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DStecks posted:I literally cannot parse what you're saying, so let me drop out of GBS mode to explain that what I meant is that these movies exist to appeal to people who can't tolerate movies with what they view as liberal agendas. I know some of them, and they literally consider the film's "moral correctness" as the primary, or even only, measure of its quality; so saying that a right-wing movie can never be good is the precise thing these people are saying, just swap out the word left for right. First, I never said that an underdog story was the only story possible, so maybe you should step back from the computer a chill out a bit. However it is often difficult to tell a story that doesn't follow a standard 3 act structure in a film meant to have wide appeal. Detective stories and mysteries must always involve a powerful adversary or they are boring. In many cases, the crook has a mole in the police, for example, or the detective is himself in a position of powerlessness in society (see every noir ever). I have a book on how to properly structure and plot a pulp mystery novel so I should break it out and cite passages. In the case of the action hero, he MUST be an underdog. He MUST be fighting against overwhelming force, even if the film's story is a conservative "strong manly man fights effeminate environmentalists" those effeminate environmentalists must be mean, wily, and have a shitload of force, otherwise the movie is going to be boring and dumb. In the case of your heroic senator, in theory that could be kind of an OK movie (I guess tepid like Charlie Wilson's war) except that we all know that gay people get stomped on by society daily, they are murdered disproportionately, and are the very definition of an underdog. So a wealthy white man (your senator) working to stomp on them further doesn't exactly scream underdog to me.
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Mar 29, 2015 18:35
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computer parts posted:In that case it's probably because few to none of them are actually trained/educated as filmmakers. I think that doesn't help, but I do think there's a very common storytelling problem in conservative American Christian cinema, and it's that, as was argued above, evangelism just doesn't make for a terribly interesting plot. But it's central to American evangelical Christianity, so I don't really see them getting away from it anytime soon.
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Mar 29, 2015 18:38
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Xibanya posted:But think about it: a conservative agenda involves deferring to already established power structures. So a conservative story involves obeying power and/or opposing those with less power. That just isn't a very fun narrative. Haven't you ever heard of an underdog? It's much more interesting to see a story about defending the powerless AGAINST the powerful. Again, though, what you're doing here is automatically politicizing a narrative or character type because of what you perceive as its inviability with a stereotypical conservative ideological framework. The Ghostbusters, Marty McFly, and Andie Walsh are all underdogs, but they are conservative underdogs. Essentially, you're saying that conservative ideological values aren't viable with a "fun narrative." But in as far as you are using evidence for this, the abstract evidence you use is the types of films that you consciously disengage from politically anyway. You're taking the didactic expression of one genre as evidence for an overarching assumption that you haven't substantiated. It could very well be that these "fun narratives" are equally conservative, but merely lack as strict a spiritual framework and are more subtly obsequious in their engagement of ideology. Every conventional narrative in commercial cinema is potentially "obeying power/deferring to already established power structures." If these institutions and their products weren't essentially conservative, then the industry wouldn't be viable. This harkens back to the fundamental problem that Evangelical and Christian audiences and filmmakers experience as a privileged minority. Conservatism and religious fundamentalism are routinely mocked on major primetime and late night talk shows, vilified in left-leaning news blocks and activist cinema, but, for the most part, are simply ignored by a capitalist media infrastructure which caters to as broad a demographic of secularized, politically fluid, cynical men between the ages of 18 and 35 as possible. People see this privileged minority turning out to vote for wackos and getting terribly inhuman laws passed and get rightfully uncomfortable, but this fundamentalist religious conservatism serves a cultural purpose: It's a flamboyant counterpoint that reinforces the ideological security of media that doesn't explicitly engage ideology, but nonetheless is complicit in the disproportionate objectification and exploitation of women, the exclusion of non-whites, the symbolic resolution of all social ills from bigotry to poverty to crime with aspirational capitalism, the idolatry of fascist action heroes, etc. Yes, these evangelical films and films targeting fundamentalist religious conservative audiences are wacko and oftentimes expressions of ignorance and persecution complexes of the privileged social and cultural group... But that doesn't mean they aren't right that Hollywood is a god-less infrastructure worshipping the almighty dollar and exploiting un-critical consumers... And it doesn't mean that conventional narrative structures - including the 'underdog story' - aren't conservative. K. Waste fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Mar 29, 2015 |
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Mar 29, 2015 18:38
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I'm talking about movies with a clear Christian thrust to them and why they are often bad. I'm not talking about movies where the conservative themes are not explicit. I thought I covered this with my remarks on stand up comedy by conservatives vs conservative stand up. A movie about a man who forces a woman to learn how to be a good brood mare is just a story of a person in power who exerts his power over someone who has less power. It is simply not a good narrative. Back to the Future, an example you give, involves a hero who is swept up in an adventure where he is in a race against the clock to do things. He has powerful adversaries and obstacles. A fun narrative.
