Movies with incomprehensible plots?

I was watching the Disney movie “Monsters Inc” the other day and I admit that I could not understand at all what it was about. I was completely lost and it really affected my enjoyment of the movie. Can anyone tell me what exactly the premise was because I couldn’t figure it out.

what popular movies have you seen recently that were incomprehensible to you?

 

from the wiki

In a world inhabited by monsters, the city of Monstropolis is powered by energy from the screams of human children. At the Monsters, Inc. factory, skilled monsters employed as "scarers" venture into the human world to scare children and harvest their screams, through doors that activate portals to children's bedroom closets. The field is considered dangerous, as human children are believed to be toxic. Energy production is falling because children are becoming less easily scared, and the company's CEO, Henry J. Waternoose III, is determined to find a solution to the problem. James P. "Sulley" Sullivan and his best friend, Michael "Mike" Wazowski, are the organization's top employees, but their chief rival, Randall Boggs, is close behind.

One evening after work, Sulley discovers that someone has left an active door on the scare floor. As he inspects the door, a small girl enters the factory. After several failed attempts by Sulley to put her back, Randall sends the door back into the factory's door storage vault, and Sulley takes the girl out of the factory in a duffel bag. He inadvertently interrupts Mike's date with his receptionist girlfriend, Celia Mae, at a Japanese sushi restaurant, and chaos erupts when the girl gets loose. Sulley and Mike manage to escape with the girl before the Child Detection Agency (CDA) arrives and quarantines the restaurant. They soon discover that the girl is not toxic, and that her laughter generates an immense amount of power. Sulley grows attached to her and calls her "Boo", while Mike is anxious to be rid of her.

The duo smuggle Boo back into the factory disguised as a baby monster and attempt to send her home, but Randall, who had been waiting in ambush for Boo, mistakenly kidnaps Mike. He straps Mike to the "Scream Extractor", a large machine capable of forcefully extracting screams from kidnapped human children, thus solving the monster world's energy crisis. Before Randall can test the machine on Mike, Sulley saves Mike, and the pair report to Waternoose about Randall's plan. However, Waternoose reveals that he and Randall are working together and exiles Mike and Sulley to the Himalayas while keeping Boo with him. The two are taken in by the Abominable Snowman, who tells them about a nearby village, which Sulley realizes he can use to return to the factory. Sulley prepares to return, but Mike refuses to go with him, blaming Sulley's stubbornness for their situation.

Sulley returns to the factory and rescues Boo from the Scream Extractor, but is attacked by Randall. Mike returns to reconcile with Sulley and accidentally helps him overpower Randall. With Randall in pursuit, Mike and Sulley take Boo and escape into the door vault. Mike invokes Boo's laughter, which causes all the doors to activate at once, allowing the monsters to freely pass in and out of the human world. Randall attempts to kill Sulley, but Boo overcomes her fear of Randall and attacks him, enabling Sulley to catch him. Sulley and Mike then trap Randall in the human world, where two residents at a trailer park mistake him for an alligator and beat him with a shovel.

Mike and Sulley locate Boo's door, but Waternoose, accompanied by the CDA, brings the door down to the scare floor. Mike distracts the CDA while Sulley escapes with Boo and her door. He leads the pursuing Waternoose into the company's simulation room, where Mike records Waternoose angrily declaring his plan to salvage the company by kidnapping children. As Waternoose is arrested by the CDA, he reprimands Sulley for destroying the company and worsening the energy crisis. The scare floor administrator Roz reveals herself to be the head of the CDA, who had been working undercover to find the mastermind of the company's internal actions. Roz thanks Mike and Sulley for their help and allows Sulley to return Boo home, but she has Boo's door demolished to prevent any monsters from making further contact with her. Sulley, inspired by his experiences with Boo, concocts a plan to retool the company's power generation method to harvest children's laughter instead of screams, as laughter is ten times more potent.

With the energy crisis solved, Sulley is named the new CEO of Monsters, Inc. Mike takes Sulley aside, revealing he has rebuilt Boo's door. It needs one final piece, which Sulley took as a memento, in order to work. Sulley puts the door chip into place, enters and joyfully reunites with Boo.

 

Godfather II - the while Hyman Roth plot. It took me decades to understand that story. Godfather III was similar.

But the movies look great and are endlessly quoteable.

Kubrick knows how to make a perfectly good story incomprehensible - 2001 and The Shining being top examples. At least 2001 has some breathtkinf visuals.

 

Tenet certainly deserves a mention here.

 

Of all the movies to become confused by, that's the one that got to you?

