The thing that made me think of this thread was “E.T.” I stumbled across an old thread about the “E.T.” revival. I never liked E.T., partly because he was a disgusting alien, but also because the movie just felt like it was toying with my emotions. Look, cute aliens. Look, kids. The flying bicycle scene just felt like so much manufactured wonder. LOOK, they’re FLYING.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m heartless. Are there any other movies or books or anything really, that you hate mainly because you can feel someone actively trying to tug at your heartstrings?
Spielberg is very fond of bludgeoning the audience over the head with Big Emotional Scenes. Take, for instance, the girl in the red coat in Schindler’s List… she’s memorably because her coat is the only spot of colour in a black and white scene.
Which, of course, is mostly to make sure you remember her when you see that red coat in a pile of bodies later on… just in case you weren’t absolutely sure yet that the Nazis are heartless child-murdering bastards who kill little girls in red coats.
The whole movie felt like emoting through paint-by-numbers. Feel sad NOW. thwak Feel angry NOW. thwak Feel hopeful NOW. thwak
No room for ambiguity, because Og forbid the audience make any decisions on their own… Nazis were Bad, Schindler was Good, war is Bad, and so on and so forth. (not that I’m disagreeing about any of the above, but I prefer to make these decisions for myself thankyouverymuch)
Absolutely. Critical favorites like John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ernst Lubitsch are just as manipulative as any other set of directors you could name. Certain people just like the results more.
Fair enough. Adorable widdle kids really grate on me, which is part of why I really resent a lot of Spielberg’s movies. I loved the Jurassic Park movies, but I could have done without the smart talking, uber talented kids.
ETA: Oh, and putting adult speak into the mouths of kids. I hate this. Like Drew Barrymore’s character going “Give me a break” and rolling her eyes, all world-weary in E.T. when she sees the alien.
A few weeks back, the Space channel ran a Trek movie marathon and for the only time since seeing it in theater, I caught part of Star Trek: Insurrection. Heck, even Disney toons were rarely that determinedly morally unambiguous.
The end of James Cameron’s Titanic, in which a young Rose is reunited with her fellow passengers and the crew feels very manipulative to me. I’ll admit that I teared up in the movie theater when I saw it, but I saw a recent rebroadcast of Titanic and it kind of turned me off.
True enough. But wouldn’t it make it even less necessary to bludgeon me over the head with wailing violin solos and little girls in red jackets, in that case?
(I much prefer The Pianist when it comes to Holocaust movies, because at least Polanski resisted the urge to get dragged into epic shlock by making the perfect heroes and dastardly villains)
I think Spielberg was trying with the Ralph Fiennes character–trying to show a character who has evil, twisted beliefs and yet perhaps vestiges of humanity. It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen it, though.
