It’s ironic that the only guy harping on “narrative” here is apparently someone who has no idea what it means.
Here’s a hint: scientific accuracy != narrative.
Are the good people of the Dope generally familiar with the concept that microwaves work by heating water, and therefore a giant microwave pulse should theoretically boil everyone in Gotham City alive? Certainly. Did that reduce the enjoyment of “Batman Begins” for some Dopers? Absolutely.
Was that loss of enjoyment due to problems with the narrative? Abso-fucking-lutely not.
Here’s the definition of “narrative” from the American Heritage Dictionary:
Traditionally, what makes up a good narrative is elements like pacing, character, internal consistency, thematic depth, etc. Notice that nowhere in that list is scientific accuracy mentioned.
IOW, a story can have terrible science but still be a good narrative.
For example: “Star Wars” is a great story despite the fact that it features laser beams traveling slower than light, sound in space, spaceships banking as if they were in an atmosphere, and human beings capable of moving things with their minds. Every single one of those things flies in the face of everything we know about basic physics, and indeed some people find them to impair their enjoyment of “Star Wars.” Does that mean the narrative is bad? Hell no. It just means that George Lucas knows about as much about science as Isaac Newton knew about visual effects.
So criticize “Batman Begins” for its plot holes, inconsistent characterizations, Katie Holmes’ piss-poor acting, or whatever. But it’s flat out wrong to say that the microwave weapon destroys the narrative, because it has absolutely nothing to do with the narrative.
I believe that it will be at least as good as say a Die Hard movie or Iron Man.
Right, but my wife’s judgment of it is based off of criteria that might be separate from the criteria you would judge it by. So basically what I need is for YOU to tell me what YOU like. Because it’s not a matter of my wife’s taste, as she is judging it by her reading of the script and thinking it doesn’t suck as a script. The point I am getting at is that we judge things differently based on the context in which we do the judging.
She also liked Shaun of the Dead.
She hasn’t seen it, she’s read the script.
I am trying to grill her about these things and she tells me that she has compartmentalized her tastes and hermetically sealed off her mind so that she may get through the Twilight series for some market research she was doing.
She’s finally answering: (this is for personal preference not judgment of narrative quality)
Likes:
Brotherhood of the Wolf
Watchmen
300 (more struck by how gorgeous it was than for the story)
Princess Mononoke
Kingdom of Heaven (Director’s Cut)
addendum: She asked me to specify that production design is an important part of the realization of a movie. (Theatrical Design Major)
Except when they stipulate that it’s a bomb that will vaporize water. You have to read ALL the words if you are going to respond. You can’t pick and choose and then pretend like you are disagreeing with me. They didn’t just violate scientific accuracy, they EXPLAINED HOW IT WORKED and then violated that. And that’s narrative. It superheats and boils water. That it was selective ONLY to the water in the mains, is what makes it a stupid plot device.
Yes.
It does when you explain what that particular function does, and then don’t apply it broadly.
I am not talking about scientific accuracy, I am talking about internal consistency. Like I said, READ ALL THE WORDS.
If they don’t try to explain how a machine works, then yes. It’s the Hard Sci Fi vs Soft Sci Fi paradigm. Don’t explain shit if you don’t want to have to deal with the consequences of consistency.
Star Wars doesn’t explain how anything works. It’s soft sci fi.
It does, because INTERNAL CONSISTENCY is an important part of narrative.
Glad I could clear that up for you. Next time, ALL THE WORDS.
In the Dark Knight the equivalent to that tech was the cell phone spy machine. It was junk science, but it didn’t explain how it worked, and it didn’t have an inconsistency in its application. There wasn’t for instance some phone line that was immune to it for some unexplainable reason.
I think we’ve established that your wife’s tastes are a horrible predictor of box office success (which is the whole point of this thread) and that she seems fascinated by movies that are pretty to look at, but also pretty hollow. So going by that metric, Avatar will make about $1.53 at the box office.
Finally, you and I did this in the last Avatar thread, but I just thought I’d mention again that December is a horrible time to expect an action blockbuster to become a mega-blockbuster…
King Kong (2005): $218 million
Apocalypto (2006): $50 million
Eragon (2006): $75 million
I Am Legend (2007): $256 million
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008): $79 million
If Avatar matches I Am Legend (the biggest December action movie in the last five years), it’ll just barely miss being called a flop. And between Princess and the Frog, Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 and Sherlock Holmes (or seeing New Moon for the 20th time), there will be plenty for the all ages set to push Avatar to the side.
Nobody’s disputing that it was a stupid plot device. But it’s not inconsistent, because they never specifically point out that humans are full of water. An obvious fact, you say? Well, not for most of the movie-going audience (especially mid-movie). Certainly not any more immediately obvious than “you need air to bank” or “a ten-story tall lizard with human proportioned legs should collapse under its own weight.”
