5 Movie Fan Theories That Make More Sense Than the Movie
At some point, we've all seen the finale of a TV show or movie and thought, "I could have written a better ending than that." (We're still bitter about 24 not ending with Jack Bauer exploding from all the accumulated urine in his body, like our write-in campaign suggested.) That's why there is a thriving culture of fan theories that flood the Internet in anticipation of every show, movie or book.
Though these theories turn out to be wrong approximately 100% of the time, we like to point out the ones that really do seem to improve on what the actual writers came up with. Tell us the below movies or series wouldn't be improved if it turned out...
(To watch Cracked improve Star Wars, click here.)
Harry Potter Isn't the Chosen One; His Inept Classmate Is
In the world of Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom is the resident doofus. He's not really good at magic, he constantly forgets stuff -- even Rowling hates him, as evidenced by the fact that she included a synonym for "ass" in his name. Neville only seems to be there so that readers who aren't smart, capable or attractive will have someone to identify with.
Also to make Harry Potter look like less of a dork in comparison.
However, just like that shy kid from your school who went on to become a porn actor, later books seem to hint that there might be something more to Neville than meets the eye ...
The Awesome Fan Theory:
Basically, that Harry Potter dude was just a distraction. The "chosen one" was Neville all along.
See, the plot of all seven books revolves around the idea that Harry's life fulfills this prophecy:
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches ... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies ... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not ... ".
"Also, he'll have a goddamn sword."
The thing is, all that stuff applies to Neville, too. His parents had thrice defied Voldemort, and he was born on July 30, one day before Harry. So what power does Neville know that Voldemort doesn't? According to the theory, that could be either "the power of love" (as in Harry's case) or "herbology."
Or both, considering the way he looks at those plants.
The "Voldemort will mark him as his equal" part was a little trickier, but then again it wasn't clear how it related to Harry, either. Neville had a messed up relationship with his parents, mainly due to the fact that Voldemort had them tortured into insanity. Voldemort had some serious mommy issues, too, so in that sense Voldemort made him his equal.
But the best part of the theory, the part that makes it all come together, is the idea that Dumbledore, the principal of Wizard High, was intentionally allowing Voldemort to think Harry was the chosen one just to protect Neville. While we're not saying they should have just ditched Harry in the last book and turned the other kid into the protagonist, it would have been pretty cool to have Harry find out he wasn't the center of the universe after all, if only because it would have made the character slightly less insufferable.
"Now that I know I'm not the chosen one, I can finally get my dick tattooed."
The later books do flirt with the idea, however briefly. And it would have fit right in with Rowling's habit of pillaging the first three books to turn all the one-off magic items and half-serious gags into game-changing MacGuffins.
*Ahem*
What We Got Instead:
Potter fans of the world were treated to a stunning twist ending in which (spoiler!) Harry kills Voldemort, and then a bunch of random stuff happens because ... you know ... wizards. But even before the last book came out, Rowling actually went on the record specifically shooting the fan theory down, perhaps realizing the ending she had already written wasn't as awesome as the one fans imagined and trying to keep them from getting their hopes up.
You probably remember the end of the first Matrix movie, in which Keanu Reeves learns that he can change reality with his mind because he's actually living in a giant computer simulation. Later, in The Matrix Reloaded, he kills several sentinel robots with his new mental god-powers --- but he's not inside the Matrix anymore. He's in the real world.
More specifically, in the land of oddly elaborate hairdos and rave sex.
So what gives? Also at the end of Matrix Reloaded, one of the evil computer programs makes its way into the real world by "possessing" the body of a human, which ... doesn't make a lot of sense, when you think about it. What's going on?
The Awesome Fan Theory:
We've previously told you about a popular interpretation which holds that the "real" world of Zion is still part of the Matrix; Keanu had just moved up to another level of simulation, like in Inception. But before the third movie was released, when Matrix fans were still in the denial stage of sequel grief, there was another, more elaborate theory: Zion is a Matrix-like simulation, but one made by humans for the purpose of creating better machines.
The previous generation left something to be desired.
In this scenario, Neo and his "enlightened" fellow humans were actually machines all along, and the baffling, recursive fight scenes they experienced in Matrix Reloaded were software implanted by the humans designed to teach them to understand human pain.
"I understand now ... it sucks ass!"
These dreaming machines would presumably be discouraged from ever declaring war and killing humans in the real world, and everyone would finally be free of the conflict that has plagued futuristic mankind since they decided that a personality was an important thing to have in their coffee machines.
