**CONTAINS GAME OF THRONES SPOILERS**
Since The Last Jedi came out (a movie which, in my opinion, is terribly flawed and has awful writing throughout) it's become extremely popular for creators and fandoms to defend writing in shows and films with "It's great at subverting audience expectations! You just hate it because you weren't expecting those things to happen!"
With the release of Season 8 of Game of Thrones and the awful massacre of that show's story and characters, it seems like people are jumping on this same bandwagon. "But it was so subversive!"
The idea, it would seem, is that writing is great merely by virtue of having unexpected things happen. If the audience is surprised with something you did as a writer, you are inherently a genius and your scripts are fantastic.
I'm going to be blunt.
This is a complete fallacy and the people using this reasoning are completely intellectually bankrupt when it comes to telling a good story.
Honestly, this whole line of reasoning is pure unadulterated nonsense.
Imagine you're watching Pulp Fiction. Marsellus Wallace is talking to Butch about throwing the boxing match. Suddenly, his head violently and gorily explodes everywhere and Willis reels in shock.
Cut to next scene. Vincent has just saved Mia from OD'ing. He takes her back to the house, smiles, and then he pulls out his pistol and shoots her dead.
Final scene. Travolta and Jackson are in the restaurant. Roth and Plummer talk about robbing the place, reach for their guns...and then decide that actually, no they won't. They just walk out, roll credits.
All three of these scenes are examples of completely subverting an audience's expectations. We don't expect Wallace's head to explode with no foreshadowing or apparent reasoning. We don't expect Vincent to randomly murder Mia, and we don't expect a robbery set-up from the start of the movie to suddenly lead to absolutely nothing.
Did these changes feel satisfying? Does it make absolutely any sense that Wallace suddenly just dies? Why would the film set up the cafe robbery for the whole run-time and then just ignore it in such a frustrating way?
No, these three examples are examples of terrible writing and would render Pulp Fiction an awful film. The expectations of the audience are "subverted" in these examples purely out of laziness or the desire to be "shocking" and unexpected. This destroys the story.
By contrast, there is actually a scene in Pulp Fiction in which a character's head suddenly explodes, subverting our expectations. However, this scene is both funny and horrifying, and is subtly foreshadowed in the form of Vincent's incompetence throughout the whole story. It also leads to a major plot dilemma which the characters successfully resolve using logic.
To cut a long explanation short; this character's sudden and "subversive" death is clever. It's not a stupid subversion for the sake of it.
Subverting an audience's expectations is not inherently bad.
But doing it out of laziness, out of stupidity or out of simply forgetting key plot points is not good writing.
Game of Thrones Season 8 is a perfect example of the worst, laziest, most idiotic "subversion". Jon Snow is set up for the entire show as a Targaryen - it's a huge reveal that means he is the rightful King of Westeros.
This is massive. This is a show all about the throne of this Kingdom and people scheming to sit on it. Jon is a protagonist we have followed right from the very beginning and is the favourite character for many people (myself included). He is revealed as the man who should be King, by right of his blood.
Yet in Season 8, Jon is suddenly meek, timid, weak, repetitive and stupid. And worse, his entire backstory and his heritage is completely ignored. The writers end the show by just giving him...nothing. He's pointless.
Arguably the biggest main character in the show becomes utterly redundant, his claim to the Kingdom is completely glossed over and he's basically deleted from the script. Instead, total randomer Bran becomes King for...no real reason whatsoever.
This is inexcusably terrible writing. To utterly ignore a central character's entire arc that you have been building for 8 seasons of television to this one incredibly important moment purely to "subvert expectations" is moronic beyond belief, not the sign of scriptwriting genius.
To round up:
Anyone can write a totally "random" story which ignores Chekhov's Gun and in which expected pay-offs are completely ignored in favour of "unexpected" twists. Children often write extremely simplistic stories like this, because they don't understand writing conventions. Does that mean children are excellent screenwriters now?
Subverting expectations in and of itself is not a mark of an excellent writer.
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Tuesday, 4 June 2019
Sunday, 4 September 2011
Film Review: Saving Private Ryan
*CONTAINS SPOILERS*
I caught Saving Private Ryan in a DVD sale recently and decided to watch it again for the first time in ages.
