People List 33 Single Scenes That Messed Up The Entire Movie Or TV Show

There are many ways film creators make movies captivating. Some rely on storytelling for that. By making the narrative engaging, understandable, relatable, and educational, storytelling holds a lot of power. In fact, some say that it is the heart and soul of filmmaking. 

Other movies count on video editing—or, better put, post-production magic. For instance, making the movie immersive is mostly done by including the senses of sight and sound, as these are the most easily fulfilled in film creation.  

With sound, makers can use spatial, binaural audio, and other sound effects to enhance realism. The visuals usually rely on the filming methods, then added effects and editing in post-production. 

Speaking of visual effects (or special effects)—they are an irreplaceable part of modern filmmaking. Typically, they are of two types—practical and digital. The former are when physical objects and techniques are used while filming, like makeup, prosthetics, animatronics, pyrotechnics, and so on. They have been used since the early days of film creation. 

Then, with the evolution of technology, digital effects came to be as well. They count on things like green screens, motion capture technology, digital compositing, and computer-generated imagery (CGI) to create needed visuals that can’t be done physically. 

At the same time, some argue that CGI has kind of ruined the movies. Here, as Erik Hoel says, nowadays makers opt for digital effects (and especially computer-generated imagery) as much as possible, neglecting physical effects to cut down on the cost and effort. This results in movies from back in the day looking more real than they do now. 

For him, this is most apparent in sci-fi and fantasy films. For example, in the remakes of, let’s say, A Nightmare on Elm Street, the effects are vastly different than they were in the originals. Also, in series like Star Wars or Matrix, the decline of physical effects is visible as well. 

Yet, CGI is not the only thing that ruins movies for people. Sometimes, a movie can be an amazing creation until one particular scene comes along and ruins everything. Whether it’s a new character joining the story, an old one returning, their acting out of character, or a new thing being revealed that changes everything—the ways in which a story can go wrong are endless. 

If you’re craving more specified examples, this list is perfect for you. It was collected from answers people had when r/AskReddit posed the question, “What single scene ruined an entire movie/franchise/ TV series?” Since they asked, the thread has gathered 18K replies, showing that plenty of people have been disappointed by scenes in their beloved stories. 

While the number sounds pretty bad, we also should remember the good old saying, “Art is subjective.” That means that, while a scene might ruin the whole experience of a movie (or TV show/franchise as it is said in the original question), others might not bat an eye. 

Maybe it doesn’t bother them as much as others, or perhaps they don’t notice it. After all, in 2024, the average attention span is 8.25 seconds—less than that of a goldfish (9 seconds). 

Either way, that doesn’t change the fact that some people can’t watch their beloved stories the same way they after the aforementioned scenes happen. Even if the controversial scene were taken out—like the scene in the TV show 13 Reasons Why was—you can’t pretend it never happened. People still remember. 

Do you have an example of a scene that ruined a story for you? Share with us in the comments!