Dream sequences such as these where you know it’s a dream are fine and I can enjoy them or not the same as any other type of scene in a film. But what I hate and get really annoyed with are the “OMG how could this huge thing happen!? What will our characters possibly do next!?… Ha ha fooled you! It was all a dream and none of this happened.” That’s just lazy writing.
Two of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s mostly highly regarded episodes are basically dream sequences: “The Inner Light” and “Tapestry”.
Yep.
Yep.
This is a good one, because they make it clear it is actually a dream.
Yes, I hate dream sequences, for many of the reasons mentioned here (and also because I’ve never had dreams that work the way those fictional dream sequences do). And yes, there are exceptions to the rule.
Another vote against dream sequences, especially if they’re purposely weird. Drug sequences too. I feel like they’re scenes where the characters have no stakes on the line.
I like the sequences in the Big Lebowski now, but they frustrated me on the first viewing.
I’ll go a step further and include plays-within-plays. I hate those murder mysteries where everyone is working on a holiday pageant and you know when they get around to the actual performance, the killer will be revealed.
The bullets are melting into shit.
It’s a dream.
When I’m dreaming, my innate reality-check is nearly nonexistent. Eminently strange things pass as normal without a second thought. Only after waking up do I realize the absurdities, if I happen to remember them. The floor plan changed after I turned my head. I’m not in school any more. My mother is long dead, isn’t she?
On the other hand when I’m watching a show or movie my reality check is fully functioning. If we could record my dream and play it back to me it would simply be… off. You can’t translate dreams to the screen accurately - real dreams are very weird without feeling weird.
~Max
I don’t mind a dream sequence if it can be kept short and sweet and to the point–I’ll call it “economical.” It’s also easier for me to accept it if it brings the character a realization or an understanding of some problem and thus drives the plot forward in some material way. If it simply reinforces the point that the character is anxious about something, I’m not nearly as accepting. I think a good (that is, not lazy, to draw on a word already used in the thread) writer should be able to give that to us in waking moments.
I prefer ones used in comedies. Young Sheldon makes good use of them, as did The Big Bang Theory. Occasionally they work in horror but more often then not they’re just a cheap device.
When they are cheats (oh no how will they survive? Oh, the entire episode was a dream!) the writers should be beaten with reeds.
But a well done “character revealing” dream can be fun. Like A Christmas Story*, but also the WKRP daydream episode, and the ones where Gilligan dreams he’s debonair spy 014, or Dr Jekyll. Those can be clever.
*technically just a day dream. Ralphie was writing his dream, not having it generated by his subconscious.
A show that’s particularly good with dream sequences (like in so many other aspects) is the Simpsons. I’m thinking of the trip Homer and Lisa individually take while they are in isolation tanks, Homer’s chili trip, but most of all, I like Homer’s daydreams, my favorite being “the land of chocolate”:
Yes, but IMHO dream sequences and daydream sequences are two separate things. The latter is totally acceptable (unless they’re trying to trick us into thinking it’s reality, which makes less sense than mistaking a dream for reality).
Well, damn. You beat me to it.
That’s a fair point. I won’t give a blanket condemnation of the “fake-out dream,” but it needs to have a great payoff and be crucial to the story if they’re going to use it. Most of the time, it’s a stupid gotcha like you say.
Ripley’s dream at the beginning of Aliens is one of the few examples that I think works. Yes, it’s a gotcha in that you briefly believe she has a chest-buster inside her before the reveal. But it shows how her experience is still a constant source of trauma, and it sets the audience on edge.
Dream sequences as a way to illuminate a character are just a cheap crutch. First of all, dreams are meaningless IRL, so the use of a dream is just a cheap contrivance and just annoy me. It’s also a cheat: the audience gets involved and then gets the rug pulled out with the author being so proud about it.
There are times when it does work, usually in comedy or when the dream is clearly a dream from the start, but most of the time it’s just lazy writing.
This.
For this reason:
I don’t think that really applies. Dream sequences are generally meant to be symbolic, to reveal the inner thoughts of the characters, fantastic and open to interpretation… These episodes don’t do that. “The Inner Light” is about forcibly implanted memories and the subjective experience of a life you never had. Just because it only happens within the mind doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a “dream sequence.” Tapestry is more of an examination of “what if” but with a magic spell. Neither really fit the mold of what we think of as dream sequences, I think you’re using an overly broad categorization.
Anyway, yeah, I generally hate dream sequences. They’re awful when they’re a gimmick to fake you out - when you don’t know it’s a dream sequence coming in and that’s what creates the drama around what happens and then there’s no consequence to it. That’s a cheap trick and insulting to the audience. Dream sequences where you’re know it’s a dream sequence and the intent is to help the audience understand something can be okay, because that’s using a different sort of narrative format to tell a story, but… very few examples I can think of. Mostly that’s used badly too. If no piece of entertainment ever used a dream sequence again I don’t think we’d really miss anything. Writers would have to find more interesting and better ways to get their point across.
One I haven’t seen mentioned is the dream sequence from The Exorcist III. I think that it was well done. But they didn’t try to fake the audience out. They showed the good lieutenant sleeping in his bed before the sequence started.
Though, similar to the Twin Peaks example given above, there is some question about how much of it actually happened.
IMHO the problem with some dream sequences isn’t that they’re lazy; it’s that they’re self-indulgent. The writer or the filmmaker wants an excuse to show us some weird, cool, edgy, imaginative imagery, but there’s no reason for the things they want to show us to actually happen in the story they’re trying to tell, so they make a dream sequence out of them.
I think that self indulgent writing is essentially lazy writing. Good writing kills its darlings.
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-kill-your-darlings#quiz-0