First thing that struck me is how powerful the film remains all these years later. There are scenes all the way through that will shock, sadden and occasionally also intrigue and uplift.
Most of all, though, it is great in the same way that Touching the Void is - it shows us the incredible hardships human beings will endure for a cause, whether that be survival or something else entirely.
The opening scene shows an aged man approaching a white cross (from the familiar harrowing seas of white crosses used as war graves). He becomes emotional as he looks down at it, and the camera zooms to his eyes to take us back in time.
Next, the Omaha Beach scene occupies the first 30 minutes of the film. It gives us a mere hellish taste of how horrific such a scenario would have been. Men are cut down again and again, mortars severing limbs of those trying to hide from the bullets. There is a non-stop chorus of screaming and shooting.
Tom Hanks plays the captain of a squad of Rangers landing there, and he is "lucky" enough to survive the initial landing. We see the rest of the destruction from his viewpoint more or less, but the filming style is chaotic and disjointed.
Several scenes really stick with you, as I still remember them from the first time I saw the film years ago. In one, a soldier missing an arm staggers around the beach in shock, paying no attention to the bullets all around him. Eventually, he picks up his severed limb and wanders slowly off-screen with it, apparently unsure what he was going to do with it.
Hanks himself said that even though he knew that everything he saw on the set was comprised of special effects, even he found himself shocked when actors nearby were suddenly collapsing all around.
The film is commendable for it's portrayal of both sides. While seen from an Allied perspective, both sides are seen to be capable of equal cruelty and mercy. Allied soldiers execute surrendering German soldiers at several points throughout the film (and in fact, one of the film's largest moral dilemnas hinges on this). Germans kill the wounded without hesitation. It's a huge moral grey-area, frequently crossing into ugly and very murky territory.
I think a very interesting statement is made by Wade, Hanks' squad medic, played by Giovanni Ribisi. He announces he has "stopped the bleeding" on a casualty, only for the wounded man to be killed by more bullets seconds afterwards. "Just give us a fucking chance!" he screams. It's peculiar but understandable that "fairness" be expected in warfare, but it's interesting to wonder at just where the line should be drawn, or if there is a line at all.
After the beach is taken, we see the squad progress on a new mission to bring home the titular "Private Ryan", whose 3 brothers have all died in service, in order to save his mother an absolutely horrendous blow and the US Government a public embarrassment.
Barry Pepper, one of my favourite actors for this role in particular, plays Jackson, a very religious sniper in Hanks' squad. Jackson is quite poetic in voicing his opinions and has a tendency to kiss his cross and begin religious prayers whenever looking through the scope of his gun.
That a character takes comfort from God when seemingly violating the Commandments is the obvious point of interest for the role. However, it's also compared in the film to the "God is on our side" propaganda of the time, and how appropriate or inappropriate that was to the war situation.
Medic Wade was perhaps my favourite character of the film however. The film makes time for even the more "minor" characters, which contributes to the idea that all these men are equally valuable both to the plot and to us as an audience.
He has a quiet reflection upon his past in one of the film's quieter moments, describing how his mother would always work late, and he would try to stay up as a child to talk to her, but often fall asleep. Then he mentions that sometimes she would get home early, stand in the doorway, but he would pretend to be asleep.
There is a long pause, and then he says "I don't know why I did that."
I think there's something we can all identify with in that line - something we did or even still do to deny ourselves what we actually want in order to prove some kind of "point" perhaps. When it comes to what's important, we suddenly realise how foolish and petty that was. Wade realises that he was denying himself something very important at that moment, just with that simple line of dialogue, and indeed that he might never see his mother again.
Later in the film, Wade is fatally wounded off-screen. His death is perhaps the most high-impact of any in the film. As a medic, he tries to assess his own injuries while the others attempt to stop him bleeding, eventually crying out with horrendous despair "Oh God, it's my liver!"
He asks for more morphine to "fix himself", and the squad realise that he simply wants to dull his pain and die. As he fades away, he cries out for his mother, tragically highlighting his past musings.
This desire for the presence of a mother figure apparently occurred a lot when men really died during the war (in fact, a man is seen shouting the same thing on Omaha beach earlier in the film). The film reflects that in much of the character's speech.
