Care of Zack Snyder

[kilroy]

Dear Hollywood:

I think you and I need to have a talk. I've noticed something missing from your work lately, and it worries me a lot: basic humanity. I'm not talking about the fact that a lot of your headliners are now digitally animated Smurfs-- I've been watching cartoons since I was tiny, I have no problems with that. I'm talking about trying to connect to the audience via empathy. You appear to have lost the knack.

I'm even noticing this in action and horror movies now. You don't exactly need a lot of character depth in a shoot 'em up or a slasher pic, but there has to be something. A single truly emotive expression. A snarky line delivered out of frustration. One moment where the characters step out of their genre and the audience recognizes them as more than walking cliches. Just a few seconds, that's all it takes for us to care.

But we haven't even been getting that. Those few seconds require a confluence of modest competency between the writer, the director, and the actors-- and that's the problem. You're failing on the most basic possible level of storytelling. We can't suspend our disbelief if we don't have someone in the film to latch onto. And if we can't pretend to ourselves that your world is in some way real then the whole exercise is pointless. You just spent however many millions of dollars on a movie when you could have just made the trailer and the posters and we all would have been happier.

Remember who you are. You are not landscape photography. You are not documentary war footage. You are not a Magic Eye painting. You're a dream of a writer performed by actors, filmed by a director, and seen by an audience. You're people all the way through. All you have to do is acknowledge it.

Comments

[brigid]

A friend of mine recently recommended a particular sitcom to me that sounded like it was right up my ally. I started watching it on netflix instant streaming, and 9 or so episodes into the first season, I have virtually no idea what the main character is like other than he's a heterosexual white male who enjoys having a lot of sex, and good and exciting things happen to him. He doesn't seem to have any hobbies or interests other than women/sex and money. He allegedly has a mother, but she is never seen anywhere ever (his dad shows up as a recurring character both in the current time and in flashback) and is only mentioned in passing as a reason for the main character to be angry at his dad (his parents are divorced).

The writers also don't seem to have met a cliche or stereotype they don't like. They are all used. All of them. Yes, even that one. That one, too.

Every time I mention this show to someone else I know, I find that they ADORE it.

I just finished watching the second season of The Venture Bros, which I hadn't really seen before. 3 or 4 episodes into that and the main characters (and several minor ones) already had more depth and character development than the sitcom.

I am slogging through the first season of this show, and the first episode of the 2nd season, because it HAS to hit its grove sometime, right? If THAT MANY people like it, it MUST have some redeeming quality other than zippy one liners delivered at a rapid pace, right? I mean, people can't be THAT willing to overlook bad writing, plot holes one could drive a truck through, mystery solving that relies heavily on accidents and coincidences, female characters being essentially interchangeable (when they aren't being sexy-but-evil), and smarmy jerk characters.... right?

But I'm starting to think that no, people are willing to sit back and consume any lazily-written tv show with decent-looking actors as long as there are a few quotable lines in each episode. Why bother trying? Mediocrity sells just fine. And what's a little --or a lot of-- casual sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc? It's just a comedy, man. Where's my sense of humor?

It's soulless. And not even that visually compelling, which at least big budget movies have going for them.

(Have you seen "True Grit"? I loved it so much. I went back and re-read the book and was surprised and pleased to see how much they kept the same... and was SO GLAD they stripped out the creepy ending from the John Wayne movie (which was not from the book).)

[brigid]

(Also: sometimes when a visually compelling big budget movie is on, I sit there and pretend I'm watching a different movie. I do this with previews, too.)