The Willing Suspension of Disbelief Metathread

[Cyrrex]

I interpreted that superman scene as merusk described.

It was still terrible and made me think, wait, what? Why didn't you do that earlier?

Really?  Even my 9 year-old self (or however old I was when I first saw it) understood that Superman knew what he was doing was absolutely forbidden and the only thing that would make him doing it was the rage of the love of his life getting crushed to death.  He flipped out and did something he shouldn't have.  That is how I have always thought of that scene.

As regards to the OP, yeah, it has to be internally consistant.  I can suspend my disbelief long enough to believe giant alien spaceships might want to attack our cities for nebulous reasons.  I also pretty much accepted the computer virus, because okay, sure, something has to take them down eventually and we all knew it would be something stupid.  Seeing Randy Quaid flying a jet fighter bugged the shit out of me.  So did launching totally ineffective nukes within the atmosphere.  Still, it was a silly movie on an absurd premise to begin with, so I think people complained too much about it.  Same with Transformers movies.  A movie about giant transforming robots from outer space fighting each other and people complained about...too many explosions?  I'm not sure I ever understood.  The best complainst I can think of about those movies was that the robot forms all looked too samey and indistinct from each other.  Next best complaint was the racist twin robots.  Yeah, the stories were stupid and ham-fisted, but guess what?  The whole idea is stupid to begin with, what else are you expecting?

[Ironwood]

 Seeing Randy Quaid flying a jet fighter bugged the shit out of me.

They gave a guy who dusted crops and flew in a war decades ago the most advanced fighter jet in the world and said 'There ya go.'

That was only one of the many, many, many reasons ID4 sucked utter balls.

[Paelos]

This thread reminds me of Misery.

[Ironwood]

Well, in fairness, he didn't get out of the cockadoodie car.

[Paelos]

I'm your #1 Fan. 

[Abagadro]

Supe reversing time was originally his solution to the Zod problem in the Donner cuts.

[jgsugden]

1) Sharknado
2) Sharknado
3) Sharknado
4) Sharktopus

Dolphicane?

Pfft.

Scorpnado.

¿Gerbennema?

[Ghambit]

Supe reversing time was originally his solution to the Zod problem in the Donner cuts.

Supenado!

[Paelos]

Supernintendo

[Ironwood]

This thread got silly.

[palmer_eldritch]

I interpreted that superman scene as merusk described.

It was still terrible and made me think, wait, what? Why didn't you do that earlier?

Really?  Even my 9 year-old self (or however old I was when I first saw it) understood that Superman knew what he was doing was absolutely forbidden and the only thing that would make him doing it was the rage of the love of his life getting crushed to death.  He flipped out and did something he shouldn't have.  That is how I have always thought of that scene.

I agree, although when you really think about it, stopping a human from detonating a nuke (albeit just one out of two) somehow doesn't count as "interfering in human history", which is what he's actually forbidden from doing - while going back in time five minutes to save a single human being does . . .

But, it somehow made sense when you were watching the movie. For me anyway, even at a very young age. You knew Superman was doing something he shouldn't.

Sometimes a film can have problems with the plot and get away with it, avoiding those "wait, what?" moments. For me, it doesn't do any harm at all if you can actually see the author's hand at work a little bit, and you can understand what they're getting at. Superman's father told him never to do something, but now he's gone and broken the rules to save the person he loves - you can see what story they're trying to tell there and it's a nice story, never mind if every bit of the narrative is totally consistent.

[palmer_eldritch]

My biggest hate: "It makes sense if you read the obscure tie-in novels/comics/whatever". Fuck off with that.

[Ironwood]

I bet you can't stand Donnie Darko.

[schild]

If you had to read something to understand a movie - as in the movie is a supplement to a book - then that movie has failed on every level.

The Hunger Games is one of the worst criminal pieces of media in that regard. What a fucking mess.

[Sir T]

That would kill shows like "Les Miserable" stone dead then. It doesn't even try to tell the story, if you were not familiar with the story behind it you would be completely lost.

[Samwise]

I bet you can't stand Donnie Darko.

