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× Talk abut Movies & TV here. Just tell us what you have been watching. Have hyper-academic discussions on visual semiotics. Whatever, it's all good.

Why are movies generally so retarded?

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27 Oct 2012 10:39 #136812 by bomber
I had the misfortune of having to sit (well, lay) through the Jackal last night, as believe it or not there was very little else on TV, and rather than be sensible and just turn it off I decided to see if it was as bad a film as I remember

spoiler: it is, please don't check yourself

then I was faffing around on IMDB and read this
swedish.imdb.com/title/tt0119395/board/t...632059&p=1#128632059

I also like that in many movies some guy starts a "100 things I learned from watching..." which basically picks out all the completely retarded things in the movie, which are almost always mucgh funnier and more entertaining than the film itself


But then I got to think, why are so many movies completely retarded, like look at the credits, there are a gazillion people involved in making a movie, probably the main star has 18 people in charge of bringing them different snacks and ironing their underwear. I don't even know what half of the job titles are when the 14 billion names scroll down the screen at the end

I get that movies are just there to make money on the whole, and that you have to sometimes sacrifice some reality for the sake of expediating a plot, and I get that Hollywood is not really a great example of film making with artistic integrity

but, does anyone know, how is that NO ONE involved in the film, from the very top end directors and producers, to the editors, to the actors, to the film crew, to the 374 billion people listed in the credits, that NO ONE ever waves their hand and says "do you know what THIS BIT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE AT ALL, JUST FUCKING THINK ABOUT IT FOR A MINUTE"

I mean, I'm guessing when they film scenes, someone is saying yeah Bruce, you go here and say this and remember you're pissed here, he did this to you, shes a bad ass, so you need to show this, and here you're going to totally flip out etc etc. I mean someone is giving them a set of lines and a mood, and a sense of what the scene is trying to do

Is there still no one, not even the person who presents the list of available sugar brands for the stars to choose which one will be placed in their coffee, no one who is saying HANG THE FUCK ON, THIS IS RETARDED, IF THIS IS HAPPENING IN A SCENE, OR IN THE PLOT WHY NOT THIS OR THIS OR THIS

Like, how the flying fuck is is that movies on the whole, and I mean, in general it's across the board inevitably are chock full of fucking ludicrous shit that literally does not make sense, and would not happen, and in fact, does not represent what generally happens in the exact situation that presumably those fucking idiots are trying to recreate on screen.

I'm guessing part of it is most movies just cram way too much stuff in there to be exciting and there's no time to make it logical or realistic, but I mean, please god, isn't anyone, anywhere involved in these films brave enough to say "erm, you know what, this is stoopid"


aaaaarrrrrgrgggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh

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27 Oct 2012 12:07 - 27 Oct 2012 12:18 #136813 by Sagrilarus
1. This is my biggest gripe -- most script writers appear to be about 22, and have no real understanding of the personal motivations of real-live adults. This becomes painfully apparent in many movies where spouses are interacting or parents and children are interacting. When I was 22 I didn't notice, now it's painfully apparent.

2. You're looking at that movie like it's a unified, well-visioned product. More likely the film was rewritten a dozen times as it was being filmed, and the editor needs to piece together a plot-line (still being rewritten) from the pieces available to him after everyone has left for their next projects. You see a "film" where the editor sees "jigsaw puzzle" and some pieces refuse to fit together. He's used a mallet to produce a final product.

I once spent a day reading the life-story of Blade Runner, generally considered a well-built film. The web site I was reading had 22 different scripts they were quoting, and pointed out how entire characters were removed from the story half-way through filming. Arcs were excised with two loose needing to be sewn together to cover the gap. Some of the errors introduced into the final product from this are used by "Decker is a replicant" proponents to argue their case.

Kevin Costner had the leading role in The Big Chill, and he was filmed. Don't look for him -- completely removed from the final product. Still got paid.

3. Why spend the money to write strong story when profits are indemnified by marquis actors and big special effects? Something needs to be trimmed. Getting the story right takes time, and time is money.

4. Too many cooks in the kitchen. The producer shows up on set and says, "the investors want nudity. We need a woman to take her shirt off." The director replies, "but it's a prison film." The producer closes the conversation, "work something in. We've got an actress that needs big film exposure. Just something long enough to get some teasers for the advertising."

5. Fifty years ago a couple of dozen true films came out a year (not the Lone Ranger/Buck Rogers stuff). Now it's more like 500 including direct to video and cable, but there's about the same number of talented writers. I once heard Neil Simon say this was the biggest difference he had seen in his lifetime. There is so much demand for content that anything reasonably coherent can find funding. The trick is to find films with some provenance (say, a thirty second review from a somewhat reputable web site) and watch those instead of going into something stone cold. There's just a lot of drivel out there.