As an example, I think another one of the most touching bits of dialogue comes from the rebellious Private Reiben (Edward Burns), who describes a mischievious and rude encounter with an older lady. He mentions how he was helping her try on a dress he knew was too small for her, and laughs when recalling her breasts.
His story builds up to be more and more crude, with his colleagues laughing at the situation, until he retells what she said to him upon noticing his wandering eyes:
""Now when you're over there, if you see anything that upsets you, if you're ever scared, I want you to close your eyes and think of these. You understand?" So I said, "Yes, ma'am.""
Instantly the mood changes - the laughter and grins drop immediately and the soldiers suddenly become self-conscious and silent. Spielberg masterfully turns something apparently shallow and without meaning into something that really hits at human vulnerability in an oddly poignant manner.
The film presents many other fascinating characters, and I have merely scratched the surface with my observations here, but it's a thoroughly rewarding and expansive film that will make you think that maybe you now understand just a tiny, tiny bit better the terrible struggle soldiers went (and still do go) through.
5/5
[*][*][*][*][*]
I caught Saving Private Ryan in a DVD sale recently and decided to watch it again for the first time in ages.
First thing that struck me is how powerful the film remains all these years later. There are scenes all the way through that will shock, sadden and occasionally also intrigue and uplift.
Most of all, though, it is great in the same way that Touching the Void is - it shows us the incredible hardships human beings will endure for a cause, whether that be survival or something else entirely.
The opening scene shows an aged man approaching a white cross (from the familiar harrowing seas of white crosses used as war graves). He becomes emotional as he looks down at it, and the camera zooms to his eyes to take us back in time.
Next, the Omaha Beach scene occupies the first 30 minutes of the film. It gives us a mere hellish taste of how horrific such a scenario would have been. Men are cut down again and again, mortars severing limbs of those trying to hide from the bullets. There is a non-stop chorus of screaming and shooting.
Tom Hanks plays the captain of a squad of Rangers landing there, and he is "lucky" enough to survive the initial landing. We see the rest of the destruction from his viewpoint more or less, but the filming style is chaotic and disjointed.
Several scenes really stick with you, as I still remember them from the first time I saw the film years ago. In one, a soldier missing an arm staggers around the beach in shock, paying no attention to the bullets all around him. Eventually, he picks up his severed limb and wanders slowly off-screen with it, apparently unsure what he was going to do with it.
Hanks himself said that even though he knew that everything he saw on the set was comprised of special effects, even he found himself shocked when actors nearby were suddenly collapsing all around.
The film is commendable for it's portrayal of both sides. While seen from an Allied perspective, both sides are seen to be capable of equal cruelty and mercy. Allied soldiers execute surrendering German soldiers at several points throughout the film (and in fact, one of the film's largest moral dilemnas hinges on this). Germans kill the wounded without hesitation. It's a huge moral grey-area, frequently crossing into ugly and very murky territory.
I think a very interesting statement is made by Wade, Hanks' squad medic, played by Giovanni Ribisi. He announces he has "stopped the bleeding" on a casualty, only for the wounded man to be killed by more bullets seconds afterwards. "Just give us a fucking chance!" he screams. It's peculiar but understandable that "fairness" be expected in warfare, but it's interesting to wonder at just where the line should be drawn, or if there is a line at all.
After the beach is taken, we see the squad progress on a new mission to bring home the titular "Private Ryan", whose 3 brothers have all died in service, in order to save his mother an absolutely horrendous blow and the US Government a public embarrassment.
Barry Pepper, one of my favourite actors for this role in particular, plays Jackson, a very religious sniper in Hanks' squad. Jackson is quite poetic in voicing his opinions and has a tendency to kiss his cross and begin religious prayers whenever looking through the scope of his gun.
That a character takes comfort from God when seemingly violating the Commandments is the obvious point of interest for the role. However, it's also compared in the film to the "God is on our side" propaganda of the time, and how appropriate or inappropriate that was to the war situation.
Medic Wade was perhaps my favourite character of the film however. The film makes time for even the more "minor" characters, which contributes to the idea that all these men are equally valuable both to the plot and to us as an audience.
He has a quiet reflection upon his past in one of the film's quieter moments, describing how his mother would always work late, and he would try to stay up as a child to talk to her, but often fall asleep. Then he mentions that sometimes she would get home early, stand in the doorway, but he would pretend to be asleep.