I had fun discussing Donnie Darko with my friends immediately after getting out of the theater and think that trying to make sense of the actual events with no other context is what makes that movie awesome.  The newer director's cut version directly includes the "extra material" that spells it all out and IMO makes it a much weaker movie.

[schild]

That movie is a massively overrated piece of shit. :(

[Rendakor]

Schild hates something most of us love, film at 11.

[Teleku]

If you had to read something to understand a movie - as in the movie is a supplement to a book - then that movie has failed on every level.

The Hunger Games is one of the worst criminal pieces of media in that regard. What a fucking mess.

Err, how so?  I've never read one word of the hunger games, and I understood everything going on in the movie...

[schild]

If you had to read something to understand a movie - as in the movie is a supplement to a book - then that movie has failed on every level.

The Hunger Games is one of the worst criminal pieces of media in that regard. What a fucking mess.

Err, how so?  I've never read one word of the hunger games, and I understood everything going on in the movie...

If I could go back in time and answer that, I would. But I haven't seen it since it was in theaters and I had about 30 minutes of questions to ask directly afterwards. I remember none of them because they weren't important enough to commit to memory (because I didn't actually like the movie). Everyone basically agreed that reading the books was a big deal in that case.

[Ironwood]

I find that's the case with a lot of these 'hey, let's translate from the books' films of late.

It's rare that they pack it up in such a way that you don't get a better experience if you're a fan already.

[Ratman_tf]

If you had to read something to understand a movie - as in the movie is a supplement to a book - then that movie has failed on every level.

The Hunger Games is one of the worst criminal pieces of media in that regard. What a fucking mess.

Err, how so?  I've never read one word of the hunger games, and I understood everything going on in the movie...

Ditto. And then I went and read the book and was double fine with it.

[eldaec]

I just assumed the background plot was a direct ripoff of Battle Royale and that made it fine. Except for being a terrible movie completely lacking in tension or believable characters. The only person I could relate to in that movie was Donald Sutherland. The GF tells me this is not the appropriate person to cheer for.

Anyway, to answer the OP, the most important thing for me is characters acting reasonably within the rules of the universe. Movies, even summer blockbusters, are ultimately about growth of, and conflict between, characters. If that makes sense and appears to lead the story, the rest can earn a pass.

If you spend movie 1 developing a tiny nuclear reactor attached to the protagonists chest, and movie 2 developing that reactor to not kill the protagonist, you can't spend movie 3 with the lead guy sucking on a car battery.

Fantasy movies I had no believability issue with off the top of my head....

Star Wars
Tremors
Toy Story
Monsters inc
Goonies
LotR
Spiderman 1, 2, and even 3 was OK from this perspective.
Thor
Harry Potter 1, 2, 3, 5
WallE
Ghostbusters
All the Back to the Futures
Star Trek 2 and 6
Iron Man 1
From Russia with Love, and most of the first 15 bond films.
Batman Begins and Dark Knight

[HaemishM]

My suspension of belief ends the minute I raise a finger and say "But... why would you...?" about anything in the movie. Movies are a very visceral medium - you need to be able to keep following the movie without stopping to have to think about it (you can analyze it in depth on subsequent viewings). If the movie makes me stop and think about why the characters would do that, or why this thing works like it does when the movie has already established that it doesn't... then the movie has fucked up.

Examples:

Prometheus - Geologist dude who released geomapping dronebots gets lost
Star Trek Into Darkness - Kirk hides the Enterprise in the ocean of a world to hide it from the natives instead of just beaming down from orbit

With summer blockbusters, action movies and superhero movies, there are things you usually can "just go with" that would fall down on closer inspection (like secret identities). If the breaks in credulity interrupt one of those movies with its assumed suspension of belief, it is a really shitty movie.

[Khaldun]

I think Siskel and Ebert talked about this once--plots that require characters to act unbelievably stupidly are ok once or twice if everything else is working but they invite that questioning moment and if they don't have a way to very quickly draw you back into the action the film has lost its deflector shields.

[Ratman_tf]

I just assumed the background plot was a direct ripoff of Battle Royale and that made it fine.

 

[schild]

Why are you face-palming? Multiple people have told me not to bother reading Hunger Games if I've read Battle Royale (which I have) and that the latter is simply the better movie in every way imaginable.

