M’s dialogue really is on the nose, clunky, or unrealistic. It deters tremendously from the films.
Amen, amen, amen.
The idea that screenwriting=dialogue is extremely implanted in the public consciousness, for some reason, but screenwriting is very much NOT about dialogue.
First of all, the problem with the explanation of why the machines are imprisoning the humans is not really a problem with the WORDS. The scene would have been pretty weak no matter what Morpheus’s explanation was. Consider this; he might have been lying. Nothing that happens in the subsequent films proves him right; we don’t really know for sure what the machines’ motivations for keeping humans imprisoned are. Morpheus has his own agenda, and in any case might not know himself.
But even if you assume he’s lying, it’s not a great scene, because it’s just a tiny bit too wordy. The movie slows down considerably in that part, and they needed to cut a few seconds here and there. That dialogue could have gone, or an explanation thrown in somewhere else.
Almost ALL the dialogue in The Matrix is stupid. It’s psychobabble mumbo jumbo from the first word to the last. But the screenplay works.
For an opposite example, consider “Serenity.” There’s a few moments of very bad dialogue, but a lot of exceptionally good lines, really great dialogue. Almost every character, even bit characters, gets a good line in now and then. But the screenplay (IMHO, YMMV) is quite dull overall. It’s too cliche, too predictable, too slow, and just an absolutely by-the-numbers generic space opera/technogeek wankfest. I remember lots of good dialogue wrapped into a really boring movie. If I wanted to hear witticisms and not worry about story, I’d go see a comedian.
Then what part of the filmmaking effort is about dialogue? Dialogue is extremely important, and it is a component of screenwriting, is it not?
Only because most of the dialogue is very brief. When a movie bogs down every time the characters utter three sentences in a row, it’s usually because the dialogue is badly written.
I welcome this thread, because after watching “The Happening” recently, I can’t put my finger on why M. Night’s movies aren’t better than they are. He obviously can make incredible movies; I don’t know why his recent movies have been one or two doors down from great. “The Happening” wasn’t even really good; it was deeply flawed in many ways (and I LOVE post-apocalyptic stuff, and am quite forgiving of a good frolic in the genre).
ETA: I like the comparison to George Lucas, because he’s a prime example of a brilliant guy who needs some help that he isn’t willing to take.
I recommend that you either study film more in depth, or stop saying things like this that reveal your lack of knowledge. 
As I said, attention to dialogue is properly around 2% of the screenwriter’s effort. If you go back in filmmaking history, you can frequently find credits (I think a couple of Hitchcock movies have this) that say “script by so-and-so, dialogues by such-and-such.” In film, storytelling is structure. The dialogue is just a thin layer of icing.
Frequently, dialogue is invented on the set by the actors. Look at your typical Judd Apatow movie; he creates characters and a storyline represented by a series of scenes in which various pieces of knowledge are imparted to the audience and events occur to modify the characters’ reality. The actual words are just a flavoring component in the overall stew, and they are frequently made up on the set by the actors.
But while the actors may be making up their dialogue, they are not making up the story. They do not get to say to the writer/director, “I don’t think I would have an affair with this character, I would have an affair with that character.” The most they will contribute is, “When I begin the affair with this character, I would say this instead of that.” The fact of the affair as a plot point is what’s in the script. The words spoken to initiate that plot point are superficial and, while potentially amusing, essentially insignificant in the larger scheme.
The smart and/or experienced writer knows this, and doesn’t expend much effort on dialogue that will be rewritten on the fly anyway. Scripted dialogue is frequently serviceable at best as a result. (Exceptions are for writers who are known primarily for their dialogue, such as David Mamet or Kevin Smith. And the weakness of the latter, in particular, is that his storytelling structures are rudimentary and amateurish. He gets by on the wit and charm of his characters, not his stories.)
Returning to the OP, Shyamalan’s best movie, structurally, is probably Unbreakable. It tells a huge story, with tons of backstory, with great simplicity and economy. The tone is cold and removed, which is why lots of people don’t enjoy it; the basic premise is also fairly ridiculous, which is why lots of other people don’t enjoy it. But as a constructed story, it’s really marvelously done.
Signs, by contrast, is weak, because it’s highly linear, and most critically built around two central revelations, one of which turns out to be irrelevant and dismissable, the other of which turns out to be pedestrian and laughable. The movie succeeds, insofar as it does, because of the strength of the performances and the richness of its atmosphere. But at the screenplay level, it’s pretty bad.
Don’t patronize me.
That attitude explains a lot about the movies.
I do not dispute the importance of structure. But “film people” don’t consider dialogue important only because so many of them are tin-eared and incapable of writing it well.
My point is made and I’m done.
But Hollywood scripts also have characters hang up without saying “Goodbye.” Which offloads extraneous information, does not waste time, and is in fact completely idiotic.
I’m sorry for my last post. It was stupid and rather rude.
Let me try to express myself better:
It’s true that I don’t know as much about films as you do, Cervaise, but my taste is just as sophisticated as yours or any other Doper’s. It’s pretty rude of you to dismiss my opinions by saying I just don’t know anything about filmmaking.
