie Memento before I realised it was being told backwards.
Nikole 3 weeks ago
My roommate in college (Northwestern University and she was studying to be an industrial engineer, which she now is) NEVER got movies. At the end my then boyfriend and I were talking about it and she said, “Oh, it was backwards?”
Load More Replies...
Jaya 3 weeks ago
When I watched War of the Worlds (the one with Tom Cruise), I kept thinking "When is that radio show gonna start that will make people panic?" Lol. It probably took me half an hour to realize that the movie is about the original story itself and not about the radio event 😄
Apatheist Account2 3 weeks ago
I did see an Agatha Christie play - now renamed to the doubly ungrammatical And Then There Were None - and wasted the whole of the first half wondering when Poirot was going to appear. It's not a Poirot story, although it my defence, it did say on the bill that it was set on the same island as Evil Under the Sun.
Faminerst Anstemal 3 weeks ago
Tangentially relevant: I really wanted to watch the Last Airbender when it came out. I didn't know about how bad the movie was yet, and neither did I know anything about the anime - I only saw the trailer and thought it looked cool. Avatar was in the theaters around the same time. My friends and I got the tickets to Avatar, started watching the movie, and about an hour in, I'm asking them, when is that kid with the arrow on his head going to show up?
Siobhan Gournay 3 weeks ago
Below is a copy of my favourite movie synopsis ever!! This ALIEN synopsis from a Hong Kong bootleg DVD needs to be in a museum and guarded as a cultural treasure. "Space ship people get up from sleeping coffin and have eat. Computer woman find strange noisings on planet and astronauts go to seeing. Astronauts find big elephant man who dead then find too many egg. Astronaut is possess by egg demon and new egg demon is come when eat bad noodle. Seven friends and cat all try to find egg demon before space ship go home but is hard working. Who will life to escaping? Who is bad milk blood robot? Scream not working because space make deaf."
Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 3 weeks ago
When in space, stay away from bad noodle.
Load More Replies...
David Morgan 3 weeks ago (edited)
I didn't misunderstand it, but having only seen the first half of 'The Sixth Sense' as a teenager, I was fairly patronising when correcting someone else about plot details - turns out they'd seen the whole thing. They were a lot kinder than they needed to be...
Lou Cam 3 weeks ago
I embarrassingly called out the plot twist in The Sixth Sense during the first scene because it was obvious to me...I was a bit tipsy and forgot I was in the cinema. Sorry to everyone there!
Load More Replies...
DrBronxx 3 weeks ago
We went to see what we thought was World Trade Center, but it was actually United 93. My friend leaned over and whispered "when does Nicholas Cage show up?". In retrospect, it felt kind of weird at the time seeing a trailer for the film we *thought* we were going to see, before the film we *Actually* saw. We initially put it down to the fact that we were in a cinema in a foreign country, and that's just how they did things.
WalterWhiteSavannah 3 weeks ago
I've got partial face blindness to the point I can walk past just about anyone I don't know extremely well and not notice them unless I hear their voice, but thank God it's not as bad as some of the people in this list.
Johnny McFearless 3 weeks ago
My dad brought me anime Lily C.A.T. thinking it was a cute cartoon about a kitten. I was five. Scarred for life.
Jaya 3 weeks ago
Similar experience with Fritz the cat, a cartoon about a cat who used d***s and had orgies. That was ehm.... interesting.
Load More Replies... C B Jones 3 weeks ago
It's the other way around for me. I get angry at movies a lot when it feels like the director thinks we're cretins and makes everything blindingly obvious. So I tend to mutter "Yeah, yeah, we get it, *this* is going to happen, come on, move on now" or whatever; my better half hates me for it and gives me the evils every time but I can't seem to help it...
Apatheist Account2 3 weeks ago
Hitchcock defined "suspense" and telling the audience that something is going to happen, but not telling them when.
Load More Replies...
zerofoxgiven 2 weeks ago
We watched "Theory of everything" (movie about Stephen Hawking's life) with our class in school (adult school so everyone was over 18). This was the time the movie came out, so Hawking was still alive. When his condition started getting very bad, one of the girls gasped loudly and asked: "Oh no, he's not going to die, right?" One guy told her, "No, he's alive." Girl: "What, you've seen the movie before?" Guy: "No, but he's a real life person, you know." Girl: "I'm not talking about the actor, but the guy he plays, Stephen!" Everyone just stared at her. She was 20, and never heard about Stephen Hawking. So sad.
Puppy Dancing! 3 weeks ago
I watched Shutter Island, it was so boring I fell asleep on a date. I woke up when she was killing the kids and said so his wife killed his kids why is he so normal. Of course I slept through the part where the whole thing is in an institution.