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Mar 29, 2015 18:44
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K. Waste posted:But that doesn't mean they aren't right that Hollywood is a god-less infrastructure worshipping the almighty dollar and exploiting un-critical consumers... And it doesn't mean that conventional narrative structures - including the 'underdog story' - aren't conservative. Isn't this even more damning of the audiences that consume conservative Christian films and eschew Hollywood, though? That even Hollywood films, frequently very conservative in nature, aren't conservative enough for them?
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Mar 29, 2015 18:45
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Cognac McCarthy posted:Isn't this even more damning of the audiences that consume conservative Christian films and eschew Hollywood, though? That even Hollywood films, frequently very conservative in nature, aren't conservative enough for them? This assumes that there's only one dimension of being conservative. You can be conservative in a "gently caress the poor" way without being conservative in the "Jesus for all" way.
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Mar 29, 2015 18:57
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Of course you can. But there are evangelical conservatives who would look at something like Top Gun or, to use a more recent example, Zero Dark Thirty, and decide they're bad movies because there's no moving Christ-centered message in them. While I'm sure a lot of evangelical types will gladly go see a Transformers movie or better yet Lone Survivor, I doubt the average right-leaning moviegoer is going to give much thought to seeing God's Not Dead. I think it's because a lot of these movies are plainly uninteresting. And, again, I suspect it's a product of the constraints of evangelical narrative.
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Mar 29, 2015 19:05
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Cognac McCarthy posted:Of course you can. But there are evangelical conservatives who would look at something like Top Gun or, to use a more recent example, Zero Dark Thirty, and decide they're bad movies because there's no moving Christ-centered message in them. It's almost as though there are different definitions of conservative being used interchangeably.
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Mar 29, 2015 19:09
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I don't actually know what you're accusing me/others of, or what the point of that line of discussion is.  Can we get back to talking about why God's Not Dead blows?
