WTF!? The Suspension of Disbelief

When is too much? At what point do you become disenfranchised with whatever film you may be watching and seriously think about whether or not you should waste your time any further? Is it the point where the hero narrowly escapes with some blind luck bum whiffery, for the fifth bloody time in a row? Or is it way before then, when you can’t possibly forgive the wooden acting and faux-plot? I can take a bit of bad acting so long as the action doesn’t border on the farcicle.

Personally, I don’t take it well when a non-super hero in a film does something that defies all gravitational laws. I may let one or two slide but when it happens on a more regular basis, I get irritated beyond belief. I find myself saying things like “aarrgh, it was all good and you had to go and do that?” The most recent example was in Hanna. I’m sorry, but anyone who grabs the underneath of a speeding hummer from a hole in the ground is going to lose their arms. It’s when things like that happen that I think they should’ve just allowed said person to find the car stationary and stow away before it takes off, or at the very least, have the hummers traveling a lot slower to ramp up the feasibility of it. At least Mad Max showed what happens when you hook onto a speeding vehicle. Cundalini wanted his arm back. I enjoyed Salt but the experience was marred with these moments so it tends to fade in memory, as do others of its ilk.

Let’s go back a bit and take a look at Die Hard. John McClane is no stranger to performing ridiculous over the top maneuvers to get himself out of the shit. The first Die Hard is still the best and one of the reasons why, is that although he gets very lucky on two occasions, one with a fire hose and one with the lift shaft, it’s quite acceptable that a man could survive it with some luck on his side. I’ve heard of much weirder shit that people have survived so you have to allow for some freak luck in these films. It’s when directors rely on such set-pieces that it starts to wear thin. I remember Escape from LA left me dismayed at how absurd most of the set pieces were. They defied all logic and even left me, a seventeen year old fan of the original, cursing all the way home. Don’t get me started on Con Air. Even the first Transformers had me thinking that Optimus Prime catching Sam falling out of a skyscraper wouldn’t end well for Sam. The sheer force that Optimus nabs him would be enough to break every bone in his body. Still, I let it go for some.

Christopher Nolan reinvented Batman in a way that few other directors have reinvented anything of any worth and I thought the first Batman with Keaton and Nicholson was top notch. Have you watched it recently? I used to think is was a great, dark and brooding take on Batman and when it was announced that it was being rebooted, I was happy to see it restart after the original’s deplorable sequels. When I saw Nolan’s effort, I left the cinema completely on a high and needed more Batman when I got home. So I threw on the original Batman when I got back and was instantly shocked by its over the top nature and utter campiness. Nolan had singlehandedly wiped the slate clean with a new film that grounded an unlikely hero in some form of reality. I guess for me personally, that’s what I need in films. Yes, Nolan’s Batman was gliding around the city and using some tech that is impossible but he still showed how these things were made and grounded the film with a logical reasoning as to why certain things exist. Burton’s Batman was more style over substance with little regard to plausibility. I really can’t sit through the original anymore, so thanks for that Chris.

Indiana Jones was nuked into the stratosphere inside a fridge and smashed into the ground at a velocity that would liquify an elephant. That was the very beginning of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and the moment I knew I wasn’t going to be in for a good night. Don’t get me started on the waterfall car ride. This movie is a giant “fuck you” to anyone with more than two brain cells. Did they seriously think people would swallow it? I guess so. Why is it that some movies upset me with implausible acts but then I can enjoy a movie like Machete where the damn thing is full of them? I guess it comes down to how serious it takes itself. Machete is so over the top it’s a riot but serious action films have to meter it back if you want to have a solid impact. Kill Bill pt 1 is somewhat of an anomaly, dark and serious in parts and completely crazy in others but somehow really works. Such is the gift that Tarantino has. One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen is Dennis Rodman jumping out of a plane and deploying his parachute which turns into…yes…. a big basketball around him and he bounces to safety. Jean Claude Van Damme should be ashamed. I turned off “Double Team” after that very moment.