There is a long pause, and then he says "I don't know why I did that."
I think there's something we can all identify with in that line - something we did or even still do to deny ourselves what we actually want in order to prove some kind of "point" perhaps. When it comes to what's important, we suddenly realise how foolish and petty that was. Wade realises that he was denying himself something very important at that moment, just with that simple line of dialogue, and indeed that he might never see his mother again.
Later in the film, Wade is fatally wounded off-screen. His death is perhaps the most high-impact of any in the film. As a medic, he tries to assess his own injuries while the others attempt to stop him bleeding, eventually crying out with horrendous despair "Oh God, it's my liver!"
He asks for more morphine to "fix himself", and the squad realise that he simply wants to dull his pain and die. As he fades away, he cries out for his mother, tragically highlighting his past musings.
This desire for the presence of a mother figure apparently occurred a lot when men really died during the war (in fact, a man is seen shouting the same thing on Omaha beach earlier in the film). The film reflects that in much of the character's speech.
As an example, I think another one of the most touching bits of dialogue comes from the rebellious Private Reiben (Edward Burns), who describes a mischievious and rude encounter with an older lady. He mentions how he was helping her try on a dress he knew was too small for her, and laughs when recalling her breasts.
His story builds up to be more and more crude, with his colleagues laughing at the situation, until he retells what she said to him upon noticing his wandering eyes:
""Now when you're over there, if you see anything that upsets you, if you're ever scared, I want you to close your eyes and think of these. You understand?" So I said, "Yes, ma'am.""
Instantly the mood changes - the laughter and grins drop immediately and the soldiers suddenly become self-conscious and silent. Spielberg masterfully turns something apparently shallow and without meaning into something that really hits at human vulnerability in an oddly poignant manner.
The film presents many other fascinating characters, and I have merely scratched the surface with my observations here, but it's a thoroughly rewarding and expansive film that will make you think that maybe you now understand just a tiny, tiny bit better the terrible struggle soldiers went (and still do go) through.
5/5
[*][*][*][*][*]
Sunday, 6 March 2011
Movie Review: Taken
*This review contains "spoilers" for a rather predictable plot!*
So I caught this movie for the second time on TV last night and the second watching really saw the film pulling itself to pieces for me.
Now, I hate to rant on a film starring Liam Neeson, who portrayed the lovable "Dad" in Fallout 3, but I think the problem with this movie is really the script.
He gives a pretty decent performance with what he's given, but the whole film is like power trip father-revenge pornography. The film is pretty much just "I AM A DAD, DAMMIT, AND SO I AM JUSTIFIED TO SHOOT PEOPLE!11oneone!"
The plot concerns a CIA agent named Bryan (Neeson) whose daughter is kidnapped by an Albanian Mafia group. The group specialises in prostitution and Neeson's character is promptly told in dramatic fashion that he'll probably never see her again within a few days.
Anyway, this setup is all pretty irrelevant, the entire story of the film basically boils down to "Dad murders lots of bad men, happy ending." There's essentially no character development aside from "I'm pissed off, where is my daughter?" and the typical whiny ex-wife character that gets 2 minutes of screen time.
The bad guys are all completely 1 dimensional amoral arseholes and exist only to spout dickish lines before they get executed in a suitably violent fashion by the enraged Neeson.
While it has trappings of a Thriller, it has the despoiled brains of an Action film.
Take the ending, which is absolutely ludicrous and kind of reminded me of Mirror's Edge. Neeson spends 90% of the film killing people, whether by snapping necks, beating them senseless, stabbing them or just substantially altering their blood-lead molar ratio.
He has no government backing for these vigilante murder sprees and makes next to no effort to cover his tracks, he just storms in and starts piling up the corpses. We even see the police after him at one point.
So when he kills the final bad guy, does he go down for life? Or maybe he gets a death sentence for the amount of carnage he wrought?
Err, no. Actually he just takes a leisurely stroll to the airport with his daughter and goes back home to live happily ever after. Let's ignore the 50 or so people he killed, they were bad after all and so there are no repurcussions...
There is also a kind of half-arsed attempt to make Neeson's character anti-heroish. Neeson plays the part with skill, and so this actually kind of works (such as in a rather unpleasant torture scene, easily the agent's most morally dubious act).
