I’ve watched shows, movies, read comics or listened to podcasts where there is a lot of build up around a mystery, only for the end to be lackluster. In these the journey itself was more riveting than where we ended up. What are some instances where the answer lived up to the hype?

  • 50MYT@aussie.zone
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    3 个月前

    Primer

    The mystery is working out what’s going on. The answer is a way cooler outcome than what you thought going in.

        • inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world
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          3 个月前

          Eh. You’re allowed to disagree, and I wasn’t even born when those movies came out so I didn’t really experince it as a cultural moment.But personally I don’t find 'em that fun or interesting. I’ve watched primer at least half a dozen times, but I’ll never choose to watch Back again.

  • Diddlydee@feddit.ukEnglish
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    3 个月前

    The man from earth (2007). Low budget but a great movie, particularly if you know nothing about it beforehand.

  • xyguy@startrek.websiteEnglish
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    3 个月前

    Id say quite a few Twilight Zone episodes had endings that were better than the mystery. But of course, there were just as many episodes where the opposite was true.

  • SSTF@lemmy.world
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    3 个月前

    Basically every episode of Columbo. The mystery isn’t the crime, but how he’s going to solve it.

    • Vanth@reddthat.comEnglish
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      3 个月前

      The subgenre Columbo falls under is a “howcatchem” or an inverted detective story, as opposed to the more typical “whodunnit”.

      Just in case OP likes that setup and wants to keyword search for more. One I like and has a second season in works is Poker Face starring Natasha Lyonne.

      • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
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        3 个月前

        Not sure the genre or trope, but Poker Face (and 6 Feet Under), the additional subgenre for me is “who’s gonna die in the first scene”.

      • ApollosArrow@lemmy.worldOP
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        3 个月前

        The closest I’ve watched in the last decade to something like this may be BBC’s Sherlock. Does that fall in the same category?

        • Vanth@reddthat.comEnglish
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          3 个月前

          It’s been a while for me and I never did watch all of them, but no, I think Sherlock is a whodunnit, heavy on the drama, plus the twist of some narration from Watson’s blog.

          The first episode opens with several people seemingly taking a pill to commit suicide. But someone is making them do it somehow. We don’t know who, we don’t know why. Who did it? Whodunnit genre.

          Where if it were a Howcatchem genre, the identity of the baddie is revealed up front and the episode is about how the detective figures it out and nails them. How did the detective catch them? Howcatchem.

          Monk, if you ever saw that one, would sometimes do whodunnit episodes and sometimes howcatchem episodes.

          • ApollosArrow@lemmy.worldOP
            0·
            3 个月前

            There is a mix of both throughout the show, especially in the Irene Adler The Woman episode. You already know she is behind a few criminal things from the start. There is also another case within that same episode where someone died next to a river, and one of the draws of the case is that Sherlock figured it out instantly, but doesn’t want to tell anyone what the answer is. It is slowly revealed in bits over the episode of what he figured out.

            I may give Columbo a shot since it’s an older show I have put off trying. And Monk has also been sitting on my list.

  • KittenBiscuits@lemm.eeEnglish
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    3 个月前

    When it was first released, The Sixth Sense ending blew everyones’ minds.

    Usual Suspects and Se7en as well.

    • ApollosArrow@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 个月前

      All three great answers. I thoroughly enjoyed them. I’ve been trying to get my wife to watch Se7en or Usual Suspects for years.

    • Vanth@reddthat.comEnglish
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      3 个月前

      My youngest sister has never watched Sixth Sense so that’s the plan the next time one of us visits the other.

      I suspect even though she doesn’t know the twist, it has invaded pop culture references and memes enough that she will figure it out early on in the movie. I remember even just knowing there was A Twist^TM was enough for me to spot what was coming much earlier on than the reveal. Really looking forward to seeing what she thinks of the movie from her Gen Z perspective.

    • stringere@sh.itjust.works
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      3 个月前

      Fun fact about Fenster’s weird accent: Benicio Del Toro decided that he was playing a “Black Chinese Puerto Rican Jew”.

  • Sʏʟᴇɴᴄᴇ@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 个月前

    The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell comes to mind. A Jesuit priest is the only survivor of a first-contact flight to an alien world and returns horribly disfigured in mind and body and refuses to talk about what happened. We slowly learn what happened to everyone as the story unfolds. Great SF novel and not religious, although it explores religion.

  • Drusas@fedia.io
    0·
    3 个月前

    A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul G. Tremblay comes to mind.

    I don’t know that the payoff is necessarily better than the mystery, but the show Dark is a great mystery story as well.

    • ApollosArrow@lemmy.worldOP
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      3 个月前

      This is one hard to say. Dark is one of my favorite shows, but I do think the journey is better, the journey is kind of the process for the acceptance of the finale, so it does make sense.

  • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    3 个月前

    The Sixth Sense. I didn’t predict the twist because I didn’t know it had a twist, so when it dropped, it absolutely delivered.

    Same with Memento, but less so, because I was actively trying to work out what was happening. The twist caught me by surprise, but I knew some sort of reveal was coming