SF movies and suspension of disbelief

Cafe Society
1

Why oh why is it so hard for movie makers to properly use the concept of susension of disbelief? It drives me mad! MAD I tell you! BWAHAHAAAAA.!!!

What? You have no idea what I’m ranting about?

I just watched The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. In this movie I was expected to believe that Captain Nemo could build a submarine 800 ft long and 20 ft wide. I was expected to believe that vampires exist. I was expected to believe that the invisible man was real. And I was expected to believe that Mr. Hyde was a large rampaging monster.

I accepted all these premises with ease. After all, if I didn’t suspend disbelief over these items, there wouldn’t have been much movie. I didn’t even require any explanation other than “They just are.”

But once I have accepted the basic premise of the movie, the movie HAS to remain internally consistent with how these premises interact with the rest of the world.

In LXG, without any explanation or good reason, I am also expected to accept several incidental breakings of the laws of physics that have nothing to do with the premises I had already accepted. A man can wear a steel breatplate and it will protect him from a Winchester rifle? Despite the fact that armor went out of use because even a smoothbore black powder rifle can penetrate any amount of steel that a human can wear while still remaining mobile?

An 800ft long sub makes a large wake in the ocean, but can cruise down the canals of Venice and create no wake at all?

A man who has never seen a car before can instantly with no instruction at all figure out how to drive like he’s a NASCAR champ?

GaaaaHHHH!H!!! This kind of thing annoys the crud out of me.

2

I loudly second that! Things like that make it almost impossible for me to enjoy a movie anymore, because my brain is saying “Oh, dammit… how stupid do they think I am?”

However, your question of “why?” is easy to answer: moviemakers do it because they don’t care, and they don’t care because the mass audience doesn’t seem to care. The mass audience doesn’t care because they’re just going to see some explosions, hear some one-liners, and leer at the hot actors. Consistent logic is unimportant to them.

3

You sound just like my brother, he’s a prat when it comes to sci-fi/fantasy films/TV. You don’t have to believe any of what you’re watching, you just watch it. That’s it. It’s not terribly complicated. It’s called entertainment …
:rolleyes:

4

Haven’t seen the flick (yet… gonna just ‘cuz I like bad sci-fi movies. I even watched Evolution), so I gotta ask: Were they movin’ the same speed as out in the open ocean? Just wonderin’.

5

A second hearty amen. I think the problem is that most people don’t think logically enough to even get why this would be a problem for those of us who do. These sort of people never make it into written sf (except for clueless famous mainstream writers who try it, of course). Movies, on the other hand, are sometimes done by people who don’t get why an 800 ft. sub in the canals of Venice would ever bother you.

I belong to a writing group, of which only two of us know anything about sf. I mentioned at one point how the races in my galaxy were oxgen breathers and methane breathers. This got a comment, from a lady of a certain age, that this was boring, and that I should have beings based on other things. I began to explain about energy bonds, and how not every element would do, when she said I should just make up an element. :eek:

She never got why I considered this suggestion obscene. Especially when she said it was just science fiction, so who would care. :eek: :eek: People like that are the market these clowns are going after, and they outnumber us.

6

But see, that’s the thing. I am perfectly willing to believe just about anything that the movie makers throw at me , as long as it is internally consistent. And it is not just SF movies.

An often mentioned example… Speed. I can believe that Keanu Reeves is a super cop and can defuse bombs while under a bus. I can even accept the outrageous premise that all criminals follow National Criminal Mastermind Electrical Standards for their wire colors.

I can even accept that they can get the bus going fast enough to jump the 50 ft gap in the roadway. But it is just not physically possible to land that jump at the same height you started it if you do not go off a ramp. Would it have been so hard for them to use the standard “Ramp the bus up on a pile of sandbags that are convieniently lying there” trick?

7

Yeah, God forbid anyone actually think about what they watch. Horrors!

Here’s a hint: not everyone finds mindless entertainment entertaining.

8

The important thing here is consistent with its own premise. For instance, I just saw The Core. The science is absurd, but once you get past that, it’s a pretty entertaining film, and, given the premises, it sticks close to the reality it has created.

I’m also willing to grant the movie the right to dramatic license. Thus, if Speed wants to play with a stunt to make it look more dramatic, instead of “realistic,” that’s fine with me, and I frankly can’t see why anyone has to be so literal as to object.* People evidently prefer “realistic” and dull to unrealistic and dramatic.

