Write or Wrong 74

Suspension of Disbelief

It's that time of year again! That's right, dear reader, it's time for the summer movie season. And with it come the staples of the season: superheroes, aliens, medieval warriors, spaceships, chaos, destruction, and guns. Big honkin' guns. Bearing this in mind, the fact that we have such larger than life characters and situations as the focus of these movies, we have to take it all with a grain of salt. It's pure escapist fiction and suspension of disbelief is key.

Now, it seems that people love action. They love to see things blown up, shredded, shattered, smashed and dented. They love their heroes bruised, bloodied, broken to tatters. But to achieve these things, you need situations far beyond those we see in real life. Why film a fender bender when you can have a twenty car pile-up on the freeway? Who needs a shootout between cops and criminals when it's possible to have space marines wage war on carnivorous zombies from another dimension? Do you get what I'm saying? These situations are ridiculous. They are just intentionally out of the realm of possibility just to get your blood pumping. And most people realize this and go with the flow. But I've noticed a disturbing trend in the way people view movies. They seem to be looking for realism!

I recently went to a showing of "The Day After Tomorrow" with my girlfriend and a couple of guy friends. We sat down, watched the trailers and readied ourselves to behold the unbridled carnage that was to ensue. SPOILER: IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE OR PLAN ON SEEING IT, SKIP THIS SECTION. The movie goes through a shoestring plot of how the worlds weather patterns are changing to such a degree that most of the northern hemisphere will soon be shrouded in a new Ice Age. Manhattan is engulfed by giant tidal waves, Los Angeles is battered by giant tornadoes, and Japan gets pelted with hail the size of footballs. As New York is turned into a block of ice, our heroes battle the frozen elements. Through freak occurrences parts of the world begin to "flash freeze". Any and all matter freezes on contact with the air, turning living things into organic ice cubes. And while this happens, the entire United States government pretty much does nothing and sits back while the chaos ensues. All of this occurs onscreen and no one says anything about how ridiculous it is or how it's not possible. Then they plot takes a turn where the main characters have to face off against a trio of wolves that have escaped from a local zoo. When this happens, both my girlfriend and my friend Mike chime in about how unrealistic and stupid the wolves are. Now these are some wonderfully rendered CG wolves that move and sound amazingly authentic. The fact that they're after the main characters, in comparison to the impending Ice Age, is now somehow seen as ridiculous. People, the world was just hit with weather that destroyed New York, Los Angeles, and Japan and rendered the northern hemisphere an arctic tundra in less than two weeks and a pack of hungry wolves stalking humans seems ridiculous?! We just saw cities get levelled by tidal waves the size of the Rhode Island and helicopters get flash frozen in mid-flight and a group of starving wild animals hunting humans is somehow stupid and unrealistic? That just boggles the mind. END SPOILER.

Now there have been some pretty outlandish plots in recent memory. Machines have taken over the planet and used humans as living duracells. Dinosaurs have been cloned and run amok in California. And robots from the future have been sent back to the present to do battle over the fate of the saviour of their future. Now tell me from those very vague descriptions that summer movie fare is just obviously in the realm of unreality. These things we see are not supposed to be real or "realistic". What they are supposed to be are fantastic, pulse-pounding situations guaranteed to have you smiling and trying to keep yourself in the seat. So next time you see a movie with some unreal cataclysm, impossible gunfight, or physics-shattering acrobatic act, remember, it's a movie. And not just any movie, a summer movie. They are just a whole other breed.