In this thread concerning an upcoming movie in which a giant monster attacks NYC, some folks expressed objections to the manner in which ads for the film portrayed the Statue of Liberty’s head being swatted/flung/expectorated into the streets of the city. Apparently the real SoL is constructed in such a manner that its head would not bounce in the manner portrayed.
I thought such concerns were amusing, given that the basic premise of the movie is apparently that some gargantuan monster/robot/whatever arises from the sea to lay waste to the city and terrorize its inhabitants.
On poster observed:
This got me thinking about the extent and manner in which folks “suspend disbelief” at the movies - especially SF and horror films that have preposterously unbelievable underlying premises.
-If you are going to object to the film unrealistically portraying the structural integrity of the SoL, are you also going to object to the fact that the giant monster would likely be unable to support its own weight, or move in the manner that it does?
-What portion of the potential viewing audience for this monster flick do you think has a firm understanding of the SoL’s construction?
-How technically “incorrect” does a movie have to be for you to cease to enjoy it?
-Do you actually “suspend disbelief” when watching fantastic films, or do you just enjoy going along for a fun - tho unbelievable - ride?
-What are some instances where you were willing to suspend disbelief, but then objected to a relatively minor point saying, “Now I don’t buy THAT!”
I think the biggest challenge for suspending disbelief for me is when a movie violates its own rules. You can make up any reality you want, but you have to stick to it.
Violating basic laws of physics does it for me. A robot falling out of the sky at great velocity, transforming into a jet 50 feet above the ground, then flying away at full speed is a good example of this.
What kinda gets me moreso is when I feel a character behaves unbelievably.
Either no person would act like that, or I don’t buy that the character they created and developed would then act in a certain way.
I always get a kick out of when I’ll be watching something like Star Trek, and a fellow viewer will be happily buying into the show, and then will object to some relatively minor bit of technobabble they pull out to resolve a plot point.
Someone once said that you can make me believe the impossible but not the improvable.
So a time traveling AI can use a quantum phaser to disengage the molecular bonds of a safe to get in – No problem.
But, have Jimmy the Tulalip walk up to the same safe and just happen to guess the combination on the first try, with no other explanation – NO F’n way!
Don’t know why but it’s true
on Edit:*
Oh and the movies own rules thing that TDN brings up. That’s good too
I was just thinking about this topic today, but with TV shows. What makes some inconsistencies in TV shows like *Pushing Daisies * acceptable, but when they’re in *Star Trek: Enterprise * you can hear the howl into the Delta quadrant?
I think it has to do with quality. With a good quality show, with quality plotlines, actors, and characters, we may be more forgiving. I think JSexton also has a point…if you want to establish that all human can breathe in a vacuum, fine. But don’t then have a human suffocate in space without having a damn good explanation.
jsexton and dinsdale pretty much nailed it for me. I have no problem buying into a world where the One Ring can only be melted down in a specific volcano, or where the Force can be used to choke out those of insufficient faith, or a mother’s loving self-sacrifice serves as a thin layer of Voldy-repellent. What always snaps me out of the story is characters reacting unrealistically, or plot points being obviously pulled out of asses.
I think it just boils down to whether or not you find the cognitive dissonance of suspension of belief entertaining. It’s kind of like the carnival ride thing. Some people like to have multiple g’s on their solar plexis, some don’t.
I personally don’t like to suspend belief, nor do I like carnival rides. I’m not Casper Milquetoast; I just think reality is stranger than fiction and getting tossed about is a bad thing. It’s a matter of personal preference, therefore as variable as fingerprints.
Yep, that’s a big part of it right there. An addendum would be movies that are theoretically set in our reality with real life rules but make no sense at all.
Such as, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, the premise with the insurance and naming his kids as the beneficiaries makes no sense, Swordfish for…well many reasons.
I agree that it’s largely about consistency. You walk in with a set of expectations about the way this movie will change reality. If it changes it in other ways, your suspension of disbelief is blown.