There is a problem when the premise is inconsistent or poorly thought out. The driving in LXG certainly falls into this category. Gattaca also keeps doing things that conflict with its setup; the idea behind the premise is good, but was very poorly thought out, and requires from its audience just as much mindless acceptance as LXG.

Alien began to lose me when they were shown smoking on a spaceship (if that were the only complaint, I would have overlooked it, but the utter stupidity of the crew made me detest them all, and the film they were in).

However, I’m willing to overlook occasional inconsistencies if the movie works otherwise (Insert relevant Emerson quote here). It’s only when it’s clear the people involved haven’t bothered to think out the situation that I object.

*It’s a real pet peeve of mine. I blame videotapes, which lets people stop and nitpick instead of just plain watching the movie.

9

Sorry, but the bus error was so glaring that I caught it in the theater with ease. Why couldn’t I just accept it as dramatic license? Because when I saw the bus speeding towards the end of the bridge, and then fly off, I knew instinctively that the bus could NOT land on the other side. The other side was obviously at the same height and so that possibility was out of the question. So during the long slow motion buildup, I was eagerly awaiting what cool plot twist they were going to throw in to save the bus. And then it magically lands on the other side. It ruined that portion of the movie for me.

Imagine you were watching a movie that had a horse race. The hero’s horse was 10 lengths behind. How is he going to win? Oh no, the evil horse is one length from the finish line! It is physically impossible for the hero to win! How is he going to deal with losing? Is his girlfriend really going to be killed by the mob now? His Mom will lose the house without the prize money!

And then… BOING! The hero is over the finish line, the winner. No explanation how he travelled 100 ft before the evil horse could travel 10 ft. Just…BOING! I win! Are you telling me that makes for a good movie?

10

Not only that, but he didn’t get out of the cockadoodie car!

I really enjoyed the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen* comic book. Maybe somebody’ll make a movie of it someday.

Actually, you can make a bulletproof steel breastplate, and this was done in the 15th and 16th centuries. But they’re pretty heavy, and too expensive to equip a large army with, so by the time all the European nations had standing armies, they were also entering a period of men going to war with very little personal protection. (During the American Civil War, some soldiers did wear spring steel vests that supposedly would stop a Minie ball.)

But the LXG movie did seem to assume a lot of ignorance on the part of its audience (and if the audience is American teenagers, the assumption is probably justified). If you were making a movie, why would you pick Venice, of all cities, for a car chase? And I slapped my forehead at the notion that you could get from Paris to Venice faster by taking a giant submarine all the way around Iberia, through the Straits of Gibraltar, and halfway across the Mediterranean than by taking the train.

11

BoringDad, we are in complete agreement. In fact this sort of thing annoys me so much that I was inspired to write a long rant about just one movie. Speaking of which, I was supposed to go back to that thread, and I haven’t gotten around to it yet. I feel ashamed…

12

There are two types of suspension of disbelief I think. One is that used to form the premise of the film, the set-up. Something that takes us to a place in what may be an un-natural way, but also us then to ask, now we have accepted this set of circumstances (even though we know in real life, they are impossible ones) what will happen?

This set-up is a major artistic choice and will form the backbone for the rest of the film. Any narrative, or film of this type can be reduced to a ‘What if…’ question.

We accept this, as an audience we are aware this is an artistic choice ,and are intelligent to let the set-up exists, so we can find out what happens next? And maybe along the way learn something insightful…or just see lot’s of special effects.

The problem begins when the artist then begins to break his own established conventions without reason. That’s the key, if the conventions of the genre are broken with a reason, a literary device, we are usually prepared to accept it so that we can find out where the artist is taking us. If it’s broken without reason and is an obvious error then it can ruin the whole film.

There is a slight problem with this, audiences are so well trained in viewing naturalistic art that sometimes they are unprepared to accept anything which breaks the conventions of realism.

Regarding Speed, while complaining the jump is unrealistic is a perfectly valid viewpoint, I would argue that within the genre in which this film operates it’s perfectly logical. People moan about the number of bullets the hero can take before dying, at all the ‘un-realisticness’ in the Die Hard films. At Harrison Fords jump of the dam in The Fugitive. Yet these are all expected conventions of the action movie genre, if you’re not prepared to accept them go and watch something else.

Regarding TLXG (which I haven’t seen so based on your post), the errors in this are inconsistent with the genre, with the set-up an inexcusable.