When I say that dialogue is important, I am talking about its significance to the movie as a work. How much effort the writers put into it will vary wildly depending on the project and the writer. Trying to assign a percentage to this is a silly exercise, as I tried to suggest earlier, but even if we pretend we can do that, a writer who puts 2% of his effort into dialogue and consistently produces bad dialogue obviously needs to put more effort into it (or hand that part of the writing off to someone else). The importance of dialogue as an element of screenwriting is not measured in how hard one works at it.
I suspect, but cannot prove, that an old prejudice against screenwriting as compared to “real” literary work has resulted in a general lack of concern for good dialogue among filmmakers.
In nearly all movies, the ideas and logic that underlie the story are communicated to the audience primarily through words spoken by someone. The quality of these words should therefore be considered pretty important. If it usually isn’t, that’s too bad but it doesn’t make me wrong.
And I am not willing to accept that any movie can be “an excellent screenplay with shitty dialogue”. That’s tantamount to saying that the quality of the dialogue doesn’t matter.
For fun, try to watch a Hollywood movie, with the sound turned off. You’ll be surprised at how much you can make out of the story without the dialogue. Of course, this won’t work with all movies, but in most cases movies are primarily visual and action rather than speech moves the story forward.
Look at it this way: a movie with a good story, good structure and good pacing can still be enjoyable. An example of this is of course Star Wars. The dialogue is terrible, but it’s still a hugely entertaining film. On the other hand, excellent dialogue can never rescue a movie with shitty plot and structure. So, while it’s a bit futile to use actual numbers, in the end, dialogue does weigh less than structure when it comes to a movie’s worth.
I don’t think anyone is saying that dialogue is unimportant. Star Wars is flawed for its stilted words, and some movies are really carried from good to excellent by their dialogue.
No, but any shitty element is going to be a detriment to the film as a whole. But you can have a brilliant movie without *any *dialogue. And how you apply dialogue to a script is a structural issue.
M Night’s problem is that he doesn’t know how to tell a story.
Cervaise Thanks for that explanation. I’ve avoided Shyamalan movies since Signs, because I fear the worst, but I’ll get around to them one day.
However, Unbreakable is in the top 5 of my favorite movies of all time. I could never explain exactly why, but now you’ve pointed out structure as a key element, I guess that goes some way to explaining it.
Anyway, if a guy can make Unbreakable, he’s got it within him to strike gold again, it’s just a matter of time.
Oh, and I wanted to add – your comment on Mammet is spot on too. After you mentioned him being all about the words, not the story I went back and thought “What was Glenngarry about?” A group of shitty salesmen have a bad day. Lol.
I think for this discussion, it might be worthwhile to think of a movie with both a shitty screenplay and shitty dialogue. The epic Patrick Swayze classic Road House. It’s no surprise to me that David Lee Henry, the writer behind that masterpiece, only has 4 other shitty movies to his name.
Now, Road House had a few things going for it, believe it or not. First, the Swayze. Inexplicably popular in the eighties, people apparently really enjoyed his work, and I believe he was capable of an entertaining performance, if not a good one. Second, it’s a familiar story, mainly from the Westerns genre, but hey, it’s familiar because it works. Third, Sam Elliot is awesome.
Road House also had some horrible dialogue. I actually like the dialogue, but only because it is highly ridiculous. “Pain don’t hurt.” “I thought you’d be bigger.” “I used to fuck guys like you in prison.” “JC Penny is coming HERE because of me!” “Be nice until it’s time to not be nice.” “It’s my way or the highway.” Believe it or not, even worse lines were actually cut from the film. “Now you can have that fire sale you wanted” and “The worst [woman] was the best time I ever had.” In fact, I can’t even think of a scene that benefited from anybody speaking. What wasn’t trite was ridiculous (or both: “You’re my regular Saturday night thing!”).
But the dialogue, as laughable as it undoubtedly is, is not the problem with Road House. I know, I know. But look at the elements of the story. Corrupt Business Guy controls an entire town. Nobody can stand up to him, and if he does, they’re in for a world of hurt. He treats it all like a big joke–he’s affable, and that’s why he’s so fucking creepy. He’s also accustomed to getting his own way, and so when some new hotshot crosses him in a subtle, highly stupid way (firing his nephew in a town that’s big enough to find gainful employment elsewhere. Perhaps even JC Penny), he becomes petulant. Angry, he lashes out, in a series of increasingly violent meetings, until Hot Shot must make a stand because nobody else will do it.
Only, that’s not what happens. If you watch the movie and really pay attention (and who wants to do that?) you’ll notice that it’s a series of slightly related, and yet not interlocking scenes. A few times, one scene will logically follow another. Other times, they’re just interspersed without rhyme or reason. Still other times, the placement of the scenes literally violate space and time. There’s no clear sense of how much time passes–except the Double Deuce gets increasingly high class. While an intelligent person can piece together what must be happening–it’s not a complicated film after all–characters are often acting the way the writer thinks these sort of people must act, not because of any real motives. There aren’t any real motives embedded in the script because there’s no real structure. There’s just some rather unlikable people doing random, violent things.
