(Spoilers for No Country For Old Men and A Cabin in the Woods)
Obviously, no one believes that literally all movies that call out or subvert tropes are good, but I feel that people often attribute positive points to movies solely for subverting expectations, even when the execution of those subversions are subpar.
One of the reasons I didn't like No Country For Old Men as much as many other people did was precisely because of this, although I would still consider it a good movie. The first half of the film is fantastic—it masterfully builds tension, has some incredible and intense battle scenes, and I like that, for the most part, the characters all make the smartest decisions they can; I could scarcely improve on any of them without the knowledge of hindsight, which is something uncommon in action movies (many movies often have an otherwise smart character acting unusually stupid to give another character a chance to take advantage).
I understand that the latter half of the movie is supposed to be a subversion of expectations and what would realistically happen to someone even as tough as Llewelyn in his situation—the protagonist dies off-screen to a group of unnamed cartel members without even facing the antagonist—but I believe that it is a lazy and unsatisfying ending to the protagonist we have built a connection to over the course of the movie, especially since his death was not even shown in the screen.
How good would the first few seasons of Game of Thrones have been if Tywin Lannister abruptly died of a disease in the beginning of Season 3, or if Jon Snow were killed by unnamed wildlings after he travels with the Night's Watch beyond the wall, as realistically someone in his position would be? How good would Breaking Bad have been if Walter White were killed by some random unnamed drug dealers in Season 2 of the show, as someone like Walt would realistically be in his position? Had there been a final showdown between Llewelyn and Anton where Llewelyn dies, with the rest of the movie playing out the exact same way it did, it would have had a satisfying conclusion while also being a subversion of the trope that the protagonist must always win; instead, I felt that it was just a cheap subversion for the sake of being a subversion.
Another highly rated movie that calls out common tropes in its genre would be A Cabin in the Woods, although it does so in a different manner to No Country For Old Men. The primary problem I have with this movie is that it is completely generic; I understand that it was intentionally made to be that way, but it is just not very interesting to watch what is essentially the most generic horror movie ever made for two-thirds of the film. I've heard people say it's creative in calling out the tropes in the genre, but I would say its method of criticizing tropes is perhaps the most uncreative way it could criticize the genre. The first two-thirds also have "comedic" scenes in a lab watching the main characters struggle which I felt utterly failed at making me laugh. The last one-third of the film didn't really have much a plot, and in all honestly wasn't very good either; at the end a character was literally just listing common tropes and saying that they must happen, which I thought was an even more uncreative way of calling out tropes. Despite being a pretty terrible movie in my opinion, it is rated 92% by critics on Rotten Tomatoes mostly for "subverting tropes of the horror genre."
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Notes -
It's funny you say this, because Game of Thrones arguably got famous for an "anticlimactic" death or even a set of them
I remember a fan being absolutely offended at the death of Ned. Yet it was broadly considered bold and became famous. Why?
Because it was set up by the story. Ned's death is simultaneously unpredictable but also predictable and it's consequences were similarly so. It fit with the themes Martin was writing.
Similarly, No Country for Old Men is about many things, but it emphasizes the limits of the Sheriff's power to change life's brutality and the hubris of Llewellyn. This is emphasized multiple times, even directly at the audience via parables with helpful summations. The ending is also an "anticlimax" where Chigurh gets hit and walks off but it highlights that even Chigurh isn't really separate from vagaries of the world despite his rules (which he believes protect him), again tied to debates in the film.
Now, I get why that might not work for you but that similarity to GoT's Season 1 (maintaining thematic consistency) is why the movie was so well-received in spit of its "anticlimax".
Another factor is that No Country for Old Men is a movie, which means that it has a much more compressed time frame. We knew Moss for two hours, Ned for 10, Jon Snow for ~75. Different expectations.
tl;dr: My defense is that Game of Thrones and No Country for Old Men are admired for similar reasons, therefore GoT isn't a good counterexample.
When I read A Game of Thrones back in 2004 (while I was supposed to be paying attention in Grade 9 English), I was absolutely floored by Ned's death. All the fantasy books I had ever read drilled into me, consciously or not, expectations about how the story would go. The hero always survives, good ultimately triumphs, things come around in the end. There's a sort of nervous, excited energy you get when you realize a story isn't going to go the way you thought, and all of a sudden instead there are a million possibilities. I can remember vividly some of the times this has happened to me and Ned's death was one of them.
From a writing perspective it's also a very well constructed twist: it's set up in the book itself of course, but I'm referring more to the way it toys with the reader. The reader is used to seeing the protagonist escape seemingly impossible situations, and the book gives you various different reasons why it would make sense within the logic of the characters and the story for Ned to survive (not to mention the reader's knowledge that this is book 1 of a series). And then he doesn't.
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