The reason we like this theory is that it would have been a clever play on the old "machines revolt " trope -- instead of humans letting robots take over the world again (apparently nobody in this universe paid any attention to the Terminator movies), the fact that they actually took steps to prevent that sort of shit from happening would have turned the cliche on its head and provided a Matrix-like twist ending for the trilogy.
In addition to giving an in-story excuse for Keanu's acting.
What We Got Instead:
As anyone who watched The Matrix Revolutions knows, the official explanation was that Neo had powers in the real world because fuck you, dear viewer, that's why. At one point someone says something about Neo's powers coming from "The Source," without actually bothering to explain what "The Source" is, which is probably the result of the Wachowskis saying "Don't worry, we'll figure something out in the next movie" while forgetting that this was the final film.
Above: The "Source."
Toward the end of the Twilight series, several pressing questions remain in the mind of the reader, the foremost being, "How can I introduce a constitutional amendment to stop the phrase 'sculpted, incandescent chest' from ever being used again?" But there are others: Why can't Edward, a vampire mind-reader, read the thoughts of Bella, a regular human girl? Also, how on earth is Bella pregnant with his half-vampire baby, when vampires can't father children?
What time of the day was this picture taken, and why isn't he engulfed in flames?
The fact that Bella's baby is mysteriously invisible to any kind of scan and even another vampire's precognitive powers (apparently, in Twilight vampires are basically like the X-Men) seems to suggest that something is definitely up with that particular fetus. What could the author possibly be hinting at with all these clues? What amazing plot twist could possibly justify all this drivel?
Bella is revealed to be a T-1000?
The Awesome Fan Theory:
Simple: Bella, the completely uninteresting teenage protagonist, is actually part werewolf. You thought you were reading about a boring, cliched emo girl stereotype, but that's exactly what the author wanted you to think.
The Twilight books tell us repeatedly that vampire powers go haywire when it comes to their ancient enemies, the werewolves. If Bella possessed a weird combination of human and werewolf DNA, it would explain why Edward couldn't read her mind, why the vampires couldn't see her baby's future and possibly how the hell she got pregnant in the first place.
Everyone knows a werewolf uterus is more resistant than a regular one.
Think about it: That whole "vampire powers go crazy" stuff could easily include making their sperm count go up while inside a werewolf -- sure, why not? They just never found out about it because vampires and werewolves hate each other so much. This could also explain why Jacob, the most eligible werewolf bachelor, has the hots for dull Bella: it's just genetics. Also, Jacob didn't find out he had werewolf blood until the second book, so there's a precedent for this stuff.
Awful tattoos are an early warning sign of lycanthropy.
More importantly, making Bella and Jacob long-lost first cousins would have utilized the time-tested Star Wars Incest Love Triangle Escape Clause. Finally, Bella's human/werewolf/vampire hybrid baby could have ended the vampire vs. werewolf conflict by linking them to a common bloodline, like a significantly more sparkly version of a medieval dynastic marriage.
What We Got Instead:
We sure did get an explanation for Bella's special powers: She is an incredibly unique and beautiful snowflake, and everybody loves her. Seriously -- that's it. It turned out that the vampires couldn't see the baby's future because the fetus was "wrapped in something."
"There it is. Miss, your son is covered in bullshit plot twists."
As for the mysterious impregnation, the author fixed that plot hole by having some guy walk in and tell everyone that male vampires can in fact impregnate human females, but that it happens so rarely that everyone sort of forgot about it. Apparently, vampires throughout history have been very strict about always using contraceptives and never, ever raping people.
Seriously, why is he not on fire now?
Oh, and the Jacob/Bella/Edward triangle is "solved" when Jacob falls deeply in love with Bella's recently born baby ... but the less said about that the better.
Battlestar Galactica's Cylons Are Robot Syphilis
In the 2004 version of Battlestar Galactica, the nearly obliterated human race is fighting the cylons, a race of artificial life forms that were once robots but who have become physically identical to humans. In fact they're so identical to humans that near the end of the show, four regular characters realized that they were cylons all along and never even knew it.
This is why you should always watch your lover's spine during intercourse.
It sounds like a pretty cool twist, except for the fact that it didn't really make a lot of sense: One of these characters had lived among humans for decades before the human-cylon war even started, for example. Another had fathered a perfectly normal child with his human wife, even though cylon/human babies were supposed to be a huge deal.
And yet no one gave a crap about that kid.