Road House could have been a solid movie if the structure of the screenplay made any sense. Sure, we’d still wince over “pain don’t hurt” but, all in all, it’d be pretty easy to forgive if it was a single crime, and not part of a multitude of sins.
No, you’re wrong.
Compared to most of his peers, Cameron is a fantastic screenwriter. Yeah, perhaps his dialog is wanting, but he certainly knows how to put a film together from the ground up, and that includes his writing.
Look at these movies that he penned the screenplays for (and then gave away or didn’t film):
*Strange Days
*A Crowded Room – AWESOME screenplay that would have made an excellent film starring John Cusack.
*The original script for the first Spiderman – That was far superior to what Sam Raimi filmed (especially since Sam and others took Cameron’s script for Spiderman and butchered it and made it weaker–It was Cameron’s idea to have Peter’s web slinging ability a product of biology, not technology)
*Point Break
Cameron catches a lot of hell, and I really don’t get it, but M. Night Shyamalan is a genital wart on Cameron’s penis, IMHO.
I agree, Unbreakable is far and away his best film.
I have to disagree with people here.
I think Schyamalan is a terrible director. He is extremely good at one specific part of directing, but he’s distinctly awful in everything else. He is very good at creating compelling visual images which accent the “action” with an engaging and haunting power.
His sense of pacing is horrific. Most of the time during his flicks, I fnd myself begging for the next damn scene. There’s endless quiet, endless slow-moving nothing. The man basically takes an hour to punctuate his sentence. I’m up for some variability in movie pacing, but he’s simply always slow, everywhere. That’s just as bad as never-let-up-action-stunt-spectaculars, but less exciting. Yes, the long, slow shot which focuses intently on the mood is a fine thing, but when it becomes the focus of the movie, or the film has too much fluff over a very short plot, it becomes virtually worthless.
This, IMHo, is why The Sixth Sense was good and the others much weaker.
I tend to agree with the others that Unbreakable was his best film, even though I can’t argue against your point that the movie really, REALLY takes its time. Somehow, though, it works for me, since every scene had a sense of purpose and I could tell it was building up to something. What also helped was that the atmosphere remained taut and unblinking; despite the seemingly glacial pace, I felt a lot more tense and a greater sense of dramatic movement than I do in most action movies (where a lot of things may happen on screen, but nothing feels significantly changed despite the hero having slaughtered 18392 bad guys). The pay-off actually felt proper and earned, and overall, it was just a really good movie.
Contrast this with Signs and The Happening, where you can tell that M Night tried the same narrative arc, but was foiled by pure silliness in plot contrivances. If you’re going for slow atmospheric tension, then for the love of God, don’t have your characters in a chase scene with WIND. OK, I’ll stop here, as otherwise, this will become yet another The Happening rant…
I’m reading this thread with great interest. I really like watching movies, and I have some general sense of literary strengths and weaknesses, having studied English (please insert unemployability joke here). But I don’t know Jack about the theory underlying movie-making.
For what it’s worth, I found The Sixth Sense to be amazing because it had pitch-perfect mood, and worked as a supernatural drama, and then the twist made you go back and re-assess everything you’d just seen, and yet the movie had played by the rules. IMHO, he desperately needed to continue the excellent mood work, and let go of the freaking twist idea, because shoehorning it in as an afterthought ruined *Unbreakable *for me, and his constant return to the trope reeks of desperation.
Anyway, I must lean toward structural quality over dialogue, since I love me some Cameron, and have been puzzled why I just don’t seem to “get” Mamet. However, it seems to me that a certain brand of comedy really does rely on well-written, well-delivered dialog, as much as good structure - off the top of my head, Mel Brooks’ films, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, and Office Space.
Ok, this is a tiny hijack, but speaks to the same point we are hijacking on already with regard to screenplay structure so I figure it is ok.
Mamett isn’t all about the words. He is all about the character and because of that his words become memorable and more important. And that is also a structural choice. It helps that he writes interesting dialogue, but he isn’t actually all about the words. He is a modernist and as such writes his material in such a way that character drives story as opposed to plot driving the story.
James Cameron and I would say MNS are both more aristotilian in their storytelling technique, meaning that plot drives the story with characters taking a backseat. It is because of this that they can get away with less than stellar dialogue. But Cameron has a firm understanding of how to buid a plot, the same way Mamett has a firm understanding of how to build a character. I don’t really feel that MNS has much of an understanding of either.
I will see if I can look it up, but I vividly remember reading an interview with MNS in the LA Times after Sixth Sense came out and just before Unbreakable was released where MNS said that he felt Francis Ford Copalla’s Dracula was one of the best movies ever made (or something to that effect. Maybe he said it was his biggest influence.) Right there that told me that he was missing something fundamental in his understanding of film.