I have no idea where this rant will go - but it's going to be ranty - I can tell already. I am fixated this moment on why so many movies lately have been boring me to hell with their "stories."


Just watched the recent foregin film Avalon. I was lured to view it after seeing some snapshots online which were quite intriguing.

The movie, however, is anything but intriguing and was one of the best examples of poor story work I've seen in a long time.

This film is all mise en scene and not much else. This is why.

The entire plot is based on this pattern.

"You need to disable the big gun."

The character then disables the big gun.

"Good, now you need to kill the ghost girl."

Okay - killed the ghost girl.

Etcetera.

I think the main problem in many action movies (and many movies in general for that matter) is that the writers (or producers for that matter) are under the impression that the more goals - the better - the more headlines - the bigger and better the movie. And if there aren't a lot of them, just make them big.

But the movie is the part that occurs between the headlines. (Replace "movie" with "story" and "headlines" with "plot points" and we'll connect to an earlier discussion.)

The movie happens between the goal and completion of that goal.

If you're feeling argumentative, you're proably thinking "Okay - but then you just make up a whole bunch of new plot point to satisfy that goal."

Well, that's just it - the inclination is to break each goal into a series of headlines and then our new movie is just as empty as the larger movie, it has become it's own string of goals: "Sneak into Camp, take out the snipers on the hill, sneak behind the barricks... etc."

Again - an empty theatrical experience.

So - what if the motivations for taking out the gun were explored? What if the characters and their humanity was taken seriously and you were able to connect to these people on a deep level?

Well - that's good stuff! But the best way to show a character and their motivations is by watching them respond to situations - not having them monologue on about their childhood - and right now our movie is so boring that we don't care about it - and if we don't care about it, we won't care about the characters either - so compelling or noble motivations and character history is not solving our problem.

So this is the heart of my thinking on the subject.

The goal - disable the gun. Then a series of subgoals becomes obvious - sneak into the camp - take out the sniper - get behind the barricks - etc.

So we sneak into camp, we're almost spotted, we have to duck into a tent to hide from a guard. As the guards pass something catches our eye. An open box of photos. We go to the box, and take the top photo. We're confused. It's a photo of ourselves! This is a personally family photo of the lead character. Paradigm shift.

(Okay - I'm not saying this is a great scene - I'm just winging this as I rant) - but suddenly, I believe, the audience is more interested because the unexpected happened. Suddenly everything is different. It could be one of a thousand things, but these paradigm shifts are the only way to keep your audience interested.

Here's a thought on how to incorporate them. If you know your basic story and what happens. Why not set up your story in the beginning to be something else?

What about doing that with every scene?

The audience is always formulating a plan that leads to the end of the movie. It's part of the movie going experience, there is always expectation.

What is not happening lately in our big blockbusters is the altering of that expectation.

Obviously using unique nonlinear story devices like Pulp Fiction or Memento can do that - but you can do that in a Linear movie as well.

Compare Harry Potter 1 with Harry Potter 3 and you will see the same sets, characters, and "stuff" - but in the latter film, you're actually curious. Why? Well - you don't really know what to expect.

So - make the audience THINK the goal is to sneak into the camp, take out the sniper, get behind the bunker - and then throw them for a curve ball. If you know where you movie REALLY has to go, why not set it up to go somewhere else? You can reverse engineer your twists. Your real movie might really have some totally different plot with only the first step (sneak into camp) in common.

If people can imagine thousands of potential moves ahead in chess, certainly writers could imagine at least a couple more goals and fake us out a little bit in our expectation.

Well - I think that's enough of a rant on that.