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Mar 29, 2015 19:28
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Cognac McCarthy posted:I don't actually know what you're accusing me/others of, or what the point of that line of discussion is. Your point of confusion seems to be "why do conservatives not like conservative films?", e.g.: Cognac McCarthy posted:Isn't this even more damning of the audiences that consume conservative Christian films and eschew Hollywood, though? That even Hollywood films, frequently very conservative in nature, aren't conservative enough for them? In reality it's "why do evangelicals not like neocon* films?", the answer to that being "because they're not neocons". *Eg: Zero Dark Thirty et all
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Mar 29, 2015 19:36
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Cognac McCarthy posted:Isn't this even more damning of the audiences that consume conservative Christian films and eschew Hollywood, though? That even Hollywood films, frequently very conservative in nature, aren't conservative enough for them? Not really. People tend to engage with media that they can at least partially to fully identify with on whatever moral, social, cultural, or political level. I'm saying that the difference between Moms Night Out and Sex Tape (that Jesus figures as an off-screen character in one of them) is insignificant compared to their shared aggressive mediocrity. What's remarkable is that the value systems undergirding both films--ubiquitous materialism, consumerism (did you know that Christians love "Gangnam Style"?), social stereotyping, broad gender-based comedy--are so startlingly similar. There's an essential political allegiance between both these bad movies that comes out of both of them explicitly not having anything to do with politics. Ghostbusters is an underdog story about a group of outcast academics who start their own business, and are nearly put out of commission by a federal employee at precisely the hour when they're needed the most. Back to the Future is about how the science of the white man made it possible for him to go back in time and invent rock 'n' roll. These things are at least as apparent and loaded with conservative connotations as God actually being a character. The difference is that these are major Hollywood productions, and the one where God is shadow-directing most likely isn't. Except for the occasional religious epic - and while in the midst of a new cycle of them - these things don't really crossover into the mainstream, because the conflicts they reflect are implicitly limiting to a certain group. But Sex Tape is also performing this ideological function in one of its more banal and accessible forms, and what makes it accessible is actually remarkably cheap. You almost wish that Jesus would show up as a character to at least make things a little interesting.
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Mar 29, 2015 19:42
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computer parts posted:Your point of confusion seems to be "why do conservatives not like conservative films?", e.g.: Ah but in the minds of evangelical conservatives, these other movies aren't even conservative. They rail against Hollywood as if it's "leftist" and anti-Christian, when it's at most areligious and politically all over the place. That's what I mean by "damning". They have a narrow definition of conservative themselves.
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Mar 29, 2015 19:59
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:you seen Calvary yet? written/directed by Martin McDonagh's brother John. one of the best films of 2014 and one of the best religious films in a long time No, I haven't, despite hearing good things about it. Didn't know his brother worked on that. I'll definitely check it out now. The More than One Lesson podcast's latest episode is on Do You Believe?, which they review mostly to see how much improvement there is from God's Not Dead (same production company and writers, I think). By no means do they consider it a quality film, but they do point out that some things in it are much more competently done like the ending, which features a car crash. So they're possibly improving.
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Mar 29, 2015 23:58
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Kangra posted:No, I haven't, despite hearing good things about it. Didn't know his brother worked on that. I'll definitely check it out now. i'm a big Martin McDonagh fan but Calvary might be better than any of his movies.
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Mar 30, 2015 00:02
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JediTalentAgent posted:I liked this bit in his review of Frequency about the potential offense to God that was the time travel plot of the movie... There was, but it was removed by the Pope in 2148.
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Mar 30, 2015 05:36
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Xibanya posted:It's interesting in his review of Mary Poppins that he says LOTR is an example of what not to do because I read an essay by a Christian about how the magic in LOTR was an example of how to write good magic in a Christian framework. Namely, the essayist said that any "good" magic user must fit the following criteria: Where did the whole "aversion to magic" thing come about in general Christian ideology, anyway? I don't think I've ever read the Bible in its entirety, but I've read at least a good 75% or so of it over the years and I've never seen anything really suggesting "MAGIC = EVIL" aside from I guess bad guys using magic. K. Waste posted:Again, though, what you're doing here is automatically politicizing a narrative or character type because of what you perceive as its inviability with a stereotypical conservative ideological framework. The Ghostbusters, Marty McFly, and Andie Walsh are all underdogs, but they are conservative underdogs. The Ghostbusters openly defy the city government through the entire movie and come out as being the "right" ones, and Marty McFly literally goes back in time and changes the future. Those both seem to fly pretty hard in the face of any definition of "conservative," despite whatever reading you may come up with of their actions or characters reflecting 80's conservatism. raditts fucked around with this message at 14:42 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 14:16
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raditts posted:Where did the whole "aversion to magic" thing come about in general Christian ideology, anyway? I don't think I've ever read the Bible in its entirety, but I've read at least a good 75% or so of it over the years and I've never seen anything really suggesting "MAGIC = EVIL" aside from I guess bad guys using magic. I think it's that only God is supposed to have power and so if you have any magical power it is granted by a demon. I know when I was a kid, that was the gist of it from my religious mother. Most Christians I know pick and choose what's good or bad; my nephews weren't allowed to play Magic the Gathering but they saw every Harry Potter movie and watched a shitload of bad B movies about Merlin. Here's a source from my childhood. Carman fights a witch
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Mar 30, 2015 14:31
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Isaac Horowitz, eh? I wonder what that could possibly suggest.
