Not long ago I saw Pacific
Rim and loved it. A long time ago I saw Armageddon
and hated it. It left me wondering: why? The answer wasn’t clear to me at
first, but it did remind me of an important lesson about writing and storytelling.
Pacific Rim and Armageddon are both jumbo-sized eye
candy served up with extra heaps of action and spectacle. Anyone who knows me
won’t be one bit surprised that I loved Guillermo Del Torro’s heavy metal
creature-feature because I’m a lifelong fan of giant monster flicks—heck, I can
recite the blow-by-blow of every rubber-suited rumble Godzilla has ever thrown
down during his 60-year reign as King of Monsters. But what’s not to like about
Armageddon, Michael Bay’s 1998
disaster-stravaganza about a bunch of rough-necks who fly into space to blow up
earth-bound meteors? It’s got explosions and destruction on a grand scale, so
how come I didn’t dig it?
I used to take the high-ground and claim that it was about Armageddon’s shameless disregard for the
laws of physics. After all, this movie is actually used as a NASA
training film… to see which trainees can spot the most scientific errors (the
official count is 168 impossibilities and countless improbabilities). But, come
on, all giant monsters/robots would be subject to the square-cube law meaning
that any creature or machine of that size would collapse under its own weight. The
square-cube law may be my LEAST favorite ramification of our 3-dimensional
universe EVER, yet it is powerless to stop my willing suspension of disbelief.
It’s certainly not that either movie takes itself too
seriously. Both deliver their thrills with a smirk, most memorably with Ron
Pearlman’s performance as a swaggering profiteer in Pacific Rim and the hulking Michael Clarke Duncan crying like a
baby during high-gee stress tests in Armageddon.
Most action movies do well to keep things light, whether they’re blockbusters
like the massively entertaining Thor 2
or low-grade, goofball flicks like Sharknado.
A little bit of laughter is endearing, and it helps the audience swallow impossible
premises.
After giving this question far more thought than it probably
deserved, I reached the conclusion that my preferences were pretty much
arbitrary. I wish I had some kind of high-falutin’, intellectually justifiable
reason to prefer Pacific Rim, but the
truth is that it’s no more logical than why I prefer broccoli over cauliflower.
I like giant monsters, but I don’t especially care for blue collar astronauts. Simple
as that.
The lesson for a writer is this: know your audience. It’s
not good enough to write a genre for genre fans, because you have to know that
not all the readers in your genre go for the same thing. Your audience might
accept vampires but not zombies, or they might hunger for family drama but not courtroom
drama. You’ve just got to know.
It’s like Tom Stoppard wrote in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead: “The audience knows what
they expect and that is all they are prepared to believe.” The corollary is
that a writer needs to know one in order to provide the other.
Be good, and dream crazy dreams
Sechin Tower is a teacher, a table-top game designer, and the
author of Mad Science Institute. You
can read more about him and his books on SechinTower.com
and his games on SiegeTowerGames.com
5 comments:
This reminds me of Tom Clancy's quote - "The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense."
I'm a fan of Sleepy Hollow on Fox, Monday nights. It's like they created the plot by throwing darts on a board filled with mythologies, history, and the Bible. It's weird yet totally fun. You are so right about cutting lose without taking yourself too seriously.
I haven't watched Sleepy Hollow, but you make it sound like something I might enjoy!
I just watched Pacific Rim tonight with my family for the first time! IT WAS AMAZING. It's funny because normally I am not a fan of action movies but it held my attention the whole way through :)
@lexi I think filmmakers are getting better at including more depth to characters, even in big action movies. I guess they're finally figuring out what novelists have known all along! Of course, a healthy dash of humor doesn't hurt, either.
I haven't seen Armageddon in a long time, but I remember it being rubbish. Pacific Rim, on the other hand, was amazing. Sure, you have to throw a fair amount of common sense out the window, but to me it was an example of pure, fun, escapism.
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