It could be argued that movies rely too much on surprise these days. You could slog through two hours of stale popcorn only to find out the key to the mystery our heroes have been trying to solve was something everyone on screen knew but didn’t tell the audience, or it was all a dream, or it was Adam Sandler playing his own twin sister the whole time. It’s just lazy writing.
That’s not to say a big reveal is never effective — if anything, it’s an insult to the ones that are truly enthralling. For Redditor Jburg12, “examples would be the coffee mug scene in (The) Usual Suspects or the poster scene in (The) Shawshank Redemption.”
They then asked r/AskReddit, “What are the best ‘reveal’ scenes in film?” and the answers, of course, couldn’t be anything but revealing.
Jurassic Park
Soylent Green
Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Gladiator
Watchmen
Wreck-It Ralph
Ocean’s Eleven
Memento
The Silence of the Lambs
The Departed
Oldboy
The Prestige
The Dark Knight
V for Vendetta
The Orphanage
Frailty
A Beautiful Mind
Primal Fear
Saw
Alien
Seven
The Empire Strikes Back
Content shared from www.cracked.com.