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Mar 30, 2015 14:50
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raditts posted:Where did the whole "aversion to magic" thing come about in general Christian ideology, anyway? I don't think I've ever read the Bible in its entirety, but I've read at least a good 75% or so of it over the years and I've never seen anything really suggesting "MAGIC = EVIL" aside from I guess bad guys using magic. It was always around of course, but it took on the characteristics of mass right-wing hysteria in the 1980s really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse
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Mar 30, 2015 14:59
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according to Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (a super great read), many of Jesus' contemporaries tried to discredit him as "a magician"
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Mar 30, 2015 15:27
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raditts posted:The Ghostbusters openly defy the city government through the entire movie and come out as being the "right" ones, and Marty McFly literally goes back in time and changes the future. Those both seem to fly pretty hard in the face of any definition of "conservative," despite whatever reading you may come up with of their actions or characters reflecting 80's conservatism. The Ghostbusters don't oppose the government, they oppose over-regulation, which has been a consistent motivation of conservative movments and parties in the U.S. since at least the New Deal. Their opponents aren't the FBI or CIA, they're the Environmental Protection Agency. It's not like there's no nuance to Ghostbusters - the 'busters near-sighted, environmentally dangerous ghost-hunting methods are clearly a problem that they can't contain, which is always on the verge of 'meltdown.' But this meltdown happens, and ultimately the only solution is for the 'busters to prophetically contain the apocalypse that they themselves started. By defying government regulation of their independent, for profit public service, the 'busters accelerate the urban ecosystem literally to the point of Armageddon and save it, the significance being that they have symbolically remade the established order in their populist, anti-intellectual, anti-bureaucratic, spiritually conservative image. ("Nobody steps on a church in my town!") The point is that while deregulation 'caused temporary structural chaos, it ultimately corrects itself - federal regulation literally doesn't do anything. You're implying that by defying the government you're necessarily not a conservative, but this is silly. What if you're a regressive conservative? What if you have nostalgic fantasies of the socially segregated '50s and its aspirational baby-boomer romances? Of course, this leads us right to Back to the Future. Yeah, Marty McFly changes the future, but how is changing the future - a totally impossible, implicitly symbolic act - necessarily anti-conservative (or un-conservative)? It's the same exact thing as Ghostbusters - an independent scientific enterprise lacking in any government regulation accelerates a contemporary social problem (Marty's family is going from being pathetic and poor to not existing whatsoever), but then not only fixes it but makes it better than it was before. When Marty wakes up at the end of the film, he is waking up to the new morning of Reagan's America, to the realization that the nostalgic fantasy of the '50s wasn't a lie, it just wasn't 'remembered properly.' Turns out, white people invented rock 'n' roll, your dad overcame his fears, and your parents achieved the American Dream. This, in itself, is a lie, of course. Marty's original family has been destroyed. It has been swept away to make a path for the realization of what it 'should have been.' These highly successful commercial films being overtly reflective of the cultural preoccupations of the time does not stop them from being conservative, nor do their implicit political contradictions and hypocrisies. All conservatism is implicitly political hypocrisy because that which it 'conserves' is a post-hoc myth. Of course everything is in a constant state of flux, and conservatives contribute to political change. But dismissing the conservatism of a narrative because it is no more or less airtight than actual conservative political theory isn't particularly constructive to political analysis. My initial response was to the assertion that there's no such thing as a conservative underdog. This is also silly. Who is Dirty Harry, or any vigilante movie gunman for that matter, but a conservative underdog? Just because one doesn't identify with the political 'truth' that a film presents doesn't suddenly suspend what happens in the film. Similarly, the conspicuous absence of an Evangelical Christian framework in numerous loving horrible to mediocre films, and the overarching conservatism of the commercial film industry, leads to me to conclude that the specific spiritual framework has very little to do with what makes a film bad, or lacking in entertainment value. The relationship is indirect - I dislike Persecuted because it's a mediocre thriller above all, not because it's conservative (many cinematically accomplished conservative films), not because Jesus is in it (many cinematically accomplished films with Jesus), and not because it gives expression to cultural paranoia (many cinematically accomplished films that do precisely this).
