I know that it’s always intentional when the backstory of a character isn’t given, thus to let you fashion it in your own mind et al, but sometimes I think the movie would be improved if you understood a bit more of the character’s motives (even if it’s in retrospect at the end). Two very recent movies (I’ll use spoiler tags but they don’t reveal major plot elements):
Million Dollar Baby- Clint Eastwood’s character’s falling out with his daughter is a major element throughout, but exactly what happened is never revealed, even though it was severe enough that she is unable to forgive and he seems to understand.
Vera Drake- the movie never tells why or even how long ago this sweet mousy angelic little woman became an abortionist or how she learned the procedure. You assume that something major would be required to make her take such risks free of charge.
Of course it appears in literature as well (Iago’s all consuming hatred of Othello is much deeper than anything mentioned in the play), but movies moreso. What are some backstories you would like to have had?
Not a character problem, exactly, but I think the new Dawn of The Dead could have used a little more explaination as to what caused the zombies. It’s all well and good to say that the remake is “a stand-alone, not a sequel” but if you’ve never seen the orginal movie (and I haven’t) you have no idea what made people become zombies. I can imagine all sorts of reasons, but it’d be nice to know the specific one. Hell, even Night Of The Comet gave more of an explaination than this movie did.
While all of us Tolkien geekazoids would have creamed our pants had Jackson managed to sneak in The Lay of Leithian or some background on Aragorn’s lineage and life, we’re probably talking a fourth movie for sheer volume of backstory involved, just for Arnor/Gondor/Aragorn/Arwen.
You say that like it’s a bad thing. I was jonesin’ for a movie last December, you know. The season has lost meaning without a LOTR movie to look forward to.
The back story for the new one and the original are the same. Satan, (You know, Ned Flanders, from the Halloween episode.) decides there are too many dead people, and decide to let them go free-range for a while. God just stays out of the whole thing. Or, stated more dramatically, in the tagline, When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.
No, wait, I just remembered it is a direct sequel to Night of the Living Dead ( I hated the ending!)
The real back story. Not even implied by Dawn. In short, it’s all America’s fault.
Chaos descends upon the world as the brains of the recently deceased become inexplicably reanimated, causing the dead to rise and feed on human flesh. Speculation rests on a radiation-covered NASA satellite returning from Venus, but it only remains a speculation.Taken from Curly Q. Link, at imdb.com
To make amends for dragging the thread off topic, I’ll nominate Steel Magnolias. It could use a little more explanation of why everyone puts up with Ouiser Boudreaux.
Actually, I kind of liked it that they didn’t explain it. IMO, it added a bit of verisimilitude. In all these “apocalyptic disaster” scenario movies, the most awkward scene is the bit in which somehow the characters under seige figure out what happened. In the remake of DOTD, the characters are simply thrust into the situation, and before there’s any time to react, society has broken down and no-one is left to explain the matter. That seemed more realistic than having some television announcer calmy explain how “a satalitte exposed to weird radiation crash landed, blah, blah, blah.” (which was the case in the original “Night of…” flick. I mean, Why would the television studio exempt from all the chaos taking place at the time? How would they manage to get that information about the satalitte at all considering all their field reporters would have been under attack by zombies? and lastly, if the U.S. government were responsible for causing such a disaster, do you think they might try to cover up their culpability? (ergo, do you imagine that any U.S. president would hold a press conference to explain that the U.S. gov’t just triggered doomsday?
