A bad ending of this sort can ruin future viewings for me, at least (vs. opening scenes).
I get stabby any time someone mentions 12 Monkeys as some stellar example of filmmaking, when the first time I watched it I was utterly appalled at the airport security protocols (or lack thereof) at the end. Not only do they just perfunctorily wave the asshole with the viruses through without a second thought, after Willis is shot not a SINGLE cop or security person calls back the bottle guy, saying “Hey get back here, you’re part of this too.”
This of course was made worse by the events of Sept. 11, 2001, where security became even tighter. But even before then no way he is getting on that plane with those bottles (in a US airport at least), and after shots are fired no way the plane gets to take off with that guy and his cargo on board.
This is why I don’t like a lot of modern special effects, they are obviously special effects to me, and it annoys me to come that close to realism without getting all the way there. I have an easier time suspending disbelief for cheap effects, even if they are more obvious, I don’t feel like it’s a lame attempt to convince me that I’m seeing reality.
Stupid premises also cause this problem for me. Go full out fantasy or sci-fi if you need to, but don’t try to convince me that impossible technology exists, or that people don’t see the blatantly obvious problems with the situation they are in.
Yeah, I think stuff like that pulls me out of a movie.
Like I was watching John Wick 2 and the characters are fighting in the “Oculus” World Trade Center PATH station. They fight their way onto what is clearly an NJ PATH train, after which the stops are announced as Canal Street, Rector Street and Broad Street. Not only are these stops not near each other, they are not on any PATH train line.
Unrealistic dialogue often kills the magic for me. I can get past it, but the film has to be very good for other reasons (Casablanca).
Also, fight sequences without clear views of the punches, etc., especially when the actor doesn’t look dangerous. Often in the same film, someone gets shot in a limb and is using it just a few minutes later.
I wasn’t actually watching it myself, which may make a difference, but I was walking through the room as others were watching Stranger Things with the closed captioning turned on. And the captions definitely made me feel that “This isn’t real; this is just actors delivering lines in front of a camera,” because I could see the lines that they were going to be delivering right before they delivered them.
I think that’s true in general, for most viewers. The hero has to figure out a code sequence of 27 numbers, with 100 billion different possible combinations, or else the anti-matter transport device will activate and the entire city of San Francisco will be instantly teleported to the surface of the moon? No problem. He enters 27 numbers at random, and by pure dumb luck it just happens to be the correct sequence? That’s where people will say, “Oh, come on!”
Either I’m a bad movie-goer, or I’m particularly resistant to “breaking the suspension of disbelief.” I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced being “taken out of a movie,” because I don’t think that I’ve ever been in one. That is, I’m pretty much always aware that these are actors in front of a camera delivering lines. Indeed, I find that my enjoyment of movies is usually increased by thinking about the actors, the director, the special effects artists, and their various techniques.
Maybe I’m getting more cynical, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve become less and less patient with the whole “Let’s pretend this really happened” school of analysis. The Sherlockian “game” drives me crazy, as do some of the more fanwanky Star Trek fans–ironic considering how long I’ve been a Trekkie myself. In general, I find it more useful to understand and experience works of art as created artifacts, things which had an author and a deadline and a budget and an awareness of audience expectations and a knowledge of the conventions of their particular genre and producers breathing down their necks because this was a big tent-pole release and if it tanked it could mean the end of several people’s careers.
So in some ways I don’t really understand the complaint of being taken out of a movie, since I’ve yet to encounter a movie that ever made me forget I was an audience member in a theater watching actors perform their roles. Whether that’s better or worse for my cinema-going experience, I leave to you to judge.
I’ll take it a different way - the movie that took me out of “movie mode” did not have a flaw with science, technology, dialog, unrealistic behavior. It was none of these.
The film was Unstoppable and the fact that Scott just could not keep the camera still! The camera was spinning and dodging and weaving for the entire fucking film! Even if two people were having a calm conversation (which I don’t think happened once), the camera would still fly around them like it was a paparazzi drone over Beyonce’s wedding.
It’s so ridiculous and over the top that I could not enjoy the film for the silly fun it was.
Air resistance on the raft and landing on snow would both help, but the biggest advantage to jumping out in the raft like that is that they’re landing on a steep surface. You’re going from falling straight down at high speed, to continuing down at nearly as high a speed plus somewhat sideways, which is not nearly as much of an acceleration as hitting level ground would be.
EDIT: Oh, and when they do the drops of liquid hitting the camera, that’s intentional (often, the liquid isn’t even real at all, but computer-generated). The goal isn’t to make it look live, with no camera at all: The goal is to make it look like a documentary, still with a camera, but filming something real.
I have the same thing happen to me with fake CGI blood splatter. It almost never looks good and movies overuse it too much, Expendables 2 is entirely CGI blood splatter and none of it looks remotely convincing, it also effects how extras behave because at least with squibs actors know when to react to being “shot”, with CGI blood splatter they just seem to react either too soon or not soon enough. It takes filmmaking back to the 50s when the only way you’d know somebody was shot was when they fell down right afterwards since there never was any wound on the body at all.
Or when “the act” is clearly reaching its conclusion and the woman still has her bra on. I could buy she has to put it back on for support while sleeping, but during the act?
this was a problem for me a while ago, well , I felt that actors seemed too self conscious in a “I’m acting, I am” kind of way, I watched a lot of stuff with subtitles for a while not understanding the language they spoke made it believable again, I used Danish programmes some cop style things, good stories. Are you good at spotting when people are lying too? I think all the bullshitters in my life were what broke tv for me! seriously though, subtitles.
When they later fall and land in the river, is that a steep surface, too?
I’m sorry – both those drops look too damned long, and further than the movie makes them appear, but the landing are too hard and sudden (it wasn’t that steep a surface on the snow) for me to believe these people wouldn’t have been seriously if not fatally injured.
To refresh your memories:
OK, one more from me. And this happens much more often than one might expect.
The camera establishes a shot of a business. (In my most recent example, it was actually a cemetery.) The sign for the business is misspelled. (In this example, it was a wrought-iron arch that spelled it “CEMETARY…”) I mean, come on! Some production assistant or stage dresser was given a budget to have a faux wrought-iron arch made and he/she couldn’t be bothered to get the spelling right? The PA had ONE job and screwed it up. I’m sure that most of the people on the set realized it was misspelled, but the shooting schedule made it necessary to use the erroneous sign.
The same thing happens with newscasts, newspaper headlines and articles, highway signs, official paperwork, and similar materials shown in films. I immediately start thinking, “What the heck did the director think when the lead actor was handed a fake newspaper with the headline,‘WIFE OF PROMINENT BUSINESSMAN DISSAPPEARS’?” Did he fire the PA? Did he just sigh and say, “Nobody will notice?”
In any case, it takes a long time for me to get back into the movie.
