Category Archives: movies

What Do I Seek From Watching Reactions?

I saw: “I am a 38-year-old man who had never watched a minute of Star Wars — until I binged all of them on Disney+ over quarantine
I clicked.
I read.
It was as forgettable and unreveletory as I should have expected.

Afterwards I asked myself, Why did this click bait work on me? After the innumerous opinions of Star Wars I have read, watched and expressed myself, what benefit could one more review, written by someone who has never seen the movies, possibly hold?

What was (am) I seeking?

First, this article belongs in the “reaction” genre made popular on youtube. The typical reaction video includes watching someone watch something, that is hilarious or surprising, usually for the first time. This genre is not without its merits. Try not to smile while watching this reaction video of two teens listening to Jolene by Dolly Parton for the first time:

As for finding a reason for my interest in the opinion of someone binge-watching Star Wars for the first time: Is it because I’m longing for an experience to confront my creeping unease of not feeling “normal”? As a male/white/heterosexual, I’ve benefited from the perception that my version of “normal” matches what my culture sees as “normal.” At a time of increasing cultural difference, what is “normal” is under threat — and thank goodness it is. “Normal” is worthy of whatever resentment it gets. So perhaps my interest in having a Star Wars first-timer conclude what I have long concluded about Star Wars stood to offer a bit of comfort by reaffirming the universality of human nature. At least everybody likes Star Wars, right?

Or: In my mid-thirties, father of four children, sheltered deep within suburbia, I’ve made my bed, and must resign myself to lie in it — therefore, I’m yearning for feelings associated with “first times.” At this stage in my life I have done all the heroic work of acquiring and choosing and now am in the unsexy and relentless era of maintaining all those choices. Apparently, I’ve got another 10 years of this increasing life dissatisfaction until I’m 47.2 years old, at which point my discontent with life finally hits a tipping point and I’m able enjoy myself. Ten years feels pretty heavy, so if I can get a moment’s respite by vicariously recapturing what it was like to experience Star Wars for the first time I’ll take it, goddammit.

Or: Do I really like Star Wars or some warped perception of Star Wars that only exists in my head because of my years of being immersed in it? When I watched the latest train-wreck, The Rise of Skywalker, was I watching it or a story of it my brain generated? Between the stimulus of the movie reaching my brain and my response to it, how much of my reaction was unconsciously bent to meet my desires or expectations? Perhaps the review could reveal the latticework of preconceived notions and stories that I brought to my viewing. Of course the article wouldn’t reveal anything I didn’t already know about Star Wars–what it could do was serve as a reminder of the legion of biases that I see the world through. Recognizing yet another unknown bias could provide a dose of humility that could serve me in my attempts to come to terms with more pressing issues than the watchability of a billion dollar conglomerate’s intellectual property.

Or: I’m living amidst a global pandemic/economic depression/threatened democracy/warming planet and I just need some diversion.

Why do setups and payoffs matter so much for a movie to be enjoyable?

The movie A Quiet Place, has been an unexpected success, far surpassing analyst expectations to become one of the most profitable movies in years. The reason is because it’s good. And I think the reason it’s good is thanks to it’s superb usage of setups and payoffs. Most movies go wrong when payoffs occur without being setup or setups occur without ever being paid off.

 

Some setups are explicit others are implicit, both excel when they make us think the story is going in one direction, but when it pays off, there’s a twist.

 

Let’s take a look at a couple of the setups and payoffs from A Quite Place:
Explicit setup: While taking the laundry up the stairs, the wife accidentally pulls a nail up on the stairs. We have become hyper-aware of the setup and expect that the nail is going to be stepped on, the only question is when.
Imagine watching that nail be pulled up and then never have a character step on it throughout the rest of the movie. Or imagine a scene where the character goes down the stairs and accidentally steps on a nail we the audience didn’t know existed. In the former we’re confused, in the later we don’t believe it.
With the way it actually plays out, the setup builds great tension as we all cringe as the character steps down the stairs slowly – and as a twist, it happens at a worst possible time — when she’s going into labor!

 

Implicit setup: The husband tries again and again to repair his deaf daughter’s hearing implant. As we watch this unfold we could just understand the scene to show the father’s love for his daughter and their turbulent relationship, so it’s not such an explicit set up. Then we’re delighted to discover that thanks to his tinkering, he inadvertently created a device that exploits the monster’s weakness.
To our excitement we realize, in the end, that there was no surprise at all. What had seemed to be a turn of fate proves to be inevitable and, as we realize it, we receive the gift of insight. We should have seen it coming!

