Anyone have the experience where you cannot watch some movies because you cannot shake the knowledge that “This isn’t real; this is just actors delivering lines in front of a camera?” Any mental tricks for getting back into the movie-watching brain mode where you can “get into” the movie again?
Easy. You note it and then ignore it.
I’ve complained before about the opening of the second Indiana Jones film, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Everything is fine (well, as fine as things can be for Indy – being poisoned, shot at, and fall through awnings is pretty much par for the course for him) until the plane he’s in is running out of gas high in the mountains with no landing strip in sight and no parachutes on board (and Indy doesn’t yet know how to fly, something he’d rectify before the next film). It’s pretty much the cliffhanger-at-the-end-of-the-serial-chapter stuff you expect in an Indiana Jones film. How, you wonder, is he gonna get out of this one?
He gets out of it (with his companions) by jumping out in an inflatable raft, plummeting to earth (well, snow), landing unharmed, sledding down the snow and off the edge of a cliff into a river.
If the falls had been a relatively short distance, with a little parachuting from the raft helping to slow them, I might have been able to buy it. But they’re pretty long falls, both of them, and the snow and the river aren’t doing much to cushion the landings. In any reasonable universe – even in a reasonable Indiana Jones Universe – those poor folks had to have suffered multiple broken bodies, lots on internal injuries, and, more likely than not, shattered spines. But they haven’t got a scratch on them, and they go lumbering off into the next adventure.
I couldn’t buy it. I had a hard time coming back from such a severe strain on my Willing Suspension of Disbelief, right at the start of the movie. It’s another reason I didn’t care so much for that entry.
There was a rumor that Lucas and Spielberg wanted to open the first Indiana Jones film with this stunt. It’s a good thing they didn’t – I would’ve had reservations about Raiders if they had. As it is, I only find the scene palatable by imagining it’s jar-Jar Binks in the raft.
You might say "Wait, with all the ludicrous stuff in the Indiana Jones films that is what made you stop and say “Too much!” ??
Yep. I can buy or overlook the other things (primitive booby traps that continue to work without tending in the jungle for Og knows how many years, Supernatural forces operating , secret passages all over the place. There were lots of things that gave me pause (I’m still kinda pissed about that “invisible” bridge in Last Crusade, and the nuked refrigerator in Crystal Skul), but this is the only thing that really annoyed me.
I feel this way about ALL movies, which is why blood and guts and scary movies just don’t have any effect on me. But I still watch.
The movie threads here where people tear apart every scene bug me, because jeesh, it’s just a movie!
I’ll say this, I think Indiana Jones hiding in the refrigerator was absolutely brilliant film plotting. Perfect for the style and mood of the film, and the fact that it’s being held up as an example of poor filmmaking says more about people’s lack of imagination than anything wrong with the film.
Yeah. Stop watching, and pick a better movie.
In my experience I have different expectations and standards depending on the type of movie. A low key drama or comedy supposedly set in real life? Lazy writing or a lack of realism can really sink a movie. I appreciate it when attention is paid to details, like Breaking Bad’s Albuquerque area codes instead of “555” (which I find really distracting). But even when these mistakes are made I naturally forgive and forget if the movie has enough other compelling content. And honestly, if the movie is otherwise engaging often these errors will sail right over my head. If they don’t it’s often a sign that the movie is lacking in other areas. Once I’ve started thinking about these and my suspension of belief is broken it’s typically a lost cause. Not only can’t I get back into the movie, but I couldn’t be bothered, because the movie sucks.
And then there is a class of movie where over the top unrealism is the whole point. Shoot ‘em Up being the best example I can think of. So ridiculous. But so fun.
I somehow came across a movie on TV, where they had the Apollo 11 lunar module in the back of a truck and we’re trying to sell it, complete with the descent stage!
Yeah, I watched up till that point and almost through something at the TV.
Those kind of gross errors are enough to make me turn the movie off.
(The descent stage always remained on the moon. The ascent stage always crashed back to the surface, except for Apollo 13, which burned up on Earth reentry, and I believe Apollo 8 which was sent into solar orbit.)