Regardless, inconsistency is when two things a movie mentions disagree with each other. In this case, the movie only expounds on one thing - the inconsistency comes only from how that one thing disagrees with our knowledge of reality. Therefore, if you’re going to bitch about that, you can hardly let the same thing go in other movies. And regardless, calling it “inconsistency” is factually incorrect.
Hammond and Co. try explaining how they made dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park.” Does the fact that their cloning technology makes no actual sense make “Jurassic Park” a bad movie?
Or let’s get back to Star Wars - the Rebel pilots explicitly chatter about “locking their S-foils in attack position,” following which their fighters’ wings open up. There’s no damn air for those S-foils to interact with. Even ignoring the question of why they have wings at all, why the hell would moving them into an “X” shape have any effect on their combat effectiveness?
It is internally consistent. Just because it’s stupid doesn’t make it inconsistent. And using all caps doesn’t make your stunningly poor vocabulary accurate.
No, that’s what makes it a McGuffin. Yes, perhaps it broke the suspension of disbelief for some people, but it’s not something that was ever meant to hold up to much scrutiny. I like both Bale Batmans, but to allege that the second one (and the absurd contortions the Joker’s plot takes every step of its narrative) is somehow more credible (ooh, sorry–“internally consistent”) is splitting the most narrow of hairs.
Another problem is that Avatar runs almost an hour longer than Legend, so while the 3D price premium will make up some of that slack, it’s still going to take a hit by having fewer shows per screen (2- & 3-D) than the Will Smith flick could manage.
Wow, you didn’t even follow the context did you. This is precisely why I was vacillating on giving examples. Shot From Guns asked specifically for her TASTE in movies, not her prediction for box office gold.
That’s one of the better arguments.
I expect it to compete with I am Legend. $ 256 million is respectable. And yes, I know that Hollywood’s expectations are totally out of proportion and ridiculous, and that they will say it flops if it does that well.
Sherlock Holmes is probably its primary competitor.
Alright, I’ll concede that point, though I think it’s more obvious that a human is 80% water, and giant lizards and banking are grandfathered in. But I’ll concede your point.
But my primary complaint isn’t even the inconsistency. My primary complaint is that Katie Holmes didn’t splode. I would’ve been fine if she sploded and no one else did.
Umm, it diminishes it for sure.
Point taken.
Stunningly poor vocabulary. :rolleyes:
I was using the term correctly. I just came up with a poor example. There is a difference. As someone who has superior vocabulary to myself, you should understand that distinction.
That’s not what a McGuffin is. A McGuffin is something that is used as a plot device and it is never revealed as to what it is. Like the suitcase in Pulp Fiction or Serena’s Father Dr. VanDerMcGuffin in Gossip Girl. Something that remains off-screen around which the plot revolves but is never revealed.
A microwave pulse bomb that is described and shown on screen is NOT a McGuffin.
The plot did not revolve around the microwave pulse. The closest thing to a McGuffin in Batman Begins would be the motivation of Ra’s al Ghul’s organization. The ‘why’ of their destruction of cities is never explained more than ‘purifying decadence’. They never explain why this is important or desirable, it’s very important in the beginning of the movie and is all but forgotten by the end. And that’s using ‘McGuffin’ loosely.
Absolutely ridiculous–the McGuffin is the engine that drives a character’s motivations, even if the actual significance is somewhat irrelevant (or muted).
The secret name of the organization. The uranium in the wine bottles. The microfilm in the statue. These are all “revealed” McGuffins by the Master himself. To state that the McGuffin isn’t revealed shows a phenomenally poor understanding of the history of the term.
In the case of Batman, the gizmo-whatchamahoozit must not reach the thingamabob in time or else everything will go terribly bad. That’s the engine that Ra wants to achieve and Batman tries to prevent. A McGuffin.
But it’s not the engine of the plot, it’s the engine of one act. The wikipedia article doesn’t support your overly broad usage of the term.
So you can say that my definition is overly narrow, and so you’d have a point, but if you are using this as your foil for one-upsmanship you’re not doing a very good job. A better example of a revealed McGuffin would be the nuclear bomb in Broken Arrow.
So I’ll grant that a McGuffin is sometimes revealed, as Lucas uses R2-D2 as a McGuffin in his commentary to Star Wars. But the bomb is not a McGuffin in that it’s only introduced at the climax and did not drive the plot throughout the entire movie. It might be representative of the McGuffin, which is the organization’s plot. But it’s merely the weapon that they use. To be a McGuffin based on the usage in the wikipedia article it would have to be introduced earlier in the film.