 

I think this is what David Fincher means in this short clip when he says that the best cinematic stories have an ending that has an inevitability to it.

Why do setups and payoff matter so much for a movie to be enjoyable?

 

The human condition is one where there is way too much information out there and we are woefully ill equipped to make sense of it all — but that doesn’t stop us from trying. In every area of life, from relationships to careers, we look at sequences of events and weave explanations into them, creating narratives that link the different inputs together and ignore the facts that do not fit in the story.
Psychologists call this tendency the narrative bias: “the tendency to interpret information as being part of a larger story or pattern, regardless of whether the facts actually support the full narrative.”

 

Life is stubbornly devoid of clean-cut setups and payoffs but for the couple of hours that we’re in the theater we can imagine a world in which they are clear, everything happens for a reason, the universe isn’t random and it feels so good to vicariously see cause and effect play out for the characters on the screen.

 

We essentially are paying filmmakers to exploit this psychological vulnerability of ours and when they don’t do it right we get pissed — the story is not therapeutic or encouraging, instead it just reminds us of the problem of real life — it’s random.

True Story Movies Are The New Comic Book Movies

Bemoaning the deluge of comic book movies, reboots and sequels as Hollywood scrapes the bottom of the intellectual property barrel has become cliche. Despite our cries for relief, it doesn’t look like Hollywood has any intention of slowing down the processes of repetition, replication, sequelization, and rebooting (see: two new star wars trilogies are in the works). The motive behind this has been made very apparent: brand recognition. It’s easier to market movies based on things we’re already heard of.

 

The strategy behind comic book movies has crept into another genre as well. One that Hollywood can capitalize on without the eye rolls they get from yet another sequel: movies based on true events.

 

Just in the last few months it seems like we’ve been inundated by them: The Post, I Tonya, Molly’s Game, Disaster Artist, Only The Brave, 12 Strong, All the Money In The World, The Greatest Showman, Darkest Hour and 15:17 to Paris. To my chagrin, even Christopher Nolan, maker of original greats such as Momento, the Prestige, Inception and Interstellar went and made a true story, Dunkirk, last year.

 

Just like comic book movies, true story movies have the brand recognition. Better still, they can be given critical prestige before anyone sees them. Can anyone give a bad review to Only The Brave without looking like they disrespect the deceased firefighters that the movie is based on?

 

There is some data that backs this up: Movies based on real events have average scores higher than all other movies and they are more frequently nominated for Oscars.

 

Given the benefits of the true story genre, Hollywood is not subtle about putting the “based on a true story,” “inspired by a true story,” or “based on actual events” label on any movie where they can get away with it. The latest true story movie, 15:17 to Paris, appears to be attempting to up the ante by using the actual people from the true events as the actors in the movie.

 

Obviously these movies aren’t “true.” What movie isn’t based on real events, locations, scenarios and emotions? It’s a marketing tactic based on the assumption that a movie based on true events is more alluring.

 

The “based on a true story” schtick shows just as much loss of creative innovation and the steady decay of cinema as the comic book movie/reboot schtick. In both cases the movies add constraints for marketing purposes that limit the scope of what’s possible. In their drive for profits, both genres have to be careful or they run the risk of being accused of not being true to their source material, limiting their creativity and originality.

 

I want the stories I watch to push the limits of what has ever been done before, to disrupt conventions, to surprise me — all of which “base on a true story” movies rarely do.

The biggest compliment you can give a movie & how to rate movies

Obviously these three movies; a dark comedy, a bio-pic and a family Christmas movie, are not all equally good, right? Yet all three, boasting a rating of 81%, would lead you to believe that you should enjoy all three of them the same. If three digital cameras were rated the same, you’d expect them to be nearly identical. But these three movies are far from identical so how could they be rated the same?

I think movie ratings makes more sense once you ask this question:

Were the creators successful in achieving their goal?

If they intended to make a comedy and it’s funny, create a horror and it scares you, or make a tragic love story that makes you cry, then it’s considered good.

This accentuates the importance of genre. Movies aren’t rated against each other, they are rated against their genre. Genres initiate a contract with the audience — setting their expectations. Movies are most successful when they not only fulfill those expectations but supercede them. Good movies aren’t able to go above and beyond the contract by avoiding the genre conventions, but by fulfilling them in novel, fresh and unexpected ways.

This is what gives the review from a trained critic more clout than the review from the average viewer: critics are experts at knowing what the rules and conventions are for each genre. They know better than anyone the genre conventions that must be hit, when they’re done in a cliche way and when they’ve been transcended.