The hazards of blogging while distracted…
“But I’ve come to the realization that lately I understand a lot more about writing and storytelling and what works and does not work for me. I simply don’t have any more patience for scenes, acts, moments or effects that don’t serve some purpose in the story.”
Ok, that may well be one of the most obvious statements I’ve ever made. Or at least it reads like one. What it sounds like I’ve said is that if the scene doesn’t serve some purpose in the story, then I don’t have any patience for it. Well, duh! If it doesn’t serve any purpose in the story, it doesn’t belong there in the first place! So patience doesn’t even enter into it.
What I meant to say was that I don’t have a lot of patience with these overly long action sequences if there’s nothing going on in the scene that propels the story. The scene itself may move the story along, but the scene can still be too long if all the elements of the scene aren’t moving the story along.
The scene I was referring to specifically was the first chase scene in T3. As Quentin pointed out to me, chase scenes in action films do serve a purpose—they give the characters things to overcome, they can create bonds, etc. And these factors were certainly present in T3 (Arnold’s T-101 teams up with John Conner, we get John and Kaye in the same car, we establish the power of the TX terminator, etc.).
But here’s the question, and it’s been the one I’ve been running into repeatedly this summer: could they have accomplished the exact same thing in less time? Did they need the 10 or 15 minutes that chase scene lasted to establish these relationships or was it just an excuse to blow more things up? (‘Cause they blow up A LOT of stuff!)
I think there’s a definite case of action bloat going on this summer—the “more is better” mentality. Matrix Reloaded suffered from it—there was virtually no scene in that movie that couldn’t have been shorter. Charlie’s Angels 2 suffered from more than simple action bloat, but that was a BIG part of the problem—these non-stop CGI action fests that go on and on to no seeming purpose other than to show off the cool digital effects they’ve come up with. And the first half or so of T3 suffered from it as well, I think—easily till the escape from the cemetery scene… from there the movie picked up for me because it became more about telling the story than simply blowing stuff up.
So I’ve got to wonder… if you spent less time blowing stuff up and spent a little more time developing characters we actually give a damn about (another huge problem with this crop of summer films) would people be going back for a second and third look… the thing you need to have to get that blockbuster success? ‘Cause if that’s the trade-off we’ve gotta make, a) I’m all for it and b) we’re so screwed ‘cause it’s never going to happen.
“But I’ve come to the realization that lately I understand a lot more about writing and storytelling and what works and does not work for me. I simply don’t have any more patience for scenes, acts, moments or effects that don’t serve some purpose in the story.”
Ok, that may well be one of the most obvious statements I’ve ever made. Or at least it reads like one. What it sounds like I’ve said is that if the scene doesn’t serve some purpose in the story, then I don’t have any patience for it. Well, duh! If it doesn’t serve any purpose in the story, it doesn’t belong there in the first place! So patience doesn’t even enter into it.
What I meant to say was that I don’t have a lot of patience with these overly long action sequences if there’s nothing going on in the scene that propels the story. The scene itself may move the story along, but the scene can still be too long if all the elements of the scene aren’t moving the story along.
The scene I was referring to specifically was the first chase scene in T3. As Quentin pointed out to me, chase scenes in action films do serve a purpose—they give the characters things to overcome, they can create bonds, etc. And these factors were certainly present in T3 (Arnold’s T-101 teams up with John Conner, we get John and Kaye in the same car, we establish the power of the TX terminator, etc.).
But here’s the question, and it’s been the one I’ve been running into repeatedly this summer: could they have accomplished the exact same thing in less time? Did they need the 10 or 15 minutes that chase scene lasted to establish these relationships or was it just an excuse to blow more things up? (‘Cause they blow up A LOT of stuff!)
I think there’s a definite case of action bloat going on this summer—the “more is better” mentality. Matrix Reloaded suffered from it—there was virtually no scene in that movie that couldn’t have been shorter. Charlie’s Angels 2 suffered from more than simple action bloat, but that was a BIG part of the problem—these non-stop CGI action fests that go on and on to no seeming purpose other than to show off the cool digital effects they’ve come up with. And the first half or so of T3 suffered from it as well, I think—easily till the escape from the cemetery scene… from there the movie picked up for me because it became more about telling the story than simply blowing stuff up.
So I’ve got to wonder… if you spent less time blowing stuff up and spent a little more time developing characters we actually give a damn about (another huge problem with this crop of summer films) would people be going back for a second and third look… the thing you need to have to get that blockbuster success? ‘Cause if that’s the trade-off we’ve gotta make, a) I’m all for it and b) we’re so screwed ‘cause it’s never going to happen.
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