Mission impenetrable: are Hollywood blockbusters losing the plot?

[marmar]

Mission impenetrable: are Hollywood blockbusters losing the plot?
From Fast & Furious to the Avengers, Terminator and Jurassic World, the trend for ridiculously over-complicated storylining is out of control this year. Is it time for a purge?


(Guardian UK) Forty-five minutes into the seventh Fast & Furious movie, Vin Diesel drives towards a huge precipice. The audience have only the faintest idea why he’s there. Ditto why they have paraglided their cars into Azerbaijan. Is it Azerbaijan? It’s probably to rescue someone … who was it again? Something to do with a surveillance gizmo means they need to find their nemesis Jason Statham, except Statham seems to find them whenever he wants, being the one about to push Diesel off the cliff, not the random mercenaries they’re nicking the device from. Only Kurt Russell – who’s watching everything from his covert-ops unit and chatting about craft ale – seems to understand what the hell is going on.

What was once a series content to celebrate simple boy-racer pleasures, the seventh Fast & Furious fell prey to a recent tentpole-film affliction: ridiculously over-complicated plotting. Iron Man 3 and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation writer Drew Pearce draws an analogy for this blockbuster bloat, responsible for routinely pushing run times over the two-hour mark: “Much as I love a prog-rock album, if it’s a pop song I like it to be short and sweet, and I think it has more impact that way. And summer blockbusters are very proggy right now.”

This byzantine plot sprawl has been in full effect this year. Avengers: Age of Ultron lost many round about the point the villain heads off to a South African shipyard in search of something called Wakandan vibranium. Promoting the film, writer-director Joss Whedon acknowledged that keeping all the narrative plates spinning for his six-man superhero team, plus all the side players, had left him “a little bit broken”. Terminator Genisys director Alan Taylor, faced with the collective “eh?” over his recent convoluted overhaul of the Schwarzenegger classic, made a spirited attempt in interviews to break down the film’s supposed seven interweaving timelines. But if his film had worked, he wouldn’t have needed to.

Pacific Rim screenwriter Travis Beacham says he first noticed this “pet peeve” with the advent of the Marvel films: “It’s a very literal complexity, it’s not an emotional complexity. It’s very point A to point B, we have to get the talisman to stop Dr Whatever from raising an army. Very pragmatic stuff that doesn’t leave a lot of room for character.” He compares Jurassic World to the original Jurassic Park: “In the first film, there’s only a handful of major sequences: the T-rex attack in the rain, the velociraptors in the kitchen. But because there are so few, you can really spend some time with them, and let them unfold. The latest one is this wall-to-wall sequence of events, and there’s not a lot of suspense.”

What happened to the industry in the intervening 20 years? In the rush to give restless, spoilt-for-choice modern viewers value for money, the studios are making their blockbusters in an ever more feverish climate. The past decade has seen, in the struggle for prime spots on the movie-going calendar, the rise of release dates locked in years in advance. In order to hit those targets, production schedules have little room for deviation; finished scripts often lag behind the key special-effects sequences, which are devised early so mockups around which actors can be directed are ready when shooting starts. Screenwriters, says Pearce, are often left to link the showpieces as best as they can. ..................(more)

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/jul/30/hollywood-blockbusters-lost-plot-avengers-terminator

[Orrex]

1. If your film is two hours of non-stop action sequences...

It makes it harder to watch the exciting parts of the film via 6-minute YouTube clips. You can watch the T. Rex-in-the-Rain and the Velociraptors-in-the-Kitchen whenever you want, but you can't do that as readily if it's constant action from credits to credits, interspersed with product placement.

[displacedtexan]

2. I recently saw a rogue edit version of the latest X Men movie.

It actually made sense! The first time I saw the studio version, the time travel plot made no sense at all. The rogue edit version chopped out tons of useless time travel reasoning dialogue and out-of-sequence past/present scenes. Much more enjoyable!

As for the new Jurassic Park film, I wanted my money back!

[Galileo126]

3. I haven't seen an original plot line since 1999

(The Matrix) - everything else seems to be a remake of disastrous proportions.