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Mar 30, 2015 17:16
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Nobody said there's no such thing as a conservative underdog. Go back and reread everyone's posts.
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Mar 30, 2015 17:25
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K. Waste posted:The Ghostbusters don't oppose the government, they oppose over-regulation, which has been a consistent motivation of conservative movments and parties in the U.S. since at least the New Deal. Their opponents aren't the FBI or CIA, they're the Environmental Protection Agency. It's not like there's no nuance to Ghostbusters - the 'busters near-sighted, environmentally dangerous ghost-hunting methods are clearly a problem that they can't contain, which is always on the verge of 'meltdown.' But this meltdown happens, and ultimately the only solution is for the 'busters to prophetically contain the apocalypse that they themselves started. By defying government regulation of their independent, for profit public service, the 'busters accelerate the urban ecosystem literally to the point of Armageddon and save it, the significance being that they have symbolically remade the established order in their populist, anti-intellectual, anti-bureaucratic, spiritually conservative image. ("Nobody steps on a church in my town!") The point is that while deregulation 'caused temporary structural chaos, it ultimately corrects itself - federal regulation literally doesn't do anything. Conservatism is by definition maintaining the status quo and being resistant to change. But I get what you're trying to say. Xibanya posted:Nobody said there's no such thing as a conservative underdog. Go back and reread everyone's posts. Yeah, Rocky IV, aka "cold war hysteria expressed through a boxing match," is a prime example of that. raditts fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 17:54
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A big part of conservative philosophy going back to enlightenment resistance to popular democracy and the collapse of an aristocratic, land-based economy has been the sense that one is fighting a losing battle against the hordes of modernity. Dirty Harry wants to bring back the sane world of the Eisenhower era, but nobody else talks sense in his fallen modern world. They all think they're Gandalf or Obi Wan or whatever.
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Mar 30, 2015 18:15
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It's weird, I'm usually super attuned to that kind of stuff in movies and it usually puts me off them pretty badly but I unironically love Rocky IV.
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Mar 30, 2015 18:19
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How do you feel about Rambo?
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Mar 30, 2015 18:20
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LORD OF BUTT posted:It's weird, I'm usually super attuned to that kind of stuff in movies and it usually puts me off them pretty badly but I unironically love Rocky IV. that's because Rocky IV kicks rear end Jack Gladney posted:How do you feel about Rambo? Rambo IV also kicks rear end
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Mar 30, 2015 18:21
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raditts posted:Where did the whole "aversion to magic" thing come about in general Christian ideology, anyway? I don't think I've ever read the Bible in its entirety, but I've read at least a good 75% or so of it over the years and I've never seen anything really suggesting "MAGIC = EVIL" aside from I guess bad guys using magic. You weren't paying attention. That line about "not suffering a witch to live" is from Exodus. And in Deuteronomy there's this : "Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead." Of course, the Old Testament also contains a lot of rules that aren't followed and modern Christianity likes to pick and choose which ones they get to use. Biblically, magic is a real thing that pops up all the time in the narrative. The Witch of Endor is the best known one because she summons the ghost of a dead prophet to come back and tell one of the kings what's up (Christians have to do some real flexing to fit that in with their concept of the afterlife).
