Life is full of surprises, pleasant and painful. It sounds like a message from a Hallmark postcard, but there can be no surprise without some expectations attached to a certain thing, and this is what the most successful movies and TV shows are based on.

We expect the sun to rise every day. We (at least some of us) expect our four-legged friend to bark every time someone knocks on the door. We expect to be able to leave the house without risking catching a virus that appeared in a Chinese city thousands or tens of thousands of kilometers away from us and that no one had heard of three years ago.

People tell and consume stories to better understand themselves and the world in which we live. We look for stories that give us a safe place to experience scary situations and think about how we would react if we were the characters in them.

Attention, spoilers ahead!

For example, a movie A knock on the cabin by suspense director M. Night Shymalan, who dethroned this weekendAvatar: The Way of Water after leading the North American box office for nearly two months, it presents a situation where parents are given a choice: save their family or save the world.

They must sacrifice a member of their family so that all of humanity can survive.

No one expects such a choice. The knock on their cabin door is not a pleasant surprise. And as Szymalan’s film hits theaters around the world, including Romania, in early February, The Conversation website offers an interesting discussion about the best twists in the history of some exciting films and series.

American psychologist Vera Tobin, in her book The Elements of Suspense: Our Mental Limits and the Pleasure of Plot, argues that suspense in stories tells us about our own subjectivity and mental “shortcuts.”

Simply put, stories give us important clues about how people think. In her book, Tobin talks about what she describes as a well-constructed surprise: A story with a good surprise is one that makes us quickly rethink the events we’ve just seen, feeling that the evidence for that interpretation was there all along—that the surprise must be not only unexpected, but also revealing.

Tobin suggests 5 interrelated ways in which stories create surprises: paradigm shift, carefully managed revelations, clarification of information, withholding of information, and enjoyment of the text.

A paradigm shift in the Game of Thrones series.

A paradigm shift is when movies or television shows lead viewers to form certain expectations about one piece of information only to find another is correct.

A good example of this is Nice place, a funny and intelligent series from American director Michael Schur, which relies on a paradigm shift for its first known twist. But the series game of Thrones HBO offers us one of the most amazing paradigm shifts.

The episode with the red wedding and the return of Jon Snow was somewhat surprising, but the tone of the series was set by the beheaded Ned Stark in the penultimate episode of the first season.

The story up until that point had set the stage for Stark to become the hero of the series, and given that he was played by the famous British actor Sean Bean, it was expected that he would become the main character of the series. .

But when his head hit the ground, the paradigm shifted radically. No character was safe.

The reveal is carefully guided by the narrative

Vera Tobin, who I forgot to mention is a cognitive scientist, describes this as the way in which stories present unexpected revelations in such a way that the audience perceives the new information as a more convincing interpretation than what they thought before.

Disclosure from The Empire strikes back Darth Vader being Luke’s father is one of the most famous examples of this. But one of the most popular series of the late 90s and early 2000s came with a similarly poignant moment, even though it might seem a little syrupy to today’s viewer.

Disclosure from Buffy the Vampire Slayer the fact that Angel lost his soul after the moment of true happiness when he had sex with Buffy for the first time touched the hearts of fans around the world.

Angel’s transformation into a self-proclaimed soulless being embodied a metaphor for all those people who one day found themselves next to a person they painfully realized they no longer recognized.

Clarification of information in films and series

Misrepresentation refers to how a story appears to distort information in such a way that more accurate information may have been revealed earlier.

New series An emotionless face created by Rian Johnson, known for two films Knives away and less convincing The Last Jediis a tribute to the famous detective Columbo, with the gradual unraveling of clues that provide more and more interesting twists in each episode.

Although the audience knows who the killer is from the beginning of each episode, the process by which the character Charlie Keil, played by American actress Natasha Lyonne, uncovers clues and solves the crime takes the audience on a journey where they discover new information along the way.

Hiding Information in Movies Like Fight Club and The Usual Suspects

This happens when a story hides information that, in retrospect, was there all along. In his book, Tobin analyzes The sixth sense, another feature film directed by M. Night Shyamalan, is most about a paradigm shift. But it also hides information.

No list in this section is exhaustive Fight club David Fincher and The usual suspects directed by Bryan Singer, films that with each new viewing make the viewer aware of more clues as to why the story had a surprise ending.

Both films invite viewers to find out clues about the identity of the main character in the last 10 minutes. IN Fight clubwhen Edward Norton’s character shoots himself in the face, Brad Pitt’s Tyler Durden disappears from the story, revealing that he was an imaginary alter ego.

IN The usual suspects, Kevin Spacey’s character misleads the police just as the film misleads the audience. As Sergeant Jeff Rabin himself says (about his dingy office), shortly before the clues are revealed, “everything makes sense when you look at it properly. You have to keep up with them, you know?”

Enjoy the text in the Netflix series

An American psychologist defines “textual pleasure,” or encouraging emotional engagement, as engaging and emotional conditions for experiencing stories.

An example of this can be considered Heartstopperseries launched by Netflix last April, which uses “doodles” as drawings of leaves, hearts and stars from the graphic novels of the same name on which it is based.

These animations float and move across the screen to emphasize emotional moments in the story and give viewers visual surprises that will tug at their heartstrings.

At the other end of the emotional spectrumA quiet place, a 2018 post-apocalyptic feature film by American actor and director John Krasinki. This horror drama transports the viewer into a story world where the slightest sound can mean death (which is still in vogue these days) The last of us).

So, whether it’s a knock on the cabin door, a paradigm shift from heaven to hell, a partner who turns evil, or more, life’s surprises and plot twists in movies and TV shows make us rethink what we think we know.

I hope you enjoyed another edition of Nerd Alert this weekend. If you’re wondering what happened last week, you can find it here:

• The paradox discovered by Leonardo is clarified after 500 years / Researchers have discovered a new quantum state / When “Gladiator 2” appears