What
should we think of excellent visual effects or other exploits of
difficult technical filmmaking in the service of a bad movie?
Should we hate it? Applaud it because it gives work to our friends?
Keep our mouth shut because often the problem starts with the script
and it is not our place to say?
The
question comes up often in visual effects because of the recent
trends in filmmaking that have wisely chosen to reduce costs by
eliminating the screenwriter (or any writing of quality) in return
for having more pointless, visual effects shots. Furthermore, when
in preproduction, when there is still time to turn away from Satan
and rewrite the script, who is going to tell the director that his or
her ideas are really bad?
Recall
that the visual effects industry, if we may flatter it by calling it
an industry, is a very competitive work-for-hire, production service
business. If anyone were so stupid as to criticize the content of a
screenplay when asked to bid on it they would rapidly get the
reputation for being “arrogant” and in very short order not be
asked to bid on anything. It is not the visual effects facility's
job or privilege to judge the director's vision.
Nevertheless
we all have our moments of outrage when an expensive Hollywood film
or cheap television knockoff egregiously or outrageously abuses our
willing suspension of disbelief and we crash to the ground, taken out
of the moment, by some appalling or ludicrous cinematic plot point or
creative choice. At such times it may be useful to remember that the
Hollywood entertainment industries are about, well, entertainment,
not about presenting reality. True, the appearance of realism is
often used as a technique to make a story more appealing or
involving, but it is always in the service of making a project more
dramatic or effective and in the service of entertainment. It is
rarely, very rarely, about showing “reality”.
As
an example of this I want to describe three films with “something
that flies” in an unrealistic fashion: two of which I found
completely acceptable and one which irritated the hell out of me the
first time I saw it and every time since. And yet all three are
clearly fantasy movies intended to be entertaining. Why do two of
them work for me but the third does not?
In
the first example, we have the X Wing and Tie fighters from the
original Star Wars (1977). When this movie came out,
there were some who criticized it because these spacecraft made
whooshing noises as they went by the “camera”. Whoosh! But
this never bothered me in the least because I, as a devoted reader of
science fiction, knew that in the classic space opera it would be
quite normal and correct for such fighters to make whooshing noises
as they went by. It worked in the context of the film and the
genre.
In
our second example, we have the flying carpet in Disney's Aladdin
(1992). Now it might be a surprise to you to know that
this is pure fantasy, but it is. Flying carpets do not exist in real
life. Dont get mad at me, its true, do your own research. But if
there were flying carpets, I have no doubt that they might work like
the one in Aladdin and it certainly was completely believable
to the audience.
But
our third example is not so happy.
This
is a remake of a French film, a romantic comedy, about a secret agent
whose family does not know what he does for a living and think he is
boring. Of course, through dramatic and unbelievable plot twists,
they discover that he is a secret agent and his daughter likes him
again and he has hot sex with his wife. The American remake of this
important dramatic masterpiece was called True Lies (1994) of course
and it is even less believable overall than either Aladdin or
Star Wars. Given this fantastic nature, surely one would not
be upset when our hero has a magic carpet of his own, in this case a
Harrier jet.
In
the movie, the Arnold flies the Harrier right up to the side of a
skyscraper to kill the bad guys. Bang ! Bang ! You are dead! At
another point in the film, his daughter falls from a crane or a
bridge or something, but is able to hang onto the wing of the
Harrier. Arnold yells to her, “Hang on!”
This
irritated the living bejeesus out of me. I still want to spit whenever I think of it. Why?
Because
a Harrier, which is a very cool airplane, is a very loud jet. Very
loud. If you flew it up to a skyscraper closer than 50 feet it would
blow all the windows out, and you would probably lose control of the
vehicle. You would certainly not be able to calmly shoot out all the
bad guys. Maybe you could do something like that by standing off
about 500 feet or more, that might work.
Or
when the daughter falls to the airplane and hangs on. First off I
doubt you could hang on. Second, if you did, you would almost
certainly be hurting yourself terribly and you would let go and
hopefully die. Third you would probably get burned all to hell.
Fourth, and lastly, the Harrier is loud, really loud. Like really
damage your ears loud. LIKE REALLY FUCKING LOUD. You would not be
yelling to anybody “hang on” because no one would be able to hear
a thing.
But
why does this irritate me so much? The movie is clearly a fantasy.
In fact, I might go so far as to say that the movie is a cynical,
derivative, stupid, inane, worthless piece of shit. What difference
does it make? I am not sure. Maybe because the Harrier is a real
airplane and a very cool one, but its limitations should be
respected? Maybe because the movie expects me to take these
ridiculous developments as reality and I know it isnt even close to
what is possible?
All
I can tell you is that whenever I see these sequences from this
movie, I start jumping up and down because I can not believe how
unbelievably fucking stupid they are.
Not
even Jamie Lee Curtis doing a striptease can redeem this horrible
movie in my eyes.
But
the visual effects are very nice.
Aladdin
(1992) on IMDB
True
Lies (1994) on IMDB
Star
Wars (1977) on IMDB
Le
Totale! (1991)
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