The original Star Wars was sophisticated, however. Note the relationship of Grand Moff Tarkin and Vader. The latter fears the former in a subtle, believable way. We don’t just worry about the Death Star destroying a planet–it actually does! And so on. It had grit and didn’t play by the rules. Perfect? No. The Death Star is too easily destroyed by the rebels, and there are plenty of other flaws (they let the droids escape because there are no signs of life in the pod–that doesn’t really matter in a world with droids, does it?). But it really was a different kind of movie with a solid story, hero’s journey though it may have been…
Apt observation. Yet Jackie Brown (albeit based on a novel by master plotter Elmore Leonard) and Death Proof have solid story arcs.
I think the superhero plots are a lost cause and there will be a backlash soon. It’s very hard to pit superhero against supervillain and make the stakes believable. It inevitably becomes:
Oh no, Universe will be destroyed! (As you said.)
Supervillain has the upper hand! (Otherwise, there is nothing to fight against.)
Think of some clever way to defeat the villain. (Inevitably, not clever. In Big Hero 6, it came down to “think outside the box!” Mmm hmm… Still, fairly nice movie with the standard pretty lame story.)
I never liked these movies, and slowly, over time, people seem to be seeing that they aren’t all that. I’ve even seen some articles online about how they haven’t worn very well.
I saw Chronicle. I agree. It’s a more human-scale story whose outcome you really can’t guess in advance. That’s what more movie stories need to do: leave the outcome in doubt.
I agree. I work in advertising, and it’s usually a battle to save the client from itself. There are all manner of middle-aged men who need to stroke their egos and justify their jobs via their “input.”
I know I am in a small minority, but I thought this movie was absolutely terrible. And I went into the theater and saw it by myself in full expectation of something great. I just found it dumb and unsatisfying on every level. And I found the plot to be very poor indeed.
I cited The Matrix as a plot-driven movie. I just said it was poorly plotted.
I disagree with you about Private Ryan and Pulp Fiction. The thing carrying the weight of the movie isn’t continuity, it’s the characters and their conversations with one another and how they react to each others predicaments. In a plot-driven movie, you care about what the characters are doing, in a character driven one, you care about who they are.
In Private Ryan, what they’re doing is walking around. Every once in a while, there’s a bit of shooting, but not in any way that is demanded by the plot. Shooting happen because it’s necessitated by the setting or in order to reveal information about the characters. Taking out the gun nest doesn’t advance them towards the McGuffin, it just reveals who the men are; visualizing D-Day was just something Spielberg needed to whack out. The whole movie was a mess. The framing device was worse (but more skillfully worked in) to the movie than Titanic - which is a pretty damn low bar already; the McGuffin is clearly just thrown in to make a lazy point; and much of the movie exists only out of a desire (like Titanic) to make a blockbuster documentary. The only reason the movie is a decent one, where Titanic was crap, is that at least it does do a good job of building the characters. And consequently, the movie rests on those characters as its underlying motor.
Pulp Fiction is a series of interesting vignettes. I don’t see how you’re thinking that they’re plot driven? The closest thing to a plot in it is Jules’ arc, which consists of:
Get shot at.
Mull.
Decide to go straight.
I don’t believe that, that’s why people finished the movie, applauding at the end. That Jules had a wallet which said “Bad Mother Fucker” is what people look back on and remember.
I have read part of the first book (reading to my daughter) but not the rest. I think Rowling is talented. She is definitely a great world-builder. Hell, I am a grown adult man and I would love to matriculate at Hogworts. I am not impressed with the story of Voldemort, however. That is a lame, cliched villain.
I think characters are very separate issue from plot, since character mirror people we know from real life, and we as humans naturally find other humans interesting. It’s not all that difficult to create a character that seems real and original, since we take interest in people based on their nuances.
I wouldn’t say that. Most people aren’t able to write anything other than a Mary Sue. Even once you get past that, most characters end up as cardboard cutouts. Basically, in order to write a multitude of multifaceted characters, the writer needs to be able to keep up multiple full human brains in his one brain and that’s a tall order.
Cinema has it a little bit easier because a good actor can bring nuance into the role wasn’t there on the page. That might just be the actor being himself, but that’s more than nothing.
How do you make original characters? There are only so many ways to be human. Lay out a huge grid of personality traits, check off a bunch, and it’s probably been done before. People often say to write what you see in life, but most everyone I know is either boring or a walking, talking stereotype. But stereotypes take hold because there really are people like that.
You can try to make non-human characters that don’t follow human psychology or morality, but that’s also been done to death – monsters, gods, robots, aliens, whatever.
All you say is true. But my OP, poorly written I know, is about how different levels of quality in different areas are required to reach an “entertainment point.” It’s pretty easy to write a character that reaches that level. You know, when I watch a Michael Bay movie, it’s not so much that I find the Shia main character or Optimus Prime dissatisfying. Yeah, one could critique that shit all day long–it ain’t Tolstoy. But it can still entertain. What doesn’t entertain is the story. Same old “world threatened” trope, no interest or entertainment value in that at all.
Yes, this. Many a character has come to life through Pacino’s facial expressions alone.
Well, I think you have in essence explained my point better than I did. A stereotype or 2D character doesn’t immediately ruin a movie because it’s not unrealistic. Give the character a few interesting traits and have a good actor portray him/her, and it works. It’s not necessarily true excellence in cinema, but it’s not necessarily bad, either.
But plots don’t work like this, since movie-style plots don’t happen in real life, and the stories that people tell in real life are interesting precisely because they are true. If my friend starts telling me about someone who got lost in the woods and had to spend the night in an ad hoc shelter, well, that’s rather interesting as a true story. That’s not interesting as all as a movie story. It could work as an event in a movie, but there is no wow factor from that alone.
So you have to think up a “big” story with “big” stakes, but then we are in the realm of cliche and “been there, done that.”
I think a lot of it is in how you tell a story. I’ve met people who can tell us what they ate for dinner and you’re hanging on every word. I think anything can be made interesting, even if it’s total BS, if the storyteller can get his listeners or readers to care about the characters and what happens. How many books, movies, or TV shows have you seen where when it was over realized that the story was thin and the ending contrived or nonsensical? And how many have been boring, but you powered through them and it was actually a brilliantly constructed story, but tough to get through because the storyteller failed to engage you?