[eldaec]

And just to elaborate further. We had a discussion in another thread a out how 'messing with probability' is terrible superpower. In narrative terms it is terrible because even if it made any kind of philosophical sense it is impossible to write reasonable decisions for that character. Either it is an open ended power which means the character can use it to solve any problem on a whim (so not doing so appears dumb), or it is a deus ex power with random outcomes which means your story is no longer driven by characters, but by the whim of the author.

Either outcome results in a terrible story.

[Typhon]

And just to elaborate further. We had a discussion in another thread a out how 'messing with probability' is terrible superpower. In narrative terms it is terrible because even if it made any kind of philosophical sense it is impossible to write reasonable decisions for that character. Either it is an open ended power which means the character can use it to solve any problem on a whim (so not doing so appears dumb), or it is a deus ex power with random outcomes which means your story is no longer driven by characters, but by the whim of the author.

Either outcome results in a terrible story.

Just to elaborate even further, you and Margalis agreed that it was a terrible power.  I thought you criteria was arbitrary and not backed up with solid reasoning.  I don't remember anyone else agreeing with you, but that could be selective bias on my part.  My opinion was that blaming the power and not the writers is doing it wrong.  She's a B-list character that no one cares about and everyone uses as a get out of jail free card because they can.  Lazy hacks are lazy hacks.

Suspension of disbelief begins with the type of film that is being advertised.  The audience is expected to understand the rules of the road of a particular film prior to taking their seat.  Barring any overt advertising, the audience will expect "reality".  The film will be allowed to drift from the rules of the road if it serves to surprise or entertain.

Example, Pineapple Express.  Starts as a stoner flick but drifts into comicbook action violence land.  Probably there are a lot of moments where I said, "wait, what?", but allowed it because the execution was so good.  I was too busy laughing to really give a shit that the movie had become very improbable. 

So there's my opinion, suspension of disbelief is not broken if the script stays consistent to the rules of the road for the type of film it is, or the execution of the rules-breaking is done in a way that is entertaining. Seems like it's a pretty standard way to surprise your audience by establishing rules and then breaking them.  Difference between a crap movie and a good movie is whether or not they writer/director get away with it.

Rules of the road for a science fiction move - the writer/director are going to mostly get the science wrong because it's people who like words writing the screen plays and people who like visual narrative directing them, typically neither of these people prioritize science over narrative.  The non-science-loving audience understands this and have already suspended disbelief at the point they sat in the seat (otherwise, why spend the money?).  The science-loving audience tend to be a bit more pathological and show up mentally demanding things from the movie that will not be delivered and get upset that they aren't delivered.  Mostly I avoid that trap by allowing myself to go with the flow, or just not seeing the movie.  Time-travel movies I avoid because it's a crap concept and I know that I will be mentalling rebelling the entire movie - why waste my time and money?

[eldaec]

I thought our argument was about ~science~.

Completely agree that if you stick to rules of the film you can do wacky stuff, and in a film context it isn't science that bothers me, its narrative. Science is only relevant if science is how you express the core narrative (IM1 vs IM3).

But I would also contend that it is possible to build such a bad premise that you are hamstrung from the start and have no room to challenge characters or make a good film. Superman is an obvious example.

For me genre doesn't matter. You get no bonus points for giant robots. If Toy Story can include a compelling story based on the internally consistent decision making and  character arc of an imaginary cowboy there really is no excuse for films aimed at nerds who are much more willing to put up with world building back story than a 6 year old.

[Typhon]

(sorry for two books in a row, really bored at work right now.)

I was objecting to Margalis (and yourself) claiming that 'probably manipulation was unrealistic' on two points, 1) probably manipulation (or 'reality density field' manipulation) doesn't seem at odds with current hot-topic QM theory, 2) making a witch that uses hexes in a universe where Dr Strange exists doesn't seem unrealistic to me at all.  We ended up spending more time discussing 1).

