Forget compelling characters, forget unexpected twists or stirring events, forget any sort of logic. The underlying belief in Hollywood is “it doesn’t have to make sense if it looks really, really cool.” This credo might make a movie more exciting, the same way that scalding temperatures can make bad coffee drinkable, but ticket prices are much too high to settle for anything less than great, especially if I buy the big bucket of popcorn.
My disbelief is a tricky thing. Usually I’ve already suspended it pretty high before I even enter the theater — why go in the first place if not to be surprised, thrilled, and entertained. But some things are just too tough and spiky to swallow.
I’m ready to believe in a blind superhero with impossible martial arts abilities, but not in one that can plummet 30 stories and bounce off a fire escape without cramming his boots up between his ears (“Daredevil”).
I can deal with a mercenary archeologist who displays Olympic-level talent in anything at all she encounters while still remaining fresh and perfectly coifed, but not in one that easily lures and punches an attacking shark as an escape route or who talks about “the discovery of the pyramids.” (“Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life”). They were lost? Did some 10th century Egyptian look out his window one morning and go, “Whoa! What are those?”
I’m not talking about disappearing cigarettes, or contrails in the skies of medieval fight scenes, or visible stagehands in window reflections, or inaccurate product labels in period films, or the other minor errors that plague every movie. I don’t care about magical makeup that’s impervious to everything up to and including hurricanes and mud wrestling. I don’t even care that none of the many, many smashed late-model cars in “Bad Boys II” had working air bags. I mean the kind of “oh, come on!” things that call attention to themselves and kick me out of the fantasy.
I mean things like wondering why Tim Burton’s “Batman,” supposedly the world’s greatest martial artist, would step outside the Batcave wearing a costume that completely prevented his head from turning. Movie magic is one thing, but we’re not idiots.
His Batman was, apparently, since his sophisticated and highly maneuverable jet plane could be brought down by a handgun.
The classic movie “Citizen Kane” revolves on Charles Foster Kane’s dying word, “Rosebud.” He died alone, didn’t he? So how did anyone know what he said?
When Chris Reeves turns back time to save Margot Kidder in “Superman,” does that mean that the town he saved from flooding the first time around is now wiped out?
In “Matrix: Reloaded,” why was Neo, provably capable of taking on a hundred Smiths and rewriting reality itself, stymied by four fighters long enough to allow the little key guy to get away? Was it because they had pointy things?
There may be issues cleared up in the upcoming Star Wars movie, but so far I’m forced to believe that Darth Vader is a moron. He doesn’t recognize the droid he built as a child when he encounters it again, or the planet he was born on when he chases the rebels there, or his Force-laden daughter when he interrogates her? Of course, this is the same guy who took ten years to remember his mom was still a slave. Maybe he’s an A.D.D. Jedi. “Join me, and together we will rule the… oh look, a bird!”
Would Jeff Goldblum still have been able to upload his virus if the marauding alien race in “Independence Day” had been using Linux instead of Windows? Or were the aliens too stunned that a bunch of RV tourists with a half-hour’s training could fly fighter jets better than the professional Air Force pilots did in the first attack?
I don’t know what precise reaction the James Bond people were thinking when they created the “surfing on a door between ice floes” scene in “Die Another Day,” but it probably wasn’t what I heard in the theater, which was explosive laughter. Much like the laughter heard during the ridiculous motorcycle firefight in “MI2” or the. . . well, all of “Charlie’s Angels 2,” really. Or didn’t anyone else wonder why a bleak Mongolian military base had a mechanical bull?
Filmmakers, a little help, please? We’re waiting to be dazzled, with our money at hand. Just try not to insult us too much, OK?