Given that it clearly made no sense that these characters were cylons from the beginning and that the series went on a yearlong hiatus immediately after dropping that bomb, the fans were left with nothing to do but comb through earlier episodes in search of an explanation. And they actually found one ...
The Awesome Fan Theory:
Cylons have a sexually transmitted disease.
Above: chrome space gonorrhea.
According to this theory, cylonism is a virus, and the method of transmission is sex. It actually makes perfect sense when you look at the series. During the course of the show, all four characters had either slept with cylons or slept with people who'd enjoyed some cylon lovin' themselves.
There's not a whole lot to do in space.
Basically, every single one of these characters can be traced back to a cylon ... through fucking: Chief Tyrol's ex turned out to be a cylon sleeper agent; Colonel Tigh's wife slept with a male cylon (and was later revealed to be a cyclon herself); Tory slept with Baltar, a man with a robot fetish so extreme he'd allowed a sexy cylon spy to destroy his home planet; and Anders was married to Starbuck, who also slept with Baltar and possibly with a cylon, too.
The show could have added an important message to its plot twist: when you're fighting a war against murderous machines who walk among you as humans, always use protection.
Or, you know, try not to sleep around so much, sexy people.
What We Got Instead:
As we've mentioned before, the complex storyline of Battlestar Galactica was completely made up on the fly... which is probably why the final episodes ended up giving us a series of half-assed explanations that made way less sense than the robo-syphilis theory.
Turns out the four human cylons were actually ancient immortal beings also called cylons who, through a series of implausible plot twists and coincidences, ended up marooned on Earth with false memories. Oh, and remember Chief Tyrol's half-cylon baby? He wasn't really his son, because his wife cheated on him with some guy and -- goddammit, what is it with these people?
Keep it in your microSD slots, kids.
One of the most intriguing aspects of the original Star Wars trilogy was the brief mention of something called "The Clone Wars" -- in the first film, those three words alone are enough to change Luke's perception of Obi-Wan Kenobi from "cave-dwelling old creep" to "badass space warrior." The thing is, in those early movies they never actually told us what exactly the Clone Wars was, which somehow makes it sound even more epic: For over two decades, literally the only thing fans knew about it was that it involved clones and warring.
Plus more than two Jedi at a time, which automatically made it awesome.
Of all the wild theories fans came up with during those cold, lonely Star Wars-less decades, there's one that stands out ...
The Awesome Fan Theory:
The "clones" were artificially grown Jedi, and Obi-Wan was one of them -- thus the clone designation "OB-1."
Picture this: Millions of cloned Jedi Knights battling across planets and spaceships in a badass whirlwind of laser-force space death. A "star war," if you will. It makes sense: If you had to clone someone to create an army of warriors, a powerful Jedi would be the most logical choice.
And the most illogical would be these dudes.
According to this theory, the name Obi-Wan Kenobi is actually a transliteration of his serial number: OB-1, first in a line of star-warring space wizards. In the first movie, Obi-Wan uses the alias "Ben Kenobi," supposedly because he's hiding from the Empire, but that doesn't really make sense: Why would you keep the same last name if you didn't want to be found? This would explain where the alias came from: It was the name of the original Jedi he was cloned from (and therefore his "father").
Oh, and it closes a gigantic plot hole in the prequels: The reason the old man Obi-Wan doesn't seem to remember any of the events of the prequels (such as not remembering having ever seen the droids before, or that Darth Vader built Threepio) is that the old man is just a clone. Also, imagine the awesomeness of the surprise ending they could have included in Episode II, in which the future Darth Vader starts his march toward evil by pushing the original Obi-Wan Kenobi off of one of those high walkways they apparently design into every spaceship.
"Sure, it's a major security risk, but they just look so cool."
What We Got Instead:
In Episode II: Attack of the Clones, we find out that the Clone Wars was actually a war between some crappy robots and ... an army of Boba Fetts. The Jedi are sort of standing in between, and then they're all killed by the Boba Fetts. Yeah.
Oh yeah. These guys are way cooler than an endless apocalyptic horde of Jedi.
As for Obi-Wan, he forgot all about R2-D2 and C-3PO after spending three whole movies with them because ... you know what, at this point we don't even care.
We do care about our new Adventures in Jedi School mini-series, though.
For more crazy fan creations that are oddly awesome, check out 6 Insane Fan Theories That Actually Make Great Movies Better and The 5 Most Baffling Sex Scenes in the History of Fanfiction.
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