No argument on Superman, I don't like Superman either.  Example; Super ventriloquism.  Really?  Dude is fucking super strong, virtually invulnerable and you need to give him super ventriloquism?     Concept is broken, which I why I don't go to Superman flicks because I realize from the start that I won't like them.  I would be interested in 'alien on our planet, doesn't know he/she is an alien, comes with entirely different set of hind-brain level behaviors, needs to find his/her way through life with humans'.  That's an interesting concept as long as not superman.

I think genre matters a bunch.

Musicals.  I hate them.  Breaking out into song in the middle of story seems retarded.  Bollywood and a billion people disagree with me.

Giant Robot flick.  It comes with rules of the road.  The film goer should decide up front whether they are willing to accept those rules or not.  Not liking the rules of the road for a giant robot flick, going anyway, then rushing to a forum to cry about how the movie didn't meet your expectations makes you a bit broken.  I liked Pacific Rim a lot.  Was very entertained.  Got pretty much exactly what I was hoping for, but no more.  Tanker as sword bothered me not even a little even though I know the ship would break apart the moment he grabbed it.  I wondered a bit about why the Australian kid didn't eject (Marshal was dead anyway, according to the plotline), but didn't really worry too much about it because he was the 'tool that had to die', along with Ron Pearlman.  I didn't expect deep characters.  Rules of the road for this type of flick implies cartoony characters, if they exceed expectations in the characters/acting, likely you're going to see dudes in rubber suits.  There is only so much time/money to make a movie.  So, they didn't exceed my expectations, but they met my expectations.  I'd say the scientists were a bit flat, but I lay that at the actor's feet (not both, I thought that statistician did the best he could playing off of the biologist).

Toy Story.  Animation MOVIE about toys sets different expectations because of Disney.  Story must be something that a child can follow and and find entertaining.  An adult going to this movie assumes limited adult themes or complexity.  Because of Disney, there is also an adult expectation that the writer/director will attempt to weave another layer on top that will entertain adults.  Amusing references to more complex behavior or culture.  They execute very well, tell a good story, it's a good movie.  Is it better than Pacific Rim?  Yes.  Does that make Pacific Rim a bad movie?  It depends on where your bar for 'bad' is.  Due to my love of Godzilla and all things giant monster instilled in me as a child, my bar is really damn low for a giant monster flick.  For drama's, the bar is really really high because I tend to find them tedious.

[Ratman_tf]

Why are you face-palming? Multiple people have told me not to bother reading Hunger Games if I've read Battle Royale (which I have) and that the latter is simply the better movie in every way imaginable.

Dunno about the BR book, but the movies were about different things. I'm not gonna hyperbole and yell Totally Different! because it's obvious they have some strong similarities. But the central theme is very different.

Battle Royale, the film was pretty good for the first half, and then it went animu retard in the second half with the dude with the Rambo infinite bullets machine gun, and the goofy hackers subplot.

[pxib]

From the Pacific Rim thread:

That's what got me going--what elements of films get slagged as unreal or ridiculous by most viewers while other elements get a pass? Because often there are very common reactions to disparate plot elements in a film.

I tend to notice a few loose rules.

 First, if something is stupid the movie needs to take it for granted. If it calls attention to something stupid by trying to explain it or making it a major plot point, then the audience is deliberately asked to think. Big mistake. This is where the virus at the end of ID4 falls down. If it were something that happened to get the characters information, that would be one thing... but it's the solution that takes down the unstoppable big bads.

Second, the more distant the stupid is from common experience the less likely it is to be gamebreaking. Inventing a new form of fusion energy using tungsten and liquid helium is probably okay, but doing the same thing with gasoline and peanut butter is not. Similarly, it's okay for elves from Mars to have moral qualms that specifically forbid the sensible resolution to a dangerous situation, possibly even yakuza from Tokyo, but definitely not jews from Los Angeles.

Third: Quality art direction and emotional resonance will obscure almost anything. If the storytelling and cinematic craft suck, nothing is forgiven. If they're spectacular, much is. Inception got a huge pass for being balls-out ridiculous because it was so consistently beautiful, dramatic and engaging.

[Paelos]

Inception didn't really get a pass for being ridiculous. Hell, South Park dedicated an entire episode to how stupid it was.

[Ironwood]

Inception got a pass because the whole fucking film was about dreams.  And you were never sure the whole fucking film wasn't a dream itself.