Movies and 'The Story'

[katherineespair 36]

Roleplay has ruined movies for me. Suspension of disbelief is still there, but when a story is bad it drives me absolutely batty. 

 

There I am, watching this movie. I'm into the characters or the plot, maybe both. Doesn't matter because all of a sudden the story goes dumb. Really dumb. 

 

For example, has anyone seen Expendables 2? Really the point of the Expendables movies was to blow stuff up and give us the 80's action movie experience all over again. Lots of beef old movie giants battling for cool points. They don't just have boats or planes. They have Boat-planes. Tattooes, guns, cars, trucks, motorcycle gang, knife wielding, dart boards, manliness... It's just that kind of movie. Fueled by testosterone and meant to be enjoyed for nostalgia.

 

Still, the story wasn't bad. 

 

Sort of.

 

The story was good as long as there was no schwarzenegger, Willis, or Chuck Norris.  It was as if they wrote this great story then cut a chunk out and duck taped in a quick scene for Chuck Norris jokes. At one point There is this guy who knows his chemistry. He's supposed to be the idiot of the story (the actor actually has a degree in chemistry, I might add). At this one instance nobody believes it was going to work. They are trapped in a cave that has no way out, and he is going to blast through the wall using things he found there with them like macgyver is his spirit animal. What a great scene it would be if it worked. It SHOULD HAVE Worked. That would have been great story telling. Instead the movie editors are like 'time for a schwarzenegger scene'. Snip snip tape. It doesn't work and here comes good old mister terminator on a big digging machine. This was a place one of their men died trying to get. This was a place the badguy had spent years looking for. It couldn't be detected or found and yet without contact this dude finds it. It blew my story telling mind right out of suspended disbelief.

 

Since then, when i see stupidity in stories I find myself calling them out. I can't watch a movie anymore without looking for the plot issues then thinking how it could have been improved.  Being a roleplayer for so many years has really made me picky with story. I can see when there are hic-ups, and it drives me crazy.

 

Does anyone else have this problem?

[VirusZero 176]

Not really. 

 

Movies I go in for entertainment moreso than to be wowed with a great story. So if things are predictable or off the wall ridiculous I don't care that much as long as the spectacle is good. Though there are definitely things I gripe about at times... like in some TV shows how bad a particular scene might be. (Like in Arrow where a character stops an MGL140 grenade launcher's 40mm grenade with a trash can lid. No sir, the green arrow should have been renamed to red smear. ) But overall I can still move past that and enjoy a work for what it is.

 

Though I'd be very careful because roleplay is also full of bad writing. You may have gotten lucky with some good writing partners. But the bad writers are definitely in roleplay too. (Just because someone can type doesn't mean they are a good writer.)

[katherineespair 36]

I've had few bad writing partners, I'll admit. There is just something about a bad story that drives me nuts. I usually migrate away from that. 

[Jakolope 0]

Know that feeling for sure! 

For years I was not able to enjoy movies at all after I went to film school, so easy to see flaws everywhere. 

Story is always what I'm in it for, and I love plots, especially long plots that evolve over time <3

 

With movie watching there is sort of a cycle to observing them. You start out able to just watch them, then you learn more about good storytelling, or lighting, or editing, or directing,etc then you can see how the sausage is made. The  nice thing (for me at least) is that the next step is being able to enjoy and critique them at the same time, so watching them and feeling what the movie wants you to feel, then being able to figure out why and how it did that. At long last I can enjoy film again  (then i go use those tricks to try and get better stories for rp...shhh )

[katherineespair 36]

Ah, yes. I can see film school doing that. I feel the same way about tea. I owned a tea shop for several years, and it made it hard to just enjoy tea from anywhere. Since then I've come to enjoy looking the ability to do that. It doesn't exactly have much to do with roleplay on my side.. well. besides maybe one or two of my characters REALLY liking tea lol.