Almost every movie has a handful of coincidences in its narrative, but some are so littered with lucky accidents that they become convoluted and unbelievable. Coincidences aren’t inherently bad for a fictional story, as they are frequent in real life and they can help add tension. Butch running into Marcellus Wallace in Pulp Fiction is a great example of a coincidence adding to a film by making it more engaging and pushing the story forward.
A good rule of thumb is that coincidences are excusable when they create conflict and burdensome when they resolve it. However, this is not a hard and fast rule, as a film whose conflict is entirely driven by coincidences can become tedious and unsatisfying. Certain movies rely too much on coincidences and push the realm of believability. Usually, they twist and bend the narrative in unnatural ways to hit certain plot points, frustrating viewers in the process.
10 Kingsman: The Golden Circle
Sequels often have a problem with coincidences, as a similar plot happening to the same group of people more than once is inherently coincidental. However, some sequels use lucky accidents to call back to or even undo certain events from the previous film. This is the case in Kingsman: The Golden Circle, which uses a series of coincidences to retcon Colin Firth’s death from the first movie. The Kingsmen just so happen to investigate their American counterpart, who just so happen to be the ones who saved Firth but didn’t say anything for years. It’s an unsatisfying way to bring back a beloved character, and it doesn’t make much sense.
9 Batman v Superman
The first chunk of Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman does a pretty successful job of explaining why the two heroes are at odds. However, it undoes all that work by turning the narrative to Lex Luthor’s convoluted plot, which is heavily reliant on a series of random events, as well as characters acting irrationally. It’s fine when a character makes a bad decision, but when it is revealed to all be part of a master plan, it makes the choices seem forced by the writer. While the extended cut cleans up some of these coincidences, the narrative is still bogged down, making the film feel overly convoluted.
8 Ready Player One
While its narrative is cleaner than the book it’s based on, Ready Player One is a film strung together by a series of coincidences. Despite meeting on the worldwide server of the OASIS, all the main characters just so happen to live in the same major city but have never realized this. Every challenge within the OASIS is solved by some knowledge the main character conveniently stumbles across, even though the entire world is trying to win the same game as him. Ready Player One is a confused celebration of nostalgia, and it isn’t as clever as it wants to be.
7 Skyfall
In the aftermath of The Dark Knight, several blockbusters tried to recapture the success of the Joker by having a villain with a master plan that involves getting captured by the hero. However, not every story supports this type of beat, and the James Bond adventure Skyfall suffers because of it. The villain Silva has a convoluted scheme dependent on Bond having a micro-GPS tracker and Q mistakenly giving him access to MI6’s servers. Silva simply knows too many specifics about what is going to happen, making the story seem flimsy instead of making its villain seem intelligent.
6 Red Notice
When it debuted, Red Notice quickly became Netflix’s most-watched movie of all time. Despite this, there is an unfortunate number of coincidences in the film’s narrative. At first glance, Red Notice appears to be a breezy buddy action/adventure film, making these somewhat excusable. However, the reveal that the entire plot was planned well in advance by both Dwayne Johnson’s and Gal Gadot’s characters puts the entire plot into question, as there is just no way that they could have taken into account every little thing that happened along the way.
5 World War Z
The novel that World War Z is based on does not have a central protagonist. It is instead made up of a series of people retelling events that happened to them in the zombie apocalypse. That narrative framework works well for a book, but it makes less sense for a huge blockbuster with Brad Pitt set to star. The film takes these disparate stories and centers them all around one character. In order to have all these events happen to one guy, the film becomes over-reliant on coincidences, as Pitt’s lead just so happens to be in the right place at the right time for nearly the entire runtime.
4 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
Originally pitched as separate adventures that take place in the same world as Harry Potter, the Fantastic Beast movies quickly became more and more connected to the wider lore of the Wizarding World. Centering the narrative on Dumbledore and his famous battle with Gellert Grindelwald, the films had difficulty justifying why characters like Newt Scamander were involved at all. The Crimes of Grindelwald is the worst offender on this front, as characters seem to randomly stumble into a plot that has nothing to do with them.
3 Now You See Me
The majority of the magician heist movie is unbelievable, but once Now You See Me‘s ending twist happens, the film really goes off the rails. It’s revealed that the detective chasing the main group of characters was actually pulling the strings the entire time. Much like Red Notice, Now You See Me is more focused on delivering a surprising twist than a satisfying narrative. Its master plan doesn’t make much sense, and it raises questions about whether something like this could ever happen in real life.
2 Spider-Man: No Way Home
Spider-Man: No Way Home was a cultural event, and the three Spider-Men teaming up is a movie moment that will be remembered for years. However, to get to that point, the film twists itself into a convolved mess. Ned being a wizard, the villains coming only from the other live-action movie universes, and what they remember and what they don’t are all details the audience just has to go with to get to three Spider-Men. In the end, the film makes it seem worth it. However, as a story, No Way Home is messy, filled with beats that feel unnatural, and creates Spider-Man plot holes the MCU needs to fix.
1 The Rise of Skywalker
The final film in the Skywalker Saga tries to accomplish a lot. It not only wants to serve as a satisfying end for its saga, but it also strives to please fans unhappy with The Last Jedi. Sadly, the film fails to do either, as it mostly functions as a series of coincidences that undo narrative beats from previous Star Wars movies. Not only is The Rise of Skywalker littered with annoying coincidences, like the heroes happening to crash in quicksand that leads them to where they want to go, but the reveal that Rey is a Palpatine makes most of The Force Awakens a coincidence in hindsight.