This even drops to the level of cartoons. There was a Far Side cartoon that featured a male bee walking into his house, hanging up his hat and coat, making some comment to a female bee that’s obviously his wife. Gary Larson received letters explaining that it’s female bees that go out and work for a living, not male bees. People are willing to accept bees that walk on their hind legs, wear clothes, live in little bee-sized houses with bee-sized doors and bee-sized furniture, but the male bee had better not be working!!!
I’m probably Hollywood’s favorite sort of audience. As long as the writing is half-decent or there’s enough explosions to keep my mind off the writing, I tend to just not notice. Movies are fun and that’s all for me. Sometimes something will happen in a movie that’ll make me go “What??” but then I let it go and keep on enjoying. Unless it’s one of those movies that’s taking itself way too seriously. I like my cheese to know it’s cheese.
I’ll just say that I really appreciate movies (and books) that are well-thought-out, so that anything that happens that makes you say, “Hey! Wait a minute! That couldn’t really happen” or “They wouldn’t really do that” turns out to have an actual good explanation after all.
It seems pretty clear to me that you should limit the things requiring suspension of disbelief to the few things required by the original premise. Certainly speculation is interesting, and that allows us to make movies (or tell stories) about oversized monsters, or faster-than-light travel, or time travel, or fairies, or ghosts and witches.
But your attitude of "if you can suspend one thing, then why not everything (which seems to be what you’re saying) is untenable. If all bets are off, then you can have characters act in irrational ways, you can have characters appear multiple times, walk on the ceiling, suddenly for no reason kill their best friend, and so on. And while any one of those things might make for a compelling story, it needs a rationale and it needs to be surrounded by an understandable milieu. Because otherwise you have no idea what’s going on, you can’t orient yourself, and drama is impossible because actions have no consequences.
In the extreme cases, you have things like The Matrix, where a new reality is crreated, or anarchic cartoons where Bugs Bunny can pull a hammer out of “Hammerspace” and Daffy Duck can be blown up and reconstitted. But in those cases there’s still a general adherence to accepted reality, and the new world follows its own internal logic. And that’s not because anyone’s making it do so – it’s because you need a consistent background to make drama and plot possible, and you need a predictable world to make the humor of unpredictable behavior even possible.
So, yeah, it bothers me when the head of the statue of liberty doesn’t follow physical laws. Would you like it if the head, instead, was propelled upwards and out of the atmosphere? No? Because if it did, it would be like one of those violations of reality you see in cartoons, and it’s be funny. But that would completely destroy the mood the director was trying to produce.
I think part of the appeal of these monster movies is that it’s the real world that we all live in with some fantastical element thrown in. We can identify with the world and the characters. With the movie’s premise, we can accept a giant monster, and wonder how our own real society would react to such an impossible thing. But if the statue of liberty’s head bounced like a superball, or if people lost limbs and inexplicably grew them back, or if Abraham Lincoln appeared out of nowhere to save the day, then we’re drawn out of this movie world and realize that it’s not our own universe but some completely different fictional one, and we care less about it.
I’m perfectly willing to suspend disbelief over trivia issue like the actual physics as opposed to what looks good. If you want to nitpick, you can kill any film.
I do agree that a film has to stick with its own internal logic, and that the characters must behave in a reasonable manner (and not be idiots). But I can enjoy films like The Core and The Day After Tomorrow despite their absurdities because there are good characters and dialog.
I often can spot trivial inconsistencies in films, and it’s kind of fun to spot them. But that sort of thing is not going to ruin a film for me unless they were important plot points.
That occurred for me in “Star Trek: Insurrection” when Data blew some circuits and went berserk. Picard and Worf flew in a shuttle in pursuit of him, and Picard’s plan was to distract him by singing some light opera at him. Now, I can buy a story with a berserk android and a human and alien flying through space while singing Gilbert and Sullivan. What’s unusual about that? But the WTF moment for me occurred when Picard asked:
“Mr. Worf, are you familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan?”
and Worf replied,
“No sir, I have not had a chance to meet all the new crew members since I have been back.”
