I've been thinking a bit about movies, since my viewing spree in New York. And I think there's something wrong with Fantasy movies at the moment.
In Terminator 3 (Sci-Fi, I know), there's a terrible bit about 20 minutes in, where something impressive happens, and it's mentioned that it was occurence one of two, and you think "well, that's the end of the film sorted", and you're right. After all the running around, occurence two of two happens, and that's the end (of the running, anyway).
Similarly, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has a dull and uninteresting scene (okay, it has two dozen), where Sean Connery and Shane West go through the motions of their quasi-father-son relationship by having Connery trying to teach West a skill, which West nearly gets right, except for his impetuous nature. Are you getting me? Do you see where this might go?
And in Pirates of the Caribbean, something unexpected happens near the end, and it's never explained, because this is a ghost story. It's shrugged off as "that's magic" and that is just one of the reasons that this film rocks. It's magic, like the hero being "mostly dead" in The Princess Bride. It's magic, like half the things in LXG should have been.
But at some point Fantasy films ended up, if not as Sci-Fi, then as Dungeons and Dragons: everything has attributes, everything has rules, the viewer must be informed of them. And so the only way out is to out-think the viewers (or fail miserably, in the case of T3 and LXG) instead of surprise them.
The irony here is that the original Terminator was to all intents and purposes a Fantasy film: We naturally believed that the Terminator could mimic the sound of Sarah Connor's granny without having to hear "Voice Modulation Technology engaged": it was a robot, why wouldn't it have been able to do shit like that? So maybe I just mean "write better films, please".
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Saturday, 26 July 2003 20:36 (twenty-two years ago)
Could someone come up with the name of a Sci-Fi film where we're introduced to a new set of Rules etc., and the film still manages to surprise us with a lateral approach to them at the end? I know there's a really obvious example I'm not thinking of.
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Saturday, 26 July 2003 20:39 (twenty-two years ago)
We naturally believed that the Terminator could mimic the sound of Sarah Connor's granny without having to hear "Voice Modulation Technology engaged"heh, I just saw Terminator and had an argument with my friend about how a robot would do that, ie how it could get all the right inflections and quirks just from hearing a voice one time.
― oops (Oops), Saturday, 26 July 2003 20:44 (twenty-two years ago)
Right now I'm trying to figure out which category the Alien series falls in. While there certainly are a lot of rules and attributes to everything in the Alien scifi universe it seems like there's always a great deal of mystery and unexplained craziness going on all the time.
I think this is also why Reloaded was so much more enjoyable to me than the first installment; lots more mystery to mull over, instead of cut-and-dried explanations for everything.
― Millar (Millar), Saturday, 26 July 2003 20:54 (twenty-two years ago)
I thought The Matric was a Sci-Fi movie that revealed its Fantasy heart at the end. Which is why I like the bait-and-switch at the end of Reloaded, where it looks like the big moment is oh it's the same trick again, then five minutes later it's how the hell did that happen?
Right with the Alien movies: it doesn't say that they can't make dog-aliens, so let's make dog-aliens.
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Saturday, 26 July 2003 21:00 (twenty-two years ago)
Sci-fi: robots/rules and attributes/boys
Fantasy: magic/it seems to make sense/girls
Part of what I'm saying is that in situations where the viewer is expected to be unfamiliar with what's being presented, films all too often literally set out the axioms (and only the axioms) that you can use to predict the outcome. Sort of like Chekov's law if you had to have a character say "This is a gun. If you pull this trigger, bullets come out of the other end at fatal velocities. I'm going to hang it on the wall now".
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Saturday, 26 July 2003 21:20 (twenty-two years ago)
one year passes...