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Mar 30, 2015 19:12
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FYI, Kevin Sorbo will be doing an AMA, March 31st at 10AM EDT for Reddit tomorrow.. Maybe ask him how much he liked the last season of Andromeda? 
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Mar 30, 2015 20:03
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:according to Zealot: the Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (a super great read), many of Jesus' contemporaries tried to discredit him as "a magician" I will also pop in to say that this book super owns and Reza Aslan is a cool dude.
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Mar 30, 2015 20:13
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I feel like I'm being willfully misunderstood. I'm not saying films with themes that promote things that jive with the current American Conservative agenda can't be fun. I'm saying a lot of message-focused Christian films are so focused on hitting various checkboxes for "good Christian values" that they end up breaking several narrative conventions - conventions that are common because generally not including them makes the narrative boring. I'll go into detail below. Most narratives that can be digested easily by a moviegoing public have the following traits (  not all narratives do this, this just covers most "mainstream" narratives )
A lot of explicitly Christian films miss the mark on this. Typically the Christian films will feature a protagonist who opposes someone who is in no way a credible threat. Either their antagonist is never shown to be able to "deliver the goods" or the hero is never in any danger of dying in any one of the three ways mentioned above. One of the reasons why this happens a lot in explicitly Christian films is that usually authority figures are helpful and great role models who lack flaws and often enough the protagonist is also a shining Christian role model themselves, cruelly misunderstood by their secular opponent. Remember, a flaw is a trait that is typically a coping mechanism for the character who has it that ends up harming the character or others. Some sort of "wacky" flaw like "plays the tuba badly but is convinced they are a virtuoso, causing listeners to get hilariously annoyed but doesn't actually cause real emotional/physical damage" is not the kind of flaw I'm talking about. As you can see by CAP alerts, hardcore Christians HATE the idea of imitable characters being less than perfect. So often the Christian hero has parents/teachers/pastors who always love and support them, so that usually rules out "social death." Having a character question their faith is usually waaay too scary for these Christian films to tackle (or the writers are worried that it might cause kids to also question their faith!) so "spiritual death" is often off the table. And usually the antagonist doesn't credibly threaten the lead with "death death". What is also typical is that the opponent is shown as foolish, misguided, incompetent, etc. Often this character does not have any allies, or their allies are equally buffoonish. The end result is that the hero seems comparatively powerful and the antagonist seems comparatively weak. I've also seen in some overtly Christian films the ANTAGONIST grappling with temptation/difficult decisions, while the protagonist always knows the correct path due to their strong faith. All these contribute to the feel many of these films have that they are dull and preachy. The protagonist is usually not tempted in any serious ways and if they were, people like that CAP Alerts guy would scream bloody murder. Examples to follow. Xibanya fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Mar 30, 2015 |
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Mar 30, 2015 20:29
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I think that another major problem with these Christian films is that they take their audiences to be complete loving morons. Now, don't get me wrong, a lot of the view public are pretty big goddamn idiots, but these are written with the grace of a five year old writing a story. Two of the biggest rules they're constantly breaking are show, don't tell and creating a sympathetic antagonist. With the first, they usually just have character's just constantly speak their thoughts and with the second they usually make someone's motivations boil down to "they're mad at God" with no nuance because they think for a Christian film, you're not supposed to supposed to sympathize with an antagonist - black and white morality only. Like seriously, holy gently caress. It isn't that hard. A striking example of this is when in the trailer for "Do You Believe?" you have Sean Astin's doctor character saying "God didn't save these people. I did! I deserve the credit!" With this, they've done two things: 1 - They told us what he was thinking instead of showing us. 2 - They've created someone who is basically a saturday morning cartoon villain. Here's how you fix it: Have Sean Astin's doctor save someone's life during surgery. During the surgery, he's kind of a jerk, but he's really loving good at what he does, so everyone gets out of his way. After the surgery, the Christian family comes in to see their family member and they kind of ignore him. Sean Astin is standing there ready to bask in the glory, but they just pass him. They immediately go to pray over their recovering family member. Sean Astin walks out, pissed off, and kicks a garbage can and shouts at a nurse in his way. It doesn't take an idiot to find out that he's got an ego and wants the credit. But he's really loving good at what he did so he deserved at least a thank you. We cut back to the family praying and they're thanking God for giving the doctor the talent needed and guiding the doctor's hand to save this life. After praying, they go ask a nurse where the doctor is so they can thank him, the nurse says the doctor left for the day. Boom. We still have an antagonist with a god complex, but we can actually (at least slightly) understand his view on the situation. You have the same plot point but with FAR more nuance.
