Musing on movies (and TV)
Dec. 13th, 2005 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookzombieI've just been reading William Goldman's excellent book on being a writer of screenplays Which Lie Did I Tell? (follow-up to Adventures in the Screen Trade). By a roundabout route this got me thinking about what leads me to like some things and hate others. Being human, talking about what you don't like is always seems much easier than writing about what you do like. So, in no particular order, behind the cut are
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 6, episode 'Hell's Bells' written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner
Okay, the main thread of the story (for those that might not know): It's Xander and Anya's wedding day, Xander is shown a (later confirmed as fake) vision of their future, Xander leaves Anya at the altar, Anya becomes a vengeance demon again. Okay, it's not a great episode, bleaker than I think is really necessary, but something that we have been building up to during the season so far. My problem is with the wedding guests.
The set up has always been that the people of Sunnydale know that something weird is often going on, but are, to a person, in a state of denial. At the wedding there are is Xander's family but also monsters and demons who are friends of Anya. Having them at openly at the wedding just totally destroys my already thinning willing suspension of disbelief (and no, the 'circus folk' explanation given does not work). The series has always been, in part, about the few people who are in the know defending the normal people from what they should not need to confront. In other words, I feel that this is a betrayal of the underlying principles of the show (a show that I love dearly in most other aspects). Of course, in the episode's defence, part of the point is to show that the members of Xander's family are every bit as much monsters as the real monsters, but we've seen enough of their affect on Xander to know this already, without having to be shown it.
2. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
In the spirit of true confessions I have to admit that Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan is one of my favourite films; certainly one of my two or three favourite science fiction movies. It is quite exciting, gets good performances from most of the cast and, above all, makes emotional sense. Unlike the (suspiciously) similar death of Data in the last Star Trek film, we care about Spock's sacrifice and it ties in with the character arc.
Then The Search for Spock comes along and undoes it all. I know that there are reasons outside the film's narrative for why this was done, but even so... I would be more forgiving if The Search for Spock was better done, but it also is frankly rather boring. The opening is okay and I love the "stealing the Enterprise" and "blowing up the ship" scenes, but the rest is dull, with a side-order of more dull. The emotional resonance is not there - we should care that David, Kirk's son, is killed but it is dismissed with an 'it was worth it to get Spock back' comment. I'm sure his unwilling sacrifice for someone he hardly knew would make him feel much better...
3. Parenthood.
And now for something completely different!pennski and I went to see Parenthood a few weeks before we got married. For those who have consigned the film to mercifull oblivion, it stars Steve Martin and Mary Steenburgen and revolves around various family crises. Now, pennski will tell you that I can get quite emotionally involved in films and as the credits rolled at the cinema I burst into tears. But not for the reasons you might think. I was actually really angry and upset by the film Why? Because it was so trite. To give some emotional context, at the time we saw this my parents had recently finalised their divorce and it was only about three years since my little sister died.
To be fair, this was a relatively early Ron Howard comedy and is not meant to be Chekov, but the resolution is the emotional equivalent of 'with one bound Jack was free'. A couple of meaningful conversations and the birth of a baby and everyone is suddenly happy and the world is a great place. Life isn't like that, sorting things out can be painful and hard and sometimes you can't fix things.
Fifteen years later I can look back at my reactions and admit that they weren't entirely rational. In fact, I can remember little about the film apart from how I reacted to it. I'm also more used to the Hollywood approach to story-telling (yep, I'm pretty sure that there is some 'father and son' stuff in there) and the place that easy psychotherapy and self-help has in the film-making lexicon. But to this day it still makes me angry if I think about it too much.
Concluding Thoughts
So what do these three things have in common? I didn't realise until I thought about it, but to me they are all about betrayal of the audience. The Buffy episode betrays the background that has been built up for the audience, while both the Star Trek film and Parenthood commit emotional betrayal.
I am not saying that films should not do the unexpected - of course I like to be surprised by events, but they should also be logically and emotionally true to the background and characters that have been established.
Of course, all this probably says more about me than it does about the examples I have picked. For all of us there are themes that, in a good or bad way, push our buttons. Self-sacrifice, reconciliation and redemption (if earned) can leave me in tears, in a positive way, like no other themes. Betrayal of the audience makes me angry.
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 6, episode 'Hell's Bells' written by Rebecca Rand Kirshner
Okay, the main thread of the story (for those that might not know): It's Xander and Anya's wedding day, Xander is shown a (later confirmed as fake) vision of their future, Xander leaves Anya at the altar, Anya becomes a vengeance demon again. Okay, it's not a great episode, bleaker than I think is really necessary, but something that we have been building up to during the season so far. My problem is with the wedding guests.