For anyone in doubt, I am indeed becoming a bitter old man.

S.
Last edit: 27 Oct 2012 12:18 by Sagrilarus.
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27 Oct 2012 12:19 #136814 by bomber
theres loads of room in the bitter old man Sag!!!


I take your points but I mean way way down the "good movie" chain is still a mess, I mean even on a very low basic level, like in that link quoted the way a paramedic team sits there while some woman dies bleeding to death reciting some stupid line passed onto her by her killer. Is not a single person associated with the project thinking hang on, I bet this isn't really what happens when a police officer is bleeding to death on the couch, cos I'm guessing the medics are working at 450% efficiency with arms, IVs, drips and stuff everywhere, securing her and getting her to transfer to a hospital rather than just sit there gawping while she blabbers to some IRA terrorist now helping them catch a killer.

I know you can pull holes in most movies, but it just seems like on a basic level of how people actually work in real life is getting more and more ignored in ways that make it difficult for me to watch.


At least I understand why Fredric Forsyth wanted his name off that film credits, my god, what a complete and utterly abject way to turn a classic political thriller into a steaming pile of dogpoo.

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27 Oct 2012 13:28 #136816 by Erik Twice

Sagrilarus wrote: 1. This is my biggest gripe -- most script writers appear to be about 22, and have no real understanding of the personal motivations of real-live adults.

You know, being an increasingly grumpy 22 year old guy it seems to me that it's not because the writers are too young but that they are so terribly bad at their own job that they don't understand what is a real character or that it's a tool and a mean, not a goal in itself.

It's like watching blank slates play an RPG. "Oh, I'm going to play this guy, who has an axe, high charisma and always tells the truth, oh man, it's going to be so fun!". That's not a character guys, it's a walking plot device and slapping him a job or a dark, troubled past as a marine won't make it any more credible. You can see the whole movie coming from a mile, it's that forced.

And this happens everywhere, not just characters or even movies. Nobody says, "Humm, let's make a movie about this interesting thing!", they say "We need a movie with Star McMoney and some tits for the teenagers, because that's what all good films have".

They don't care, ldsbomber. They don't care about plot holes, actual personality or common sense. They don't think they make a good film nor a sellable one and they would rather prefer to cram more explosions or a romantic plot because Citizen Kane had both of those and it sold well so why not add more crap?


TL;DR: Nine out of ten people who praise a movie for having "character progression" should shoot themselves in the face.
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27 Oct 2012 13:35 #136818 by repoman
Well, I am certainly not going to argue that some movies are just absolute shit. With stories that are utter garbage and make no sense. Like books, or music, or any artistic endeavor where there is a large quantity of output, much or most of it is going to be lousy.

Lets look at a couple of things that might help to explain this:

The seemingly never ending list of credits at the end of the movie. Oh, how I loath this and when I watch TCM and see a movie that has two seconds of credits at the beginning of the movie I find it very refreshing. Somebody explained to me that the reason for this is that if somebody working behind the scenes gets a "credit" it counts as part of their remuneration on the film. (A union thing I think) and this is why you are enlightened as to who the caterer and her assistant were and who was the guy that drove the van that brought the electricians to the set. It lowers the labor costs.

Movies are exercises in compromise. Original author, script writers, producers, directors, actors, set designers, art directors, costume designers....all these creative people all have a say. Then the business people, the producers, the studios, the accountants, they have their say as well. Sometimes this overflowing supply of ideas results in a muddled mess but sometimes, and these are the great times, it produces something so fantastic that it'll blow your mind.

Be careful when you say Hollywood is not the place to find movies made with artistic integrity. For every movie made elsewhere that you could cite that has it it I bet I could name ten that came from Hollywood. That a lot of dross comes with the good is a just the way of the world.

Sag is right when he says most movies are made from a young perspective. You sure do see it as you get older. Much of that is because the people that go to the movies, in the theaters, by and large are younger. Old men like Sag and I probably prefer sitting on the comfy couch at home to the seats in the theater. (well sometimes...I still like going to the movies but only occasionally)

As to plot holes that annoy us. Given enough time and thought, there are remarkably few movies if any that don't have so called holes if you try to find them hard enough. I don't defend the most egregious offenders. Sometimes they are so large and obvious that you do wonder WTF? However, sometimes you have to let the minor ones slide. Like watching Frankenstein the other night. The monster is prowling around the doctors house so the doctor locks his fiancee in a room from the outside so she can't get out? Huh? And providing this first idea is a good one he fails to lock the 10 foot tall windows in this ground floor room so the monster can just walk right in? Stupid? Sure. Does it make Frankenstein a bad movie. I don't think so.
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27 Oct 2012 14:39 #136821 by ubarose
I've worked on movies. When you are working on a shitty movie, you know it. There may be 100s people listed in the credits, but only the director and the producers have any control over the movie. None of the other people can really say anything to them. They just whisper and bitch among themselves. You know things aren't good when you start getting re-writes daily, and then at 5am a whole new scene that was written the night before is delivered to you with instructions that it will be shot at noon that day. You know the movie is going to hell in a hand basket when the producers start showing up at shoots and telling people what to do. When the producers wife or girlfriend starts making suggestions, you know it's time to fill out the paper work to have your name removed from the credits.

