Cinematic Surprise Quotes

I think, in Japan, animation isn't relegated to being a genre unto itself. It's just a medium by which you can tell any number of stories, be it horror or action or adventure or drama or whatever, and we're trying to do that as well. Every film that you go see from Pixar, we're hoping is a little bit of a surprise.

It goes all the way back to 'Psycho.' Movies with twists like that are memorable because they're so simple.

The weird thing about film, which I don't really care for, is that I'm always surprised when I see the film. One way or another, I'm always surprised.

Sometimes the best experiences are when I know nothing about this movie: I've never met the director, and I come and see something and I'm blank, because then it's coming at you in a way it would never come at you if you'd read the script, with an expectation.

What doesn't draw you into a Coen Bros. movie. It's amazing. I can't believe it! They're the Coen Bros. It's ridiculous.

My first experience of that was with my first movie which I did in India. And it was so different from other people. I find that "Oh my God." Every time the music is slow I feel that people are going to get up and go out. You get this nervousness. But, to my surprise, people starting singing the song even before it came in. They started singing along a week later, after release, which was very cool.

A film in Bollywood was truly unexpected.

I have done films where we all thought the director didn't know what he was doing and it is going to be a gobble gobble turkey. And you go and watch it and it is great.

When I see the first dailies on any movie, I usually feel that I had no idea how this combination of ingredients was going to mix together, what it was going to produce.

As a filmmaker you have to keep asking yourself the question are we really going to impress them [audience] either by the wow factor, the intelligence factor, the I didn't see that coming factor?

I think most films are too predictable. They follow familiar patterns. I suppose audiences like to know where they stand but I like films that take me by surprise, take unexpected turns and twists.

I always want to confuse people in terms of any kind of image and be unpredictable in any kind of movie I make.

I love going to theatres and seeing honest little indie films I know nothing about... being surprised by a beautiful film I had no expectations about but just got lost in. I'd like to do more well-written indies. I don't know exactly what my dream role will be yet, but it's somewhere within that realm.

It's not like the original movie where you thought it was the mother committing the murders, but it was actually the son. I don't think it's possible to create the kind of shock today that we created in 1959. And I don't even want to try.

I heard that the same thing occurred in a scene in Alien, where the creature pops out of the chest of a crewman. The other actors didn't know what was to happen; the director wanted to get true surprise.

Mass-market movies have become about one thing. They kind of declare themselves right off the bat. . . . But when I go to see (a film), I want to be surprised. I want to see something I never expected. And when you get that, it should be celebrated.

Maybe my movie isn't over, I say, because sometimes moviemakers trick the audience with a false bad ending, and just when you think the movie is going to end badly, something dramatic happens, which leads to the happy ending. This seems like a good spot for something dramatic to happen, especially since it's my birthday.

My most enjoyable movie going experiences have always been going to a movie theater, sitting there and the lights go down and a film comes on the screen that you don't know everything about, and you don't know every plot turn and every character movement that's going to happen.

The joy of making a genre film is that you have audiences in that place, and it's a perfect place to start because all it takes is finding ways to startle them out of that complacency and encourage a different kind of engagement.

Some of the best movie experiences I've had are when I just walked by the theater and decided to see a movie I hadn't heard anything about and bought a ticket, because that's really the first time you can experience it untainted.

There are so many movies like this, where you thought you were smarter than the screen but the director was smarter than you, of course he's the one, of course it was a dream, of course she's dead, of course, it's hidden right there, of course it's the truth and you in your seat have failed to notice in the dark.

I've done really well so far in my career by trusting the audience to be as dissatisfied with convention as I am, as a film-goer. You want to go see a film that surprises you in some way.

I enjoy turning things on the audience. I really like working in genre because people come into the films with certain expectations. They know the tropes so well that, when you turn on those, it can be shocking because there's a complacency that comes with watching those films.