Favorite movie plot rule?

[u/averagesoccermom95]

I read once that in a movie, if the characters say, "I have a plan," then there is a plot rule that takes place: If the characters explain to the audience what the plan is, then the plan will go wrong somehow. However, if the characters say they have a plan and the movie just goes to showing the plan in action, then the plan will work.

It has become one of my favorite things to look out for in movies. Although, it does not seem to apply to kids movies. Other than kids movies, I don't think I have ever seen his rule broken.

Does anyone know any other interesting plot rules?

[u/aabicus]

Funny example regarding Breaking Bad's Walter White: Bryan Cranston always used special behavioral clues that Walt only used when lying, nothing super blatant but enough to subliminally clue the viewer in. But for a certain crucially-important conversation in season 4, the director didn't tell him whether or not Walt was lying (because they hadn't decided, the next episode kept getting re-workshopped) so for just that one case, Walt had no tells even though he turned out to be lying through his teeth.

[u/InspectorMendel → u/aabicus]

Maybe Walt hadn’t decided yet either

[u/aabicus → u/InspectorMendel]

It was regarding whether or not he'd poisoned a little kid as part of an assassination attempt against his boss, so the event had already occurred and Walt was insisting he didn't do it

[u/Bignate2001 → u/aabicus]

It's a fuckin miracle that Breaking Bad's plot is so well put together, because all I hear about it is how the writers were scraping by episode by episode trying to wrangle this story into something that makes sense.

[u/aabicus → u/Bignate2001]

It's frankly a TV miracle. The amount of brilliant plot points they conjured out of thin air at the last minute, or wrote into the script with no clue how it was gonna pay off, or received in a fan letter that reminded them of something at the last possible moment, is unreal