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Mar 30, 2015 20:59
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I disagree. I think that you can have a great story with an antagonist who is not at all sympathetic as long as the antagonist at least provides a credible threat and has a believable motivation. As an example, consider Sauron in the Lord of the Rings. He's not sympathetic but he's powerful and scary and definitely is a threat to a pack of hobbits. It sounds like your chief complaint is that the antagonists motivation is paper-thin. That leads me to something else good narratives have: a minimum of moments where the audience can ask "why don't they just...?" and not get an answer from the narrative's text or subtext. Characters should behave in ways that are natural based on who they are, the setting they're in, and the situation they face. Otherwise you can't provide a real answer to the question of "why don't they just...?" Essentially, a character should have no choice but to act the way they do. Example of where a character's choices intentionally reveal an aspect of their character - in Star Wars at the climax Han Solo arrives at the battle at great risk to himself to aid Luke. Why didn't he just take the money and run? Because he is actually a good and loyal guy deep down and he couldn't force himself not to. Example of where a character's choices unintentionally reveal an aspect of their character - Padme dies after "losing the will to live" even though she has two healthy babies. You either have to come up with some convoluted explanation neither supported by the text but not explicitly contradicted by the text about this or you take it to its logical conclusion - Padme is the kind of person who deep down doesn't really value their children very highly. Also, a wimp. Honey you're not the first girl to date a homicidal maniac. Other example - the famous "why didn't the hobbits just ride the Eagles to Mordor?" requires extratextual knowledge (reading books!) to answer. That the movie doesn't address this explicitly is to its own detriment. So a lot of these Christian movies have someone who just hates hates hates Christianity but you're always like "dude, why don't you just chill?" And the movie can't provide a satisfying answer.
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Mar 30, 2015 21:37
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Xibanya posted:Other example - the famous "why didn't the hobbits just ride the Eagles to Mordor?" requires extratextual knowledge (reading books!) to answer. That the movie doesn't address this explicitly is to its own detriment. Ehhhhh, I'm okay.
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Mar 30, 2015 21:49
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Hat Thoughts posted:Ehhhhh, I'm okay. In the meta sense, it would save us a lot of smarmy Internet critics who think they're more clever than JRRT asking "why don't they just ride Eagles? I'm so smart for having thought of it!" And then having that repeated by random people IRL every time the film comes up in conversation.
