Warning: The following contains BIG SPOILERS regarding the movie Unknown, plus The Usual Suspects. Don’t read further if you plan on watching it (or if you don’t like clumsily worded blog posts – hey, you’ve been warned!)
I watched Unknown a couple of Sundays ago, and, although I enjoyed it, I left the cinema feeling dissatisfied with it. I think it has to do with how it handled the big twist. But, first things first, let’s have a look at the synopsis and see how they set the story up.
A quick look at IMDb.com gives us the following synopsis:
A man awakens from a coma, only to discover that someone has taken on his identity and that no one, (not even his wife), believes him. With the help of a young woman, he sets out to prove who he is. (imdb.com, accessed March 14, 2011)
So far, so good. These are the sort of movies I like to watch and write. Unknown starts off very promisingly. Dr Martin Harris, played by Liam Neeson, arrives in Berlin with his wife. He forgets something at the airport and returns in a taxi to retrieve it. On the way he has a near fatal car accident.
Harris awakes in a hospital. He has no ID and no memory of exactly who he is. No one has filed a missing persons report, no one has come looking for him, not even his wife. Harris flicks on th TV and sees a news report about a Bio-technology summit. This triggers a memory, and he signs out against medical advice and sets off to find his wife.
Well, things go bad for Harris when he finds his wife, and she does not recognise who he is. Even worse, another man claims to be Dr Martin Harris. What is going on? At this point in the movie I am smiling away, snuggled down in my seat, eager to delve deeper into the story. Liam’s Dr Harris had close escapes, got closer to figuring out what was going on and had a few run-ins with his doppelganger.
It was during one of these run-ins, where Liam quoted correspondence between himself and a scientist named Bressler in an effort to convince him he was the real-deal, only to have Pseudo-Harris do the same trick, that my brother whispered, “He [Liam’s Harris] is the assassin.”
My brother had picked it. When the big twist was revealed, sure enough, Liam was the assassin, and he was on a mission to kill high-ranking scientists, but the knock to his head and subsequent amnesia threw a major spanner in the works for the people he worked for.
I was stewing about this plot-reveal for the rest of the movie. It was a big twist, but for some reason I didn’t want to accept it. I kept hoping that there would be a subsequent reveal showing that Liam was not the assassin and that it was part of the bad-guys plan to have him think he was an assassin. When I left the cinema, I was still unsatisfied with the twist – something about it didn’t agree with me.
It got me to thinking, what makes a good twist? I absolutely love the twist in The Usual Suspects. Why didn’t I have that same reaction to Unknown? What is it about the other twist that is so cool?
After a little thought, I’ve come up with the following possibilities.
Initially, I invested in Harris as a ‘good’ character. He is a scientist, he is moral, he is an underdog, too. The sudden shift to him being a cold-blooded killer was too big a shift in his character. I didn’t find it an easy adjustment to make. I think there is a contrast with the revelation of Verbal’s true character in the The Usual Suspects. Verbal goes from a low-level conman, to criminal mastermind, but the essential nature of his character does not change. He is an immoral character at the start, he is an even more immoral character at the end, but it was a twist I was able to handle as he was the same sort of character, just to a greater degree. I think the reason I didn’t like the Unknown twist is that Harris went from a moral to an immoral character. Yes, he opposes his initial immorality, but I still fought against the twist, emotionally.
Another reason the twist didn’t work so well for me is that the revelation showed a conspiracy that was less complex than what I had envisioned in my head. I wanted a more elaborate conspiracy than was eventually offered. Harris being one of the bad guys made the conspiracy smaller, not bigger. His accident turned out to be a random event, I was expecting it too have been a carefully orchestrated plot. The reason his wife failed to recognise him was much more straightforward than I had imagined, too. She was actually an accomplice, rather than his wife, and the assassins simply changed their plan to accomodate Liam’s accident. I was hoping for a more extravagant, complex conspiracy at work.
So what have I learnt from The Usual Suspects and Unknown, and how can I incorporate those lessons into my own work?
Firstly, I need to ensure that the twist reveals a conspiracy that is bigger than the audience has been lead to believe. Misdirect the audience, for sure, and give their imagination red herrings and false leads to dwell on, but make sure that the final twist blows them out of the water with its cleverness and scope! Make the plans of the bad guys cleverer than the audience thinks, without descending into plot-holes or contrivances. Make sure that the things that happen are intentional plants, rather than coincidence.
Secondly, I will endeavour to keep the hero true to their initial essence, despite the twists and turns of the narrative. The audience invests in the hero (or anti-hero), and I think a twist that causes them to reject their initial investment distances them from the hero and reduces their identification with the hero. I think a twist that causes the hero to oppose their initial values could still be effective, however, provided a later twist reversed the reversal. In fact, I think that sort of twist would bring a great sense of enjoyment, provided the second reversal occurs close in time to the first reversal – distant enough to cause some perturbation and angst, but not so distant so that the audience is forced to alter their initial emotional investment and re-imagine the hero in a completely different light.
In closing, it seems to me that a great twist is a two-fold process. It certainly requires well-structured story mechanics (the plot) but it also requires careful consideration to the characters, and the impact of the twist or reversal on them. An audience can derive much satisfaction from a big twist, but done wrong, it can actually get an audience off-side and decrease their enjoyment of the story.
Unknown started off with so much promise – but I don’t think it handled the plot requirements of the twist quite right, and it distanced me with its handling of the character requirement. It had great potential, but could have been so much better.
What do you think about the big twist or reversal? What ruins it? What makes it effective? What techniques or guidelines do you use to help you in writing the ultimate twist?