Regarding Voyager’s writing, You could have chosen a fictional element, and I wouldn’t have minded, if you had a valid reason. But it sounds like you have chosen to use a method of investigation in your work, in which part of the premise is that the world you write in is scientifically consistent with our own. In which case you have made the right choice, especially if an exploration and speculation of science will be a main part of your work. But as an example, if you are creating a fictional race for use as an analogy to something which has happened, or a particularly group of actually people, to explore those issues, but from a distance, it doesn’t matter what they breath, because the purpose of their existence is not to explore the feasibility of extraterrestrial life, but purely a literary device.

Unless there is a valid artistic reason for these choices, and based on what I have read, there isn’t.
So please think about what you watch. But remember that is art, and not real life.

13

Sigh (Again). Correct grammer as needed. Sorry folks.

[sub]Preview damnit[/sub]

14

bangs head against wall
Just for clarification this: 'Unless there is a valid artistic reason for these choices, and based on what I have read, there isn’t. ’

Refer’s to TLXG, and not Voyager’s writing…

15

Haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m curious–did they have the sub turn corners from one canal into another? Are the canals really wide enough to permit that?

16

I enjoyed Frequency until the plot began to hinge on events that were in direct contradiction to the rules established in the first part of the movie.

The basic premise of the movie is that a man is able to communicate with the past, and his late father, by radio. This is caused by “sunspot activity” or somesuch; the writers wisely didn’t spend much time trying to justify this. They did, however, make it very clear that the time period the man was communicating with exactly 30 years ago. So if it was two seconds past 5 pm on October 10, 1999 for the hero then it was two seconds 5 pm on October 10, 1969 for his father. The hero could alter the past by warning his father of what was to come, but if he said “Hey dad, be sure to do this on the 12th” then the changes to the timeline produced on the 12th in 1969 would not manifest themselves until it was the 12th in 1999 too. It won’t just happen on the same day, but exactly 30 years after the altered event in 1969. The film drives this point home again and again. It’s also made explicit that once the timeline changes, no one but the hero will be aware that things haven’t “always been that way”.

However, in the latter potion of the film, the plot requires us to accept that the changes to the timeline actually manifest themselves several days before the 30th anniversary of the alteration. So if the hero doesn’t like the way these changes work out, he has plenty of time to get back on the radio with dear ol’ dad and try to figure out a way to fix things in the past. On top of that, the climax of the film has the hero defeating the villain because the villain is distracted by a sudden change to the timeline – a change that the movie has already told us no one but the hero should be aware of! Gah!

17

Ever so conveniently, the sub apparently takes one long straight canal into the heart of Venice. I do not now if such a canal exists or not.

18

I disagree (as you might have guessed.) The genre has nothing to do with it, other than to set the world the action takes place in. Within this world we are expected to accept that many IMPROBABLE things take place. We should not be expected to believe IMPOSSIBLE things take place. As I mentioned before, the film makers had multiple tools at their disposal that could have been used to make the bus jump only improbable, but not impossible (pile of sandbags to ramp from, jump to a previously unseen lower lane, etc.)
Hero taking tons of bullets before dying? Actually, that is more realistic than the typical one bullet and you fall down instantly dead. Unless your head is blown off or your spine or heart is shot, people can take several hits and still function. It falls into improbable rather than imposible. Hero dodging a hail of bullets? Improbable that the bad guys are all such cruddy shots, but not impossible.

I would agree with you on this. I’d say that in an SF story, you could quite easily make the blanket statement for us to accept up front that one race breathes methane, and one oxygen. If that is the basic premise, I will buy it. You are telling me by that assumption that the action takes place in a universe that has laws of nature just slightly different from our own, and that is fine (and most wouldn’t even understand or care that the laws were slightly different.) It could make for a good plot device as to why two races could not share a world or something.

19

Well it’s been years since I saw Speed, so I’m prepared to concede the point on the grounds that the jump is obviously physically impossible, rather than improbable.

In action films, or any films with “Heros” we are asked to accept that they will perform feats beyond usual human capacity usually within the general physical constraints of our world.

If it really stands out as an error to you that much, then maybe it is.
This thread relates a little in someway to the’ Can’t screen writers perform 30 seconds of research’ thread, in which someone moans about the little details being wrong in a film, the use of 2 discs, for example. My original argument was going to be that things like this don’t matter, because they’re not important to the main point of the film. However my thoughts are now that most contemporary films offer a naturalistic world as part of their premise, and that if they are they small details should be consistent with this is well.

Unless there is a valid reason for changing them. (5” discs? No reason)

20

I would say that we must accept this, just like the 555 phone exchange.

The very first time I saw it used the bomb was a stolen bomb, so the wire colors **could ** have been know.