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Mar 30, 2015 21:57
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the trick is not to converse about lord of the rings
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Mar 30, 2015 22:05
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:the trick is not to converse about lord of the rings
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Mar 30, 2015 22:22
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Here's a case study of a film that I think has a very solid narrative. I was gonna use Casablanca, but like EVERYBODY has done Casablanca so I'll try to touch on some key points with something that hasn't been so overdone. Film: Looper Protagonist: Young Joe Flaw(s): Young Joe is only interested in satisfying his wants in the short term. How does the flaw "comfort" the protagonist?: Joe saw his mother murdered when he was young and he inhabits a cruel world where life is cheap. Treating life like a non-stop party helps him avoid the suffering of others and thus any obligation to ease the suffering of others. How is the flaw detrimental to the hero and/or the hero's allies?: Joe's desire to drown out reality through a hedonistic lifestyle leads him to become a literal hitman - to add icing to the cake, he knows that he will be forced to kill himself at the end of his contract but he avoids thinking about it. This trait clearly stays with him through life - Old Joe has sworn revenge because his wife was killed during an attempt by the mob to kill him instead. When asked "why don't you just make sure that you never meet her to begin with?" he can't accept that answer because his memories of her are more important to him than guaranteeing her safety. Goals through the narrative and the stakes if the protagonist fails Do lots of sex and drugs -- No consequence for failure Kill Old Joe -- the threat of death as if he fails, the mob will put a hit on him Hide from the mob -- Having failed to kill Old Joe, Young Joe now has a hit on himself and has to lay low Protect Sara and Cid from Old Joe -- The price of failure is the actual death of Sara, death of Cid's innocence (we know that if Sara dies he'll grow up to be a mob boss himself), spiritual death of Joe (the death of Old Joe's wife utterly broke him, presumably Young Joe would be distraught knowing that he failed to prevent an eternal cycle of suffering and death) Antagonist: Old Joe Antagonist's goal: Get revenge for the death of his wife by killing the man responsible - who we later learn is a young boy named Cid. Incompatible with the protagonist's goals (1. Young Joe wants Old Joe to die, if Old Joe dies he can't continue his quest for revenge. 2. Young Joe doesn't want Old Joe to kill Cid. Old Joe wants to kill Cid because Cid will grow up to be a mob boss whose botched hit on Old Joe results in Old Joe's wife's death.) How do we know that the antagonist is powerful?: In the first confrontation between Old Joe and Young Joe, Old Joe easily knocks Young Joe unconscious. Later, we see Old Joe kill everyone in the future mob by himself. Old Joe also shoots some kids dead - he's willing to murder children to achieve his goal, so we know that he won't hesitate to kill a grown woman either. Dilemmas/Giving up the flaw: Young Joe repeatedly has to choose between selfishness and altruism. Early on he clearly isn't ready to put his neck on the line as he gives away the hiding place of his friend, who is subsequently mutilated and killed by the mob.. Later, upon realizing that if Old Joe kills Sara (she is using herself as a human shield to protect Cid, we know that Old Joe is absolutely willing to kill her in order to also kill Cid) then Cid will escape and grow up to be the mob boss whose orders led to the death of Old Joe's wife, leading Old Joe to swear revenge, leading him to kill Sara, etc, he commits the ultimate selfless act of killing himself, thus preventing his revenge-crazed older self from having ever existed. He is in part able to make this decision by coming to terms with what caused him to have his flaw in the first place. He watched his mother be murdered and hardened his heart as a result. He commits a selfless act in order to prevent a little boy with whom he identifies from also having to witness his own mother's murder. I'm not saying the movie's perfect, but it hits all the right narrative beats with little waste (waste here meaning scenes/lines that neither reveal character, up the stakes, or advance the plot.) I'll need to refresh myself on some bad Christian movies, but I'll come back and dissect one of those soon and show how it misses a lot of these beats.
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Mar 30, 2015 23:11
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I think a piece that you've left out is that in mainstream cinema the protagonist or someone closely allied tp the protagonist is oftentimes an audience insert character. We watch Star Wars and pretend that we are Luke Skywalker. I don't know if that is necessarily the case with the movies discussed here. It seems from descriptions that a lot of these movies are more voyeur oriented. The camera itself is the audience insert. In which case it's really unnecessary for a film to follow a traditional narrative.
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Mar 31, 2015 01:46
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Random Stranger posted:Biblically, magic is a real thing that pops up all the time in the narrative. The Witch of Endor is the best known one because she summons the ghost of a dead prophet to come back and tell one of the kings what's up (Christians have to do some real flexing to fit that in with their concept of the afterlife). Huh. They didn't tell us that one in Sunday school.
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Mar 31, 2015 02:19
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