[Comic Book Guy costume on]
Now, it’s not unreasonable for your average Klingon to be unfamiliar with Earth opera. But Worf was raised by Sergey and Helena Roshenko. Sergey was a Starfleet officer and presumably the Roshenkos were a cultured couple. They would have exposed young Worf to as much Earth culture as they could. So it is improbable Worf would be unfamiliar with Gilbert and Sullivan.
[Comic Book Guy costume off]
Unless Worf was whooshing Picard. (“I have a sense of humor.”)
Jsexton has a good bit of it: The film has to follow it’s own internal logic, and if it does I can accept that logic’s contradiction with my own reality.
Let me add that suspension of disbelief is also justified for the sake of good storytelling. In movies with aliens, for example, I’m OK with everyone speaking English as dealing with alien language problems might bog down the story too much. My understanding of “Cloverfield”–based on the trailers I’ve seen–is that a lot of the dramatic storytelling will depend on the characters getting only part of the information or interpreting events from different perspectives. It’s clear to me the Statue of Liberty shot will be used to spark a sudden, shocking reaction; one aspect of the “what’s going on” question will be illustrated in a stunning way to both the characters and audience simultaneously, a device that gets the audience to better identify with the characters.
Keeping that mood is obviously a vital criterion in designing the scene, and if it’s done effectively I’m willing to drop any concerns about the physics.
Hmm, sort of a minimalist position that a work of fiction should restrain itself to the fewest unbelievable things necessary? How do you decide how many are necessary? In Star Trek, does the original premise require warp drive, teleporters, and not phasers, but not the holodeck?
No, that is not at all what I’m saying, and I suspect you realize as much. Instead, I’m saying if you are willing to accept this hugely improbable concactenation of factors - namely the very existence of a giant monster - why do you object to this one particular relatively minor point? Especially when it is pretty clear why they included this particular point - because it makes for a neat image on the big screen.
Heck, if they wanted to resolve it, all they’d need to do is toss in a line of dialogue saying “Gee, good thing they replaced the SoL’s head with a titanium reinforced version following that terrorist attack, because the old copper clad model would never have bounced like that!”
I dunno precisely what mood the director was trying to produce, or whether he was trying to produce a single mood for all possible audience members. But I could imagine a story where the monster was sufficiently strong to launch the SoL’s head - or a car - into orbit. Why not?
I can enjoy watching Superman be superstrong, use his x-ray vision, and have bullets bounce off his chest. Tho it is ludicrous, it doesn’t bother me that he can fly as well, including out into space where he can zip around the world sufficiently to make time go backwards…
Oh, come on now. I’d be willing to bet fewer than 25% of people on the planet today know Gilbert and Sullivan, and we’re barely 100 years removed from them. 300 years later, with that much more human (not to mention alien) culture to draw from? G&S would be an obscure curiosity, confined to the weird (Picard’s affection for Victorian-era culture is well established).
OK, that came across really, really dorky…and I’m really not even much of a Trek fan.
But how do you decide what is a minor point? That’s why my statement
isn’t me beung a smartass, but trying to establish the regime of acceptability. THAT’S why I set it as minimu m dostortion, because otherwise a segment of your audience is going to carp (not because of any Aristotelin laws of drama, or some such.) Obviously you don’t, and regard me as a fussy science geek for compliaining. Whereas I 'm bothered by things that violate reality beyond what’s needed, and think that you’re a flighty lightweight who’s not bothered by inconsistency. (Please note that these opinions do not represent reality, and are exagerrated for comic effect. Now really think about that.)
I’d be willing to bet fewer than 25% of people on the planet today know Gilbert and Sullivan, and we’re barely 100 years removed from them. 300 years later, with that much more human (not to mention alien) culture to draw from? G&S would be an obscure curiosity, confined to the weird (Picard’s affection for Victorian-era culture is well established).