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27 Oct 2012 14:48 #136822 by Gary Sax
You are missing a much simpler explanation explanation, and I'm not sure why. The mass public is stupid---look at surveys of the public to see how breaktakingly stupid (and especially) lazy they are. For the most part, they don't want anything challenging in any way. So you make stupid movies for stupid people. Done.
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27 Oct 2012 15:30 #136823 by engineer Al
Stupid is as Stupid sells.

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27 Oct 2012 19:45 #136833 by mads b.
I believe a lot of movies - especially action ones - have lots of plot loopholes. That is, parts where getting from one point of the narrative to another requires the viewer to make some sort of mental shortcut. Not logical flaws as such, but more like a big empty place you have to fill out Umberto Eco style.

However, we have to remember that realism is not what a story should aim at. In his Poetics Aristotle says something in the line of: a play should not depict what actually happened, but what could have happened. So in many ways I feel like "that never happens in real life" is not always a valid objection. No, but maybe it could and in this story - in the reality on the screen - that is what actually happens. A good example of this is childbirth. Childbirth is hardly ever shown in a realistic way in movies - for instance you don't normally go in to labour the moment the water breaks. But since the actual physical childbirth normally isn't the important thing in a movie - the proces of becoming a parent usually is.

That being said I too can't help but wonder at times about coherence in movies, but I think the size of a movie production is at fault. That and the fact that if you as an editor have to pick between cutting five minutes of action and five minutes of explaining why something actually happens, you always pick the boring explanation.
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28 Oct 2012 04:54 - 28 Oct 2012 04:54 #136842 by Dogmatix

Erik Twice wrote:

Sagrilarus wrote: 1. This is my biggest gripe -- most script writers appear to be about 22, and have no real understanding of the personal motivations of real-live adults.

You know, being an increasingly grumpy 22 year old guy it seems to me that it's not because the writers are too young but that they are so terribly bad at their own job that they don't understand what is a real character or that it's a tool and a mean, not a goal in itself.


Yea, I agree that this is not a function of age; it's a function of ability and basic sense. I've been powering through a bunch of various space opera and combat sci-fi series of late and there are heaps of authors both self-published [the Kindle store has done wonders for the concept of "vanity press" but has not exactly advanced literary culture as far as I can figure] and published by real publishing houses with editors and stuff. After reading about 30 different books in the last month, I'm starting to compile a list of gripes that seem to apply universally these days.

Things like...

1) If you've never had sex, please don't write about it. Ever. And even if you've *had* sex, S&M is rather specialized and has a language all its own. Either learn it, pony boy, or find some other sort of sexual practice to spend 20 pages writing about... (I don't know what the fuck has happened, but I swear that S&M sex slave has become a new trope for every Baen author they've picked up since Jim Baen shuffled off this mortal coil, and it's spilled over into the self-publishing crowd.

2) If you've never been in the military and refuse to make any friends who have, don't make infantry tactics the heart of your conflict.

3) If you don't know anyone with kids (and, based on #1 above, we already know you don't have any yourself), don't write your parent-child relationship from the parent point of view. You really don't know what went through your mom's head when you were a douchebag teenager and it's painfully obvious that you're just guessing when you write

4) Please pick up a shotgun and fire it at least once before writing a Zombie Apocalypse Survival novel. Your protagonist should have been zombie chow by page 3 thanks to dislocating both shoulders and possibly breaking his pelvis trying to hipfire that Remington 870...

5) Read your dialogue aloud at least once--and then have someone else read it, too. If they can't get through a sentence, it's because *humans* don't actually speak like that...

etc.

Movies and brain-candy novels seem to feature the same writing pitfalls, so I suspect my list is just as applicable there...
Last edit: 28 Oct 2012 04:54 by Dogmatix.
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29 Oct 2012 04:22 #136868 by Shellhead
Movies tend to suck for reasons best explained by Ubarose, and also there is Sturgeon's Law.

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29 Oct 2012 15:32 #136884 by StrayKnife
They kind of have to be somewhat "retarded." If a movie was totally logical and realistic, it'd be boring as hell. I know I wouldn't want to watch something that made too much sense, but I'm a fan of the tropes, genres, and gimmicks of Hollywood, and I'm not much of a critic.

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