Movies that try way too hard to make a character/characters be “badass” in a not natural or believable way, so it makes it seem like the movie was written by the character themself as a self-congraulatory autobiography.
The Expendables movies suffer heavily from this, as well as both Xander Cage xXx movies (oddly I liked State of the Union). Movies like Commando and Predator do a much better job being completely over-the-top but still not feeling like the entire movie is going " This is the greatest hero of all time" by at least giving the characters some flaws and actual motivation besides “Damn I’m good at my job!”
“you’re tearing me aparrrrrrttttt!”
I never got the impression that the Expendable movies ever really expected me to suspend my disbelief - kind of like long-form A-Team TV episodes.
It usually happens for me when a background / extra / one-line character is having to do something really humiliating or stupid. Particularly random nude / sex-scene extras. I can’t help thinking of the poor no-name actor trying to make it in Hollywood, and this is the best they can get. That always takes me out of the scene and into the idea of it just being a movie.
Exactly. One of my repeat watch movies is Flash Gordon (1980). No part of that is believable. It’s just fun.
That being said, the A-Team movie had a scene where they dodged flying cargo containers. That was unrealistic enough to make me shake my head in disbelieving dissatisfaction for twelve seconds or so before shaking it off and sinking back into the cool.
I didn’t mind the refrigerator particularly, because it didn’t go on that long. The part that had me rolling my eyes was the climatic extended chase and battle between two vehicles speeding for what was apparently dozens of miles in thick tropical forest without ever hitting a fallen log or hole (or if they did, they weren’t slowed much by it). Most people haven’t fallen out of a plane in an inflatable raft, and so might not have a feeling for how realistic that was, but anyone knows you can’t drive a speeding car very far though a forest, even a temperate one, before hitting something.
People were also critical of aliens being the focus, but that actually fit in perfectly with the flying saucer scares of the 1950s (although the “Gods from Outer Space” idea came later, in the 1960s).
But conversely, if you don’t think, in some part of your mind, “This isn’t real; it’s only a movie” while watching those blood-and-guts scary movies, you’d have to be a psychopath to enjoy them.
Mythbusters tried it.It works just fine.
That’s not to say it’s safe. The raft might tip over, and the passengers might fall out. That’s a high risk. But the raft itself lands softly. No bones broken, assuming they mange to stay in the raft.
Who said the traps were unattended? There’s a tribe who live around the temple, they worship the idol. It’s reasonable to assume they keep the traps working.
When actors really are too old for this shit, pensioners on screen fumbling about and pretending no-one notices. I get The Expendables, all done with tongue firmly in cheek, it’s when you get a septuagenarian ruining a role they made popular in the 80’s ffs. Even if the character were physically capable of doing that, mightn’t they have moved on by now?
One recent example where factual inaccuracies in a movie bothered me was in Kingsman: The Golden Circle. I knew perfectly well that much of what was going on in the movie was just silly as regards to realism. For that matter, I knew that in the first movie in this series. Still, I was bothered when the scene shifts to Louisville, Kentucky and we see Channing Tatum’s character. He’s a Kentucky native, he’s speaks with a Deep South accent, and he wears a cowboy hat. That struck me as a ridiculous combining of three different areas of the U.S. by the filmmakers who obviously have no real knowledge of individual parts of the U.S.
One thing that will take me out of a movie, at least for a minute, is when water or some other liquid splashes on the camera lens. You’d think that would get edited out, but it happens in some pretty big budget, well regarded movies. During a battle scene in the movie ‘Children of Men’ a drop of fake blood hit the lens. I think there was also a scene in ‘The Revanent’ where some water or something splashed on the lens during some action.
For me, belief is suspended when the female characters go to bed wearing bras. I know, I know…it’s a small thing. But I’ve never dated any woman who wore a bra when they were sleeping. When the heroine gets up, walks into the kitchen, and is obviously wearing a bra…“it’s just a movie.”
An actor’s ability makes all the difference. Yeah, I know that’s Jack Nicholson. When he’s doing a good job I forget that. When he’s doing a bad job then I can’t help but think that I’m just watching a bunch of people read lines.