Wednesday, January 14, 2004
The Natural Selection of Plotlines
I'm making up for a lack of a long, deep post with a couple short, shallow ones.
I've talked previously about my distaste of cliched stories and unoriginal plots. However, there's a hazard of too much originality, and that's contrivance. A story has to feel like it could actually have occurred. I'm big proponent of "willful suspension of disbelief", but there's definitely a line at which the viewer becomes no longer willful, and becomes a hostage of their suspension of disbelief.
However, sometimes, you just have to buy the whole story, before you're even involved. For instance, I would hope that no one went to see "Armageddon" expecting a realistic depiction of what the world would do if an asteroid were going to strike the Earth. Many of the reviews claimed it was unrealistic and melodramatic. Did they watch the previews? I don't know of anyone who expected to see a documentary on asteroids going in. They wanted to see shit blow up and people overact and glib one-liners in the face of certain disaster. And it delivered exactly that - I think "Armageddon" is actually a good movie - it accomplishes exactly what it tries to.
But there's another part here - when a movie is less on target than "Armageddon", or less obvious about its intent. Often, this occurs in crime movies, or mysteries - where there are so many cute twists and turns, and everything gets wrapped up nicely in the end. Take any generic thriller - "Red Dragon", "Along Came A Spider", "Goldeneye", even. They work out so properly, or inevitably, a character comes back around to conveniently fix things - usually, it makes you want to throw your disbelief out the window because it's all too convenient, and clearly something happens just to keep the story moving along. But in these cases, I have a theory - "The Natural Selection of Plotlines", that assuages my conscience whenever I think too much about these movies.
Let's take a quality movie like L.A. Confidential, for instance. (I'm trying to pick a movie that a lot of people have seen. If you haven't seen it, and really don't want to know what happens, then stop reading.) There are a lot of places in the movie where the story could have just stopped - Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) could die before saying "Rollo Tamasi". Bud White (Russell Crowe) and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) could easily decide to fight to the death and not team up together to take down the Chief of Police. Or what if Bud White doesn't get lucky and find Buzz Meeks' corpse under the house? At any of these points, the movie would have essentially stopped. There are tons of such places in a lot of different movies. In the very good movies, you never think twice about it - everything seems so natural, it's not feasible that the story would have happened any other way. Sometimes, though, if you think too much, the movie falls apart. And that's where my theory comes in.
In the real world, there are billions and billions of people, and even more stories about them and how they interact and how their lives intersect. Somewhere, in one of these stories, you have White, Exley, and Vincennes-like characters, in a very similar situation, but they don't find Meeks' body, and the investigation ends. Somewhere, you have similar characters and similar situations, and they find Meeks' body, but then the Chief kills Vincennes instantly, without him saying anything, and Exley doesn't suspect anything. Somewhere, in another similar situation with similar characters, Exley does suspect something, but gets in a fight with White and goes to find the Chief himself, and gets himself killed, and the Chief gets away with it. But who wants to watch these stories? So, the process of Natural Selection at work - the interesting plotlines rise to the top, and they only seem contrived because the contrived ones are the ones that are more interesting and worth telling. Because who really wants to watch a movie about three tough, but very different cops who FAIL to uncover massive corruption on the police force? That story happened, just no one filmed it.
The next time you're watching "The Pelican Brief Part 12", and you start to think too much, I hope this little theory easies your conscience.
I've talked previously about my distaste of cliched stories and unoriginal plots. However, there's a hazard of too much originality, and that's contrivance. A story has to feel like it could actually have occurred. I'm big proponent of "willful suspension of disbelief", but there's definitely a line at which the viewer becomes no longer willful, and becomes a hostage of their suspension of disbelief.
However, sometimes, you just have to buy the whole story, before you're even involved. For instance, I would hope that no one went to see "Armageddon" expecting a realistic depiction of what the world would do if an asteroid were going to strike the Earth. Many of the reviews claimed it was unrealistic and melodramatic. Did they watch the previews? I don't know of anyone who expected to see a documentary on asteroids going in. They wanted to see shit blow up and people overact and glib one-liners in the face of certain disaster. And it delivered exactly that - I think "Armageddon" is actually a good movie - it accomplishes exactly what it tries to.
But there's another part here - when a movie is less on target than "Armageddon", or less obvious about its intent. Often, this occurs in crime movies, or mysteries - where there are so many cute twists and turns, and everything gets wrapped up nicely in the end. Take any generic thriller - "Red Dragon", "Along Came A Spider", "Goldeneye", even. They work out so properly, or inevitably, a character comes back around to conveniently fix things - usually, it makes you want to throw your disbelief out the window because it's all too convenient, and clearly something happens just to keep the story moving along. But in these cases, I have a theory - "The Natural Selection of Plotlines", that assuages my conscience whenever I think too much about these movies.
Let's take a quality movie like L.A. Confidential, for instance. (I'm trying to pick a movie that a lot of people have seen. If you haven't seen it, and really don't want to know what happens, then stop reading.) There are a lot of places in the movie where the story could have just stopped - Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) could die before saying "Rollo Tamasi". Bud White (Russell Crowe) and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) could easily decide to fight to the death and not team up together to take down the Chief of Police. Or what if Bud White doesn't get lucky and find Buzz Meeks' corpse under the house? At any of these points, the movie would have essentially stopped. There are tons of such places in a lot of different movies. In the very good movies, you never think twice about it - everything seems so natural, it's not feasible that the story would have happened any other way. Sometimes, though, if you think too much, the movie falls apart. And that's where my theory comes in.
In the real world, there are billions and billions of people, and even more stories about them and how they interact and how their lives intersect. Somewhere, in one of these stories, you have White, Exley, and Vincennes-like characters, in a very similar situation, but they don't find Meeks' body, and the investigation ends. Somewhere, you have similar characters and similar situations, and they find Meeks' body, but then the Chief kills Vincennes instantly, without him saying anything, and Exley doesn't suspect anything. Somewhere, in another similar situation with similar characters, Exley does suspect something, but gets in a fight with White and goes to find the Chief himself, and gets himself killed, and the Chief gets away with it. But who wants to watch these stories? So, the process of Natural Selection at work - the interesting plotlines rise to the top, and they only seem contrived because the contrived ones are the ones that are more interesting and worth telling. Because who really wants to watch a movie about three tough, but very different cops who FAIL to uncover massive corruption on the police force? That story happened, just no one filmed it.
The next time you're watching "The Pelican Brief Part 12", and you start to think too much, I hope this little theory easies your conscience.
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