Emma S 3 weeks ago (edited)
I was embarrassingly far into the movie Memento before I realised it was being told backwards.
Nikole 3 weeks ago
My roommate in college (Northwestern University and she was studying to be an industrial engineer, which she now is) NEVER got movies. At the end my then boyfriend and I were talking about it and she said, “Oh, it was backwards?”
Load More Replies... Jaya 3 weeks ago
When I watched War of the Worlds (the one with Tom Cruise), I kept thinking "When is that radio show gonna start that will make people panic?" Lol. It probably took me half an hour to realize that the movie is about the original story itself and not about the radio event 😄
Apatheist Account2 3 weeks ago
I did see an Agatha Christie play - now renamed to the doubly ungrammatical And Then There Were None - and wasted the whole of the first half wondering when Poirot was going to appear. It's not a Poirot story, although it my defence, it did say on the bill that it was set on the same island as Evil Under the Sun.
Faminerst Anstemal 3 weeks ago
Tangentially relevant: I really wanted to watch the Last Airbender when it came out. I didn't know about how bad the movie was yet, and neither did I know anything about the anime - I only saw the trailer and thought it looked cool. Avatar was in the theaters around the same time. My friends and I got the tickets to Avatar, started watching the movie, and about an hour in, I'm asking them, when is that kid with the arrow on his head going to show up?
Siobhan Gournay 3 weeks ago
Below is a copy of my favourite movie synopsis ever!! This ALIEN synopsis from a Hong Kong bootleg DVD needs to be in a museum and guarded as a cultural treasure. "Space ship people get up from sleeping coffin and have eat. Computer woman find strange noisings on planet and astronauts go to seeing. Astronauts find big elephant man who dead then find too many egg. Astronaut is possess by egg demon and new egg demon is come when eat bad noodle. Seven friends and cat all try to find egg demon before space ship go home but is hard working. Who will life to escaping? Who is bad milk blood robot? Scream not working because space make deaf."
Bouche and Audi and Shyla, Oh My! 3 weeks ago
When in space, stay away from bad noodle.
Load More Replies... David Morgan 3 weeks ago (edited)
I didn't misunderstand it, but having only seen the first half of 'The Sixth Sense' as a teenager, I was fairly patronising when correcting someone else about plot details - turns out they'd seen the whole thing. They were a lot kinder than they needed to be...
Lou Cam 3 weeks ago
I embarrassingly called out the plot twist in The Sixth Sense during the first scene because it was obvious to me...I was a bit tipsy and forgot I was in the cinema. Sorry to everyone there!
Load More Replies... DrBronxx 3 weeks ago
We went to see what we thought was World Trade Center, but it was actually United 93. My friend leaned over and whispered "when does Nicholas Cage show up?". In retrospect, it felt kind of weird at the time seeing a trailer for the film we *thought* we were going to see, before the film we *Actually* saw. We initially put it down to the fact that we were in a cinema in a foreign country, and that's just how they did things.
WalterWhiteSavannah 3 weeks ago
I've got partial face blindness to the point I can walk past just about anyone I don't know extremely well and not notice them unless I hear their voice, but thank God it's not as bad as some of the people in this list.
Johnny McFearless 3 weeks ago
My dad brought me anime Lily C.A.T. thinking it was a cute cartoon about a kitten. I was five. Scarred for life.
Jaya 3 weeks ago
Similar experience with Fritz the cat, a cartoon about a cat who used d***s and had orgies. That was ehm.... interesting.
Load More Replies... C B Jones 3 weeks ago
It's the other way around for me. I get angry at movies a lot when it feels like the director thinks we're cretins and makes everything blindingly obvious. So I tend to mutter "Yeah, yeah, we get it, *this* is going to happen, come on, move on now" or whatever; my better half hates me for it and gives me the evils every time but I can't seem to help it...
Apatheist Account2 3 weeks ago
Hitchcock defined "suspense" and telling the audience that something is going to happen, but not telling them when.
Load More Replies... zerofoxgiven 2 weeks ago
We watched "Theory of everything" (movie about Stephen Hawking's life) with our class in school (adult school so everyone was over 18). This was the time the movie came out, so Hawking was still alive. When his condition started getting very bad, one of the girls gasped loudly and asked: "Oh no, he's not going to die, right?" One guy told her, "No, he's alive." Girl: "What, you've seen the movie before?" Guy: "No, but he's a real life person, you know." Girl: "I'm not talking about the actor, but the guy he plays, Stephen!" Everyone just stared at her. She was 20, and never heard about Stephen Hawking. So sad.
Puppy Dancing! 3 weeks ago
I watched Shutter Island, it was so boring I fell asleep on a date. I woke up when she was killing the kids and said so his wife killed his kids why is he so normal. Of course I slept through the part where the whole thing is in an institution.
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