The set up has always been that the people of Sunnydale know that something weird is often going on, but are, to a person, in a state of denial. At the wedding there are is Xander's family but also monsters and demons who are friends of Anya. Having them at openly at the wedding just totally destroys my already thinning willing suspension of disbelief (and no, the 'circus folk' explanation given does not work). The series has always been, in part, about the few people who are in the know defending the normal people from what they should not need to confront. In other words, I feel that this is a betrayal of the underlying principles of the show (a show that I love dearly in most other aspects). Of course, in the episode's defence, part of the point is to show that the members of Xander's family are every bit as much monsters as the real monsters, but we've seen enough of their affect on Xander to know this already, without having to be shown it.
2. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
In the spirit of true confessions I have to admit that Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan is one of my favourite films; certainly one of my two or three favourite science fiction movies. It is quite exciting, gets good performances from most of the cast and, above all, makes emotional sense. Unlike the (suspiciously) similar death of Data in the last Star Trek film, we care about Spock's sacrifice and it ties in with the character arc.
Then The Search for Spock comes along and undoes it all. I know that there are reasons outside the film's narrative for why this was done, but even so... I would be more forgiving if The Search for Spock was better done, but it also is frankly rather boring. The opening is okay and I love the "stealing the Enterprise" and "blowing up the ship" scenes, but the rest is dull, with a side-order of more dull. The emotional resonance is not there - we should care that David, Kirk's son, is killed but it is dismissed with an 'it was worth it to get Spock back' comment. I'm sure his unwilling sacrifice for someone he hardly knew would make him feel much better...
3. Parenthood.
And now for something completely different!
pennski and I went to see Parenthood a few weeks before we got married. For those who have consigned the film to mercifull oblivion, it stars Steve Martin and Mary Steenburgen and revolves around various family crises. Now, pennski will tell you that I can get quite emotionally involved in films and as the credits rolled at the cinema I burst into tears. But not for the reasons you might think. I was actually really angry and upset by the film Why? Because it was so trite. To give some emotional context, at the time we saw this my parents had recently finalised their divorce and it was only about three years since my little sister died.To be fair, this was a relatively early Ron Howard comedy and is not meant to be Chekov, but the resolution is the emotional equivalent of 'with one bound Jack was free'. A couple of meaningful conversations and the birth of a baby and everyone is suddenly happy and the world is a great place. Life isn't like that, sorting things out can be painful and hard and sometimes you can't fix things.
Fifteen years later I can look back at my reactions and admit that they weren't entirely rational. In fact, I can remember little about the film apart from how I reacted to it. I'm also more used to the Hollywood approach to story-telling (yep, I'm pretty sure that there is some 'father and son' stuff in there) and the place that easy psychotherapy and self-help has in the film-making lexicon. But to this day it still makes me angry if I think about it too much.
Concluding Thoughts
So what do these three things have in common? I didn't realise until I thought about it, but to me they are all about betrayal of the audience. The Buffy episode betrays the background that has been built up for the audience, while both the Star Trek film and Parenthood commit emotional betrayal.
I am not saying that films should not do the unexpected - of course I like to be surprised by events, but they should also be logically and emotionally true to the background and characters that have been established.
Of course, all this probably says more about me than it does about the examples I have picked. For all of us there are themes that, in a good or bad way, push our buttons. Self-sacrifice, reconciliation and redemption (if earned) can leave me in tears, in a positive way, like no other themes. Betrayal of the audience makes me angry.
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Date: 2005-12-13 06:35 pm (UTC)That said, I also like Star Trek III, and indeed think it's the second-best of the 10 films in the series (well, okay, I haven't seen Insurrection, but everyone assures me I need not bother). It has plenty of problems: Shatner blowing the timing on most of his lines, Robin Curtis as Saavik, the disappointing denouement in Vulcan. But it's got a lot going for it, too. For one thing, the script is hilarious, and Kelley and Doohan come through with flying colors there. And if II is (to some degree) about Kirk finally being hoist on his own petard for refusing to do things by the book (raise shields, you idiot!), then III rebuilds his character by stripping him of everything he relies on - his universe, his ship, and finally his friends - and yet he's still a big enough hero to kick Christopher Lloyd's ass when he has to.
To me, the real betrayal of the series was in Star Trek IV, which could have been a powerful exploration of Kirk's relationship to his world, but instead was a trifling little comedy (and not a very funny one at that). I'm constantly perplexed by its popularity (although it's twice the film that Star Trek VI: Nick Meyer Runs Out Of Ideas was).
I'm also somewhat fond of Generations; although the NextGen segments are largely superfluous (as NextGen the TV series was), the Kick/Picard sequence at the end - though flawed, and of course with a re-filmed ending - is pretty well done. Enough so that I wrote my one piece of fan fiction (http://www.leftfield.org/~rawdon/startrek/pilgrimage.html) based on it.
Anyway, I own II and III on DVD, but have never bothered to get any of the others.