Monsters scare kids to generate energy for their world. One of the kids gets back into Monstrpolis. Big monster needs to deal with this. The end!

 

'Tenet" is really simple at its core: madman wants to end the world, "Protagonist" attempts to stop him.

Everything else is just windowdressing...

 

I still have no idea what Tomorrowland is about.

 

i think audiences had a bit of trouble with
Donny Darko
pi
A lot of Terrence Malick movies.

 

Thanks for synopsis. It sure did help!

 

Malick movies tend to not really be plot-driven. They're much more about visuals and atmosphere than coherent story points, so I think if you enter them with that notion, you'll be better off.

"Darko" definitely is confusing - the director's commentary helps explain a lot of it. It's still a good movie, even when it seems confusing.

The same director's "Southland Tales" is even more confusing but not nearly as intriguing.

Just watched it the other day - what a steaming mess! The audio commentary also tries to explain the story, but it doesn't help - the movie's beyond redemption!

 

You're welcome!

Honestly never thought of "Monsters Inc" as a movie with a confusing story. Maybe some of the issues with the CEO and his evil plans made it murkier for you?

This was my synopsis from my review, BTW - a little more detailed than what I wrote earlier :

"Monsters Inc. operates from the basic childhood fear that monsters lurk in our closets. Actually, it turns out that they use closets simply as portals to get into kids’ bedrooms. From there, they terrify them to nab wee screams, which they use to power their own monster realm. We meet a successful scream-catcher team. James P. “Sulley” Sullivan (John Goodman) does the prime terrifying, while his assistant Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) runs the behind the scenes machinery to capture the shrieks.

All goes well for the boys, at least until one disastrous outing. After hours, Sulley finds a mysterious door and tries to check out why it’s there. By accident, a tot comes back to Monstropolis with them. As it happens, monsters feel absolutely terrified of little kids, and they even think there’s nothing more toxic and harmful than the touch of a child; when one monster returns with a tiny sock stuck to his back, the authorities go ballistic to prevent contamination.

Not surprisingly, it causes a panic when little “Boo” (Mary Gibbs) invades their world. The authorities discover her presence, so Mike and Sulley need to find a way to deal with the child problem. That complicates when they discover a plot led by competitor Randall (Steve Buscemi), and it doesn’t help that Sulley and Boo become pretty attached to each other. The rest of the movie follows attempts to keep Boo undercover from the authorities while they also avoid the problems posed by sleazy Randall."

 

I got that much, it was just trying to decode said window dressing that was a bit confounding.

 

Hmmm...there are tons of movies with plot holes which makes them incomprehensible only in the sense that the plots were mishandled and/or poorly written to begin with.

There are some plots that are nebulous on purpose.

Outside of that I can't think of a single film that I didn't understand, unless you count stories that should have been cleaned up well before shooting: a result of poor quality control. But even those I recognize as poor cinema, thus I "understand."

Otherwise, art is up to interpretation, so internalize what you will and take that along.

 

Yeah that synopsis is definitely way out there. What were the script writers thinking

 

I had no problems with Monsters Inc.

How about "Where Eagles Dare" or "The Big Sleep". In those cases they are true to the novels, whose plots are quite hard to follow.

 

Cloud Atlas for me

 

The 90's version of Moulin Rouge

 

Yeah, Nolan likes to overcomplicate his movies.

I think he's a great director, but his pretensions come off strongly!

 

Rollover (film) - Wikipedia

 

yea Godfather III for sure

Dr Parnassus, though Tom is always a hoot

 

Well, he was an art major so sometimes things get set aside in his films because something looks cool.

 

Apparently, it's all about an audience learning patience. Or, getting your nerve to pick up your stuff and leave the theater, in time to watch something at home on Netflix.

I mean, it worked for me, but, I start to feel sorry for those who are perfectly comfortable with a theatrical cut instead of taking the time with a Criterion box set to fully absorb whatever you might have missed in a cinema. But some people just cannot stand the idea of a movie taking its' own sweet time for you to find out what it's all about, rather than being telegraphed in the first 10 minutes, what it's going to be about!

 

I have some friends who will never let them get "suckered" into seeing another Malick film again, for just that reason. Which is a shame, because they so totally deserve to be watched in a darkened room with nothing to concentrate on but the visual.

My wife and I have the worst time with confusing narratives, because she will badger me up the wall to get me to admit I have no idea what's actually happening with some films, while I'm just pleading with her to sit tight, and let the narrative play out the way it wants to, instead of the spoon-fed manner she wants it to.

Indeed, I am soooooo glad I had the opportunity to watch 2001 three times, and read the novelization, before I'd ever met her...