I hate how it seems every single movie or other work of fiction now always has a “discussion” about how “The main character actually died at the start of the movie, and the rest is just their brain making up a happy ending as they die!”.
Unless it’s literally said or heavily implied in the actual work that is the case, nobody should ever bring it up. No, I don’t care that Grease may actually be Sandy’s last thoughts as she drowns in the ocean at the start of the movie, or how Blade Runner is about how the Blade Runner who got shot at the start of the movie is actually Deckard and the rest is his death dream. It’s just not entertaining, and yet pretty much if a movie gets big enough in terms of discussion, people will always trot out this “mind-blowing” fact.
Is there any other movie commentary idea that’s more trite or played out? My only other one is “The protagonist actually didn’t meaningfully alter the plot at all, the movie would have progressed without their involvement at all” mainly because people use Raiders of the Lost Ark and Goldfinger as their examples of this trope, which really just shows they don’t understand the movie.
No, there’s no “worse” analysis than one that is completely made up and not in any way implied by the work itself, but rather simply invented by the supplier simply to be, as you put it, “mind-blowing.” It’s the sort of thing sophomores majoring in Literature do when they are trying to cover up the fact that they didn’t read the entire book.
However, it’s funny you should pick Grease for an example. From the time the movie came out, and I was young enough not to realize it had a long history as a stage show, I thought there was something weird going on with it, because all the actors were in their 30s, not teenagers, and I kept waiting for the “It’s all a dream” ending.
At the time, I was sure there was something else going on, like they had all time-traveled back to correct a cosmic error, or save a life, or something, and was surprised when this didn’t happen-- at least in an obvious way.
Nobody should, huh? Out-of-the-box or even off-the-wall interpretations are fun. And they’re not entirely frivolous. Looking at a work in a new light, even a ridiculous one, can often reveal new insights that work on the more conventional level.
So sometimes I wonder whether Buffy is locked in a mental hospital. And I sometimes wonder whether Mulder and Scully ever made it out of that cave.
Every single one? I don’t recall ever actually encountering this (unless of course you count the classic story “An Ocurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, where that is actually the gimmick of the story).
But this sounds like a variation on “It was all a dream,” which is a justly-hated cliche.
I have to admit there is one movie where in my head canon this happened: the Steven Spielberg War of the Worlds makes a lot of sense if the movie ends when Tom Cruise gets sucked into the Martian War machine and the rest of the movie is all in his head.
The movie ending with an undestroyed Boston, his son just showing up and his smiling Ex Wife waiting for him just seems like a false fantasy. Not to mention the Martians just all dying (but I give that one a pass).
That one is pretty much the trope-setter. I’ve even heard it called Owlcreeking.
In Jasper Fforde’s book “One of Our Thursdays Is Missing” (from his “Thursday Next” series), he mocks the fact that psychodramas do tend to rely on a very small number of plot twists - the protagonist was the villain all along and didn’t realize it, the protagonist imagined the whole thing because they’re insane, it was all a dream (a.k.a. pulling a Bobby Ewing), the aforementioned Owlcreeking - and that they’re all kind of the same variation on the “unreliable narrator” mode of storytelling.
But for anyone with a new and better twist who can write a decent story around it, there’s likely a movie contract in their future.
‘The main character never existed’ trope is annoying. “Bunny Lake is Missing”, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf” produce some wrenching emotions without a pay off. When I see the trope unfolding on TV, I change the channel.
Author and horror critic Kim Newman once pointed out that people reading Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde today are experiencing the work differently than readers did back in 1886. The reveal that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person was written as a surprise twist ending. But now everyone starts reading the work already knowing that.
I would way rather read a clever and entertaining analysis about the protagonist being dead, or the whole thing only existing in someone’s head, than to have that as an actual plot twist. And yes, I’m looking at you Shutter Island and you Identity (2003) .
There is Dead Man, by Jim Jarmush, where the plot is that the main character (Johnny Depp) dies at the beginning, and the rest is his soul travelling to the Eternal Hunting Grounds™. I loved that movie, and the soundtrack by Neil Young is superb.
I believe this interpretation is not necessary to enjoy the movie, but it makes a lot of sense, from the title to the plot and to the historical/biblical/artistic references and quotes. But at least in this one example the interpretation the OP so abhorrs is IMO not bad.
How about when the big reveal is that there is a twin nobody knows about? It worked pretty well in The Prestige but otherwise it just feels like a cheat.
The idea that signals bad and lazy writing to me and that the author has run out of ideas is aliens. As soon as you need extraterrestrials to solve the plot knots you have tied yourself into I quit watching / reading. Happens to the best: Hergé’s Flight 714 to Sydney is probably his worst work, but there are so many other examples. Doubleplusbad if the aliens are benevolent, pale, shiny and pure of heart.
I suppose I was fortunate to have read it at a young enough age that I hadn’t heard of it before.
As to the OP. I don’t see it as a particularly useful analysis, unless there is something in the work that strongly suggests it, but it does go towards resolving plot holes or inconsistencies in a work as a kind of “fan canon.”
If the events in a movie are wildly unrealistic or even outright physically impossible, then it makes some sense to view it as all just a delusion of the unreliable narrator telling the story.
Not Raiders, but Temple of Doom, it actually makes more sense that the movie was a fever dream brought on by the poison in the first act than any of the events in it actually happening. Either that, or you have to accept that an inflatable raft can save someone falling out of an airplane.
Now, does that mean that’s what I think the actually writers and producers meant to go with? No, probably not. But it can be an interesting perspective.
If you don’t think it’s an interesting interpretation or perspective, you don’t have to consider it.
In any case, I’d say the, “It’s all in the narrators head” trope usually means that the writers were the ones having a fever dream.
Am I just going nutty and reading this thread wrong because I’m sleepy or are two groups of posters discussing two different things without understanding the other?
Then I offer you “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff. A little of column A, a little of column B, but a well-written little story. I first heard this read out on the radio (on This American Life IIRC).
Eh, to some extent, some people are answering the question in the title of the thread, and some people are discussing the question posed at the end of the OP.
The OP asked two different, but related questions, and both seem to be perfectly fair game for discussion, and the are related enough that both can be discussed simultaneously. If the OP didn’t mean to ask two questions, he can clarify that he didn’t actually mean to ask one of them.