I ran across an article where the author couldn't resist a dig at "toxic nerds" and of course mentioned the sacred cow of The Last Jedi. I remember walking out of Last Jedi bored out of my mind and so I was very confused when I heard so many critics going on and on about how brilliant it was and how it subverted the expectations of those who wanted to see a more heroic Luke Skywalker, and (I think this was the first time I saw this line of reasoning) this was why that is a good thing.
I will never understand why Last Jedi and Female Ghostbusters are the sacred cows for media shills. I also hate how with modern entertainment doing something unexpected for the sake of it will get the shills clapping like seals.
Some horrible examples of subverting expectations in recent memory are Arya killing the Night King (I mean having Jon have an epic battle with the Night King couldn't possibly make any sense), Robin being a lesbian in Stranger Things season 3 (they actually said the original plan was for them to be together so forgive me if I think they changed things for woke points), and of course Last Jedi.
However if well done it can be good. I know I've made posts bashing George R. R. Martin but the man is a great writer and he said he set out to subvert the tropes of Tolkein when he wrote Ice and Fire. While I will never put him and Toklein on the same level, I will admit book 1 (season 1) was a great example of subverting expectations since Ned Stark was the main star of the show at that point.
To me another good example would be Yoda in Empire Strikes Back turning out to be a little green guy that seems like a nobody.
What would your examples be of a good subversion of expectations?
When they 'broke the code' and it turned out to be a ratio of dark to light to convey meaning, I lost all interest. They've got this really complex looking symbol and through super complicated and sciency computer analysis, they come up with: 60% dark and 40% black and now they can somehow 'understand' them. My opinion went from, "ok, what's going on? Where are they going with this?" to "these writers don't know how stupid they are."
I'd have rather they kept it completely unexplained.
Then she has to call up the Chinese dude, but she has to see the future where she's already called him so she knows his phone number before she can place the call to save the world for the future to happen. I mean, most time travel related movies at least try to avoid paradoxes like that, and this one didn't have enough awesome Schwarzenegger blowing shit up action to make it forgivable.
That was the other thing: you had the soldier listening to Right Wing Talk Radio that almost fucks everything up, and the Liberal Smart Woman has to clean up the mess.
You may have unlocked my disgust reaction: this was basically a Schwarzenegger flick for Liberal Smart Women, in the sense that the protagonist is the sort of person that all Liberal Smart Women want to be. It also operates from a moral framework that is the complete opposite of a Schwarzenegger flick.
It also explains why the Liberal Smart Woman I watched it with really liked the movie.