The problem is, there is no heart to it. The film poses no moral questions, without which the whole idea of an anti-hero is kind of pointless. One minute we are encouraged to think "Wow, Bryan is actually quite a merciless dickhead", but the rest of the time the film is back to "Bad people have to die 'cos they're bad."
The action itself is quite engaging, some of the scenes, such as a shootout and the conversation beforehand in a run-down block of apartments are pretty well done. In general the film is well choreographed.
That's the only thing really that lets me save the rating a bit to 2.5/5 (rounded to 3).
If you watch it as a brainless action flick it's kind of entertaining, just don't be lured in by the false pretense that it's anything deeper, because you'll be disappointed.
It's also quite amusing how xenophobic Taken is. Literally all but one foreign character is portrayed as some kind of corrupt tosspot. Uncle Sam's people are almost all intelligent and helpful, but every French, Albanian or Arabic person is of course a complete dick, if not an outright bad guy (which they normally morph into as the film progresses).
Still, Hollywood has long been like that, so it's no real surprise.
2.5/5 --> 3/5.
[*][*][*][ ][ ]
So I caught this movie for the second time on TV last night and the second watching really saw the film pulling itself to pieces for me.
Now, I hate to rant on a film starring Liam Neeson, who portrayed the lovable "Dad" in Fallout 3, but I think the problem with this movie is really the script.
He gives a pretty decent performance with what he's given, but the whole film is like power trip father-revenge pornography. The film is pretty much just "I AM A DAD, DAMMIT, AND SO I AM JUSTIFIED TO SHOOT PEOPLE!11oneone!"
The plot concerns a CIA agent named Bryan (Neeson) whose daughter is kidnapped by an Albanian Mafia group. The group specialises in prostitution and Neeson's character is promptly told in dramatic fashion that he'll probably never see her again within a few days.
Anyway, this setup is all pretty irrelevant, the entire story of the film basically boils down to "Dad murders lots of bad men, happy ending." There's essentially no character development aside from "I'm pissed off, where is my daughter?" and the typical whiny ex-wife character that gets 2 minutes of screen time.
The bad guys are all completely 1 dimensional amoral arseholes and exist only to spout dickish lines before they get executed in a suitably violent fashion by the enraged Neeson.
While it has trappings of a Thriller, it has the despoiled brains of an Action film.
Take the ending, which is absolutely ludicrous and kind of reminded me of Mirror's Edge. Neeson spends 90% of the film killing people, whether by snapping necks, beating them senseless, stabbing them or just substantially altering their blood-lead molar ratio.
He has no government backing for these vigilante murder sprees and makes next to no effort to cover his tracks, he just storms in and starts piling up the corpses. We even see the police after him at one point.
So when he kills the final bad guy, does he go down for life? Or maybe he gets a death sentence for the amount of carnage he wrought?
Err, no. Actually he just takes a leisurely stroll to the airport with his daughter and goes back home to live happily ever after. Let's ignore the 50 or so people he killed, they were bad after all and so there are no repurcussions...
There is also a kind of half-arsed attempt to make Neeson's character anti-heroish. Neeson plays the part with skill, and so this actually kind of works (such as in a rather unpleasant torture scene, easily the agent's most morally dubious act).
The problem is, there is no heart to it. The film poses no moral questions, without which the whole idea of an anti-hero is kind of pointless. One minute we are encouraged to think "Wow, Bryan is actually quite a merciless dickhead", but the rest of the time the film is back to "Bad people have to die 'cos they're bad."
The action itself is quite engaging, some of the scenes, such as a shootout and the conversation beforehand in a run-down block of apartments are pretty well done. In general the film is well choreographed.
That's the only thing really that lets me save the rating a bit to 2.5/5 (rounded to 3).
If you watch it as a brainless action flick it's kind of entertaining, just don't be lured in by the false pretense that it's anything deeper, because you'll be disappointed.
It's also quite amusing how xenophobic Taken is. Literally all but one foreign character is portrayed as some kind of corrupt tosspot. Uncle Sam's people are almost all intelligent and helpful, but every French, Albanian or Arabic person is of course a complete dick, if not an outright bad guy (which they normally morph into as the film progresses).
Still, Hollywood has long been like that, so it's no real surprise.
2.5/5 --> 3/5.
[*][*][*][ ][ ]
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