I was reading up on The Blair Witch Project, a very ambiguous film…unless you look at some of the viral marketing and expanded universe shit released at the same time as the movie. It goes from a ambiguous movie to a movie whose plot was explained in fake websites and blog posts:smack:
The recent Star Trek remake had a villain whose motivations make no sense, his ship makes no sense, unless you read the tie in comic that explains it very well:smack:
What the hell man?! You do not explain plot details vital to even understanding the movie outside the movie in crap most people don’t know exists, its ridiculous.
I don’t care about tie in stuff that expands the universe of the film, but vital plot points?
When did this become accepted and ok and not a jerk move?
I didn’t have any trouble understanding the last Star Trek movie either, without reading the comic (which I didn’t know existed until just now). grude, you can ignore those just fine.
Someone was just talking on the radio about how the polar bear commercials on last night’s Super Bowl made more sense if you were watching the animated polar bears watch the game on a Coke website during the game. Why would anybody want to do that?
Also, when “Lost” was airing, apparently a lot of plot exposition took place on associated websites. I never saw any of that, I just wanted to watch the show. If you couldn’t successfully tell story there (they couldn’t, in my opinion) then maybe you needed better storytellers.
I’m not opposed to other media forms of particular creative efforts, but one shouldn’t depend on the other to get the job done.
There are no important plot points that depend on any of the web, videogame, or alternately-published content - it’s all just complementary. You didn’t have to read the dozens of books that were referenced in order to follow what was happening either - it just made it more interesting.
Uh, he pretty much explains his motivations point blank. He blames Spock for destroying Romulus. I suppose we don’t know all the details about his ship, but I wouldn’t call that an important plot point.
Two polar bears are watching the game on TV. One of them gets frustrated (I presume because his team is doing poorly, though I’ll admit that that wasn’t explicit; maybe I needed to check out the webpage) and gets up to get a Coke. Hijinks ensue. What did I miss?
I wonder about this sometimes, too. Also, they need to stop putting the funniest moments of a comedy in the trailers and ads - once you’ve seen the funniest bits two dozen times, the movie’s pretty much spoiled for you when you see it.
Part of the explanation was left on the cutting room floor. Nero was captured after going through the time-hole and sent to prison. It took him 25 years to escape, which was why Romulus wasn’t destroyed when Kirk/Spock/et. al. were just children.
I’ve read this scene made it into the comic book, but it was originally intended for the movie as well.
Blair Witch - are you *sure *you understood it? I thought it was deliberately left open, with several possible explanations. Perhaps you’d care to explain what the right answer is.
Lost - As far as I know, The Numbers were only explained in supplementary material. I don’t think we ever got an onscreen answer. If I missed it, perhaps you’d care to point it out.
[spoiler] Some mathematician had come up with a formula that predicted the end of the World. The Numbers were constants in the equation. Was this ever stated on the show itself, or just in the extras?
Dharma was trying to use the Island to change the numbers. But was it ever explained fully what they were trying to do, either in the show, or in the extras? Why did they have to type it into a computer every 108 minutes? [/spoiler]
Oh so you knew the meaning of the stone piles they find around their tent?(how the child killer marked his victim’s graves).
And you knew that investigators searching for them found the house from the end of the movie intact as we see it in the film, despite the fact it burned down in the 1940s?
And all the stuff about the child killer and the Blair Witch(who does exist and looks like some kind of demon based on production stuff).
Well sorry I caught none of that in the film itself.
I always thought that the extended universe stuff (for any movie, book, etc. - not just these two) often tried to patch up hanging plot points after the fact. But the extensions are after the fact, not part of a planned media spread. (Feel free to show that a spread was planned to be concurrent. I’ve just never seen that.)
If something was left on the cutting room floor, the extenders are free to use it, change it, or ignore it. It’s not really part of the movie. I mean, they shot two endings to Casa Blanca. That doesn’t mean that the ending they didn’t use has any valid connection.
In the case of the new Star Trek, I’m not sure that any explanation would make that ship and motivation make sense. Of course, not all motivations make sense, so I’ll give the motivation a pass anyway. Maybe the crew went nuts and started reconstructing the ship, like high-functioning Reavers. Those weird spikey bits on the outside? That’s were all the railing went.
None of the above mattered, and knowing it actually makes the film more confusing and considerably worse. In a first-person narrative like Blair Witch, the audience should only know what the protaganists know.
There’s a deleted scene showing Nero in a Klingon prison. They get around the TOS smoothead/later movies and series bumpy head question by having his jailers wearing full face masks.
Regarding Blair Witch–yeah none of that stuff is important in the movie. It’s cool supplemental material but not necessary or important.
All of that crap makes the movie dumber. I now hate Blair Witch more than before. And that’s saying something.
Movie makers sometimes like to tack on a bunch of irrelevant garbage to make to make dorks happy, because they are “in the know”. This is especially prevalent in sci-fi and horror. But all that nonsense doesn’t make the movie better; look how midichlorians fucked up Star Wars (“But how does The Force work???” cried the dorks). Gee, super involved (but still completely made up!) explanations turn out to be ultra boring. Who’da thunk it?
If you are the kind of person who thinks all this extraneous nonsense improves the plot, have fun reading comics and scanning message boards for info. But it isn’t actually necessary, and most people would prefer not to sit through a 7 hour snooze-a-thon so every tiny detail is “explained” (read: bludgeoned).