When reading the very well written Matthew Reilly “Scarecrow” novels, you can clearly see he has a hardon for the action espionage flick but may have watched too many methinks. Even when quietly reading away I’d let out the occasional “Fuuuuck off!” So my feelings on the subject even relates to the written word. There were many instances where things would happen that defy belief. If they were to make movies out of these books (which they definately should) and I was Directing, the first change would be to tone down the pure luck side of things. Professional Mercenaries shouldn’t need it, though maybe a couple of instances would be passable.

What do you feel on the subject? When Bruce Willis jumps out of a speeding car with enough velocity to launch it into a helicopter whilst maintaining minimal injuries to himself in the process, do you think “okay whatever” or “are you kidding me?” I fall into the latter arguement. Reel these moments back to a more believable outcome and the movie will benifit immensely.

Hannah

Vantage Point loses me when we’re supposed to believe John Hurt has a double that looks and sounds EXACTLY like him. For a supposedly ‘real’ film it’s too much of reach for me… The same goes for the masks in Mission: Impossible and MI:II. However MI:III’s attempt to explain how the masks are made helped me believe it, so not the same problem there.

Although the worst of late was for The Fourth Kind. As soon as I realised we were supposed to believe it was all real – with ‘faux’ intros for the fricking actors themselves – I completely came out of it emotionally. Fake documentaries can work for me but that was a step to far.

James McDonald

Mark, I did enjoy Hanna on the whole, it’s just that when moments like that happen, be they for artistic purposes or whatever, it really loses a few points for it. It probably shouldn’t but thats how my mind works. For sure, I’ll allow a couple of freak incidents of implausibility happen in a film without writing it off completely, I just don’t want directors to milk it as they so often do. What I mean about it fading in memory is that the more things that happen where I’m removed from the reality of it, the more forgettable it will be as it will just mesh in with the rest of them. Hanna was good, thoroughly worth seeing, just not the world-rocker I was expecting from hearing the buzz about it. Don’t get me wrong though, Hanna does not fall into the “milking the ridiculous” category, not by a long shot. There’s only two instances where it’s incredibly unbelievable, and even they’re not movie-ruining scenes.

Hannah (this is getting confusing LOL), I agree with you on the MI3 thing. That movie surprised the shit out of me after the farcical previous two films. That was genuinely great and I felt exactly the same thing as you with the whole mask thing, but the third made it believable and that helps the films entire credibility. It does matter to me when films take the time to establish a set of laws within itself that we punters can understand. Break those laws and your film is broken.

MarkShek

i find this topic extremely interesting. I mostly fall into your former category of just saying “okay whatever” if something implausible, or even impossible, happens in a film, but it seems based on film discussion forums and my own experiences with friends, that many fall into your category. I’m just bothered on some level when a person decries an entire movie because one or more scenes are extraordinary.

I have yet to see Hanna, but from my understanding of what I’ve read, it does not appear to be a film where any element of supernatural ability is introduced or any rules of nature (e.g. gravity) are designed to be breakable (such as with films like the Matrix). That said, your example from the film I’m sure all would agree that such a scene breaks a rule that isn’t designed to be broken in the technical setting of the film. You don’t seem to indicate that just the mere presence of that scene ruined the whole movie experience for you, but you did insinuate that it leads to the film fading in your memory in time. I don’t know 100% how to interpret that, but perhaps you meant it leads you to refrain from including an otherwise fantastic movie amongst a list of greats from a given year, decade, or whatever. Is such a scene really enough to derail a film? The film is about a 16 year old assassin on a mission while being hunted by some intelligence agency (or so IMDBs brief description has me to believe). This isn’t exactly going for the most reasonable and plausible story line, so I would think a bit of bending of the rules would be fine, and in my viewing would generally go unnoticed. Hanna, Escape from LA, etc, just don’t, in my opinion, require 100% complicity with the rules of nature in order to be strong films.

It’s not like we’re dealing with a film retelling a story in history here that is supposed to be going for maximum accuracy. In that case, sure I’d be bothered… If Schindler’s List showed Nazis jumping from the top of 5 story buildings and landing on their feet with no trouble outrunning a speeding car immediately following the landing, by all means decry the scene and even the entire film as an abomination.