And, as such, I haven't been to a movie theater since then.

Keep trying, Hollywood... when you get it right, I'll buy the $10 popcorn again.

<shrugs>

[Logical]

5. Then you really are not paying attention. nt

[geek tragedy]

4. Yes, the Marvel Studios films have been too complicated for average folks.

I mean, no one goes to see them.

And the most recent Fast/Furious film obviously limited itself to a small group of cineastes.

Let's not forget the critical and commercial failures that were the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings franchises.

[Logical]

6. Lol, so true, DU movie snobs just like DU food snobs! nt

[geek tragedy]

7. I love how they bring out the Pacific Rim dude

as the defender of cinema.

[zappaman]

8. Nailed it.

The combination of a release date set in stone and the advent of CGI has screwed movies.
Many classics, like THE GODFATHER, were found in the editing room. Now, there is no time.
And CGI has become the lazy way to make fx.
It's sad and that's why I watch mostly docs, foreign films, and independent movies.

[KittyWampus]

9. non-stop sequence of events + little dialogue means no character development

However, it does mean it can be shopped overseas in any language market.

You don't need to translate explosions.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

10. Many of the films today would be better served as (mini-)series.

I can't help but think with services like Hulu, Amazon and NetFlix they would find the distribution needed to make them marketable.

[Agnosticsherbet]

11. The entire marvel Universe is one extended movie

akin to reading War and Peace with its four sequels. They want to do what good television does, tell a really long story.

The same process has happened in fiction novels with endless sequels.

Think about Harry Potter, and incredibly long story told in installments that kept audiences returning to find out what happened to beloved characters. Harry's Character arc runs from "The Sorcerer's Stone to the Deathly Hollows. Each installment was complete in itself, but story lines, plot, and character's grew across the length of the whole story.

They did this and made so much money that that it lead to a theme park, endless lines of toys, and another series of movies written by the same author.

I suppose the answer ot all of that is, "Money." A successful franchise reduces the risk of makaing these mammoth movies by appealing to a guaranteed audience instead of looking for a new one. As long as huge audiences show up to see the new installment, the story will go on.

[olddots]

12. we've all seen hundreds of the thousands of movies made

over a hundred yeats .We get educated and jaded because what impacts us at first we asume is traumatic .
That and movies are reallly sucky .Who wants to see rehashes for 3 times the price of the original ?

Seems like we need some time off if the " producers are feeding us the same shit with our relclining seats and 700 percent marked up sugar and salt .

[villager]

13. I like the line about "literal complexity" vs. "emotional complexity."

That's the problem. Great 70's films referenced in this thread had emotional complexity, and that's what's missing now.

On the other hand, my favorite film of the summer, the latest Mad Max, is one long action sequence -- but it's right to the point. And manages its emotional moments along the way.

My other favorite film of the summer is a German movie called Phoenix. A "post-Holocaust" character study. Bare bones simple plot. Emotional layers peeling off the screen in its final scene....

[msongs]

14. foul mouths, gratuitous violence, cheap sex, blasting music and no character development -

hey, hollywood cranks out what the lowest denominator will pay for

[Arugula Latte]

15. I never go to those movies. The more "action" there is, the less the movie holds my attention.

I like movies where people talk to each other and relationships unfold. Of course, those are derisively referred to as "chick flicks."

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

16. I have the same problem - but then I'm an old guy used to old movies

Most films I see nowadays have such convoluted storylines, with various threads some that never resolve that it takes a lot of the enjoyment out of watching for me. I much prefer to see zero special effects or CGI but to have a great dramatic story. For me, it's all in the story and the characters who carry it out. I'm used to a straight ahead clear narrative that builds. In the 1980s I was accepted in the highly competitive screenwriter's track program at UCLA film school and that's how they taught screenwriting. One of the bibles in the program was Lajos Egri's old book The Art Of Dramatic Writing. Thankfully for me, there are lots and lots of old films (some of which I can watch again and again) that for me are on average much, much better than the blockbuster of today. That's not to say that every new movie is bad, but for me it's the vast majority that I find almost unwatchable.