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Aug. 14th, 2013 12:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThis is a post about action movies.
So last week I saw Red 2, which was a perfectly enjoyable movie as action movies go; I mean, I'm never going to complain about watching Helen Mirren saunter around being THE MOST fabulous spy because that is basically candy for my brain and eyes.
But I did spend a lot of that movie thinking: "Gosh, there are a lot of random people killed in this movie. Like, a LOT of dead people that nobody cares about, and that we, the audience are not really expected to care about. Like, wow, A LOT A LOT."
I had a conversation about this with my friends afterwards, and their consensus was pretty much, "Well, yes, and not that it's not a problem, but that's the genre; that's what action movies DO, they generate a lot of bodies for the factor of cool."
And I feel like this isn't necessarily true, but I also haven't seen enough pure action movies to generate a ton of counter-examples. The best one I can think of is a bit from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which is not an action movie but a television show, and one that in many ways is subverting a lot of the tropes of the genre it grows out of. So in T:SCC there is an episode in which Catherine Weaver, Badass Terminator, basically just wanders through a building killing everyone in sight with her shiny metal Terminator arms. It's a very, very action-tastic sequence, and it is, let's be real, a pretty cool sequence. And then comes the next episode: as the director says, "if you enjoy watching Weaver slaughter thirty people in one episode you're obligated to go to their funeral in the next."
So that's stuck with me. And I sort of feel that's more how things should be; that the death even of a bunch of extras is something that one ought to care about, at least a little.
Anyway, I've been thinking about it and now I'm tossing the question back out to you guys: what do you think? Is a high body count and a low consequence factor just inherently part and parcel of the action movie experience? Is it something that bothers you, or depending on circumstance, or not at all?
So last week I saw Red 2, which was a perfectly enjoyable movie as action movies go; I mean, I'm never going to complain about watching Helen Mirren saunter around being THE MOST fabulous spy because that is basically candy for my brain and eyes.
But I did spend a lot of that movie thinking: "Gosh, there are a lot of random people killed in this movie. Like, a LOT of dead people that nobody cares about, and that we, the audience are not really expected to care about. Like, wow, A LOT A LOT."
I had a conversation about this with my friends afterwards, and their consensus was pretty much, "Well, yes, and not that it's not a problem, but that's the genre; that's what action movies DO, they generate a lot of bodies for the factor of cool."
And I feel like this isn't necessarily true, but I also haven't seen enough pure action movies to generate a ton of counter-examples. The best one I can think of is a bit from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which is not an action movie but a television show, and one that in many ways is subverting a lot of the tropes of the genre it grows out of. So in T:SCC there is an episode in which Catherine Weaver, Badass Terminator, basically just wanders through a building killing everyone in sight with her shiny metal Terminator arms. It's a very, very action-tastic sequence, and it is, let's be real, a pretty cool sequence. And then comes the next episode: as the director says, "if you enjoy watching Weaver slaughter thirty people in one episode you're obligated to go to their funeral in the next."
So that's stuck with me. And I sort of feel that's more how things should be; that the death even of a bunch of extras is something that one ought to care about, at least a little.
Anyway, I've been thinking about it and now I'm tossing the question back out to you guys: what do you think? Is a high body count and a low consequence factor just inherently part and parcel of the action movie experience? Is it something that bothers you, or depending on circumstance, or not at all?
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Date: 2013-08-14 04:35 pm (UTC)I'm trying to remember if X2 is a film that addresses this, actually -- you know that scene where the team appears in the Oval Office? Would that count, sort of?
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Date: 2013-08-14 04:40 pm (UTC)Though as you say, bother me as much in Avengers, even though it was really distressing to see New York torn apart - partly just because of the long-term continuity -- like, in Iron Man 3, it's very clear that "what happened in New York" is a BIG THING that affected everyone in the country. Lots of people died, and it did matter. And I expect it's going to matter in Avengers 2 as well, or at least I sincerely hope it will.
I'm trying to remember now also! The problem is I remember almost nothing about X2 except that the kid from Animorphs was in it. >.>
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Date: 2013-08-14 05:03 pm (UTC)But generally, no, I don't think enough respect is shown to the people who die along the way. Not even in crime procedurals, in which the very premise to discover who the victim is and bring the killer to justice: by definition, the victims have names and stories and their deaths are defined as unjust. And it is so very much worse in the action genre, where they don't get that much dignity.
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Date: 2013-08-14 05:04 pm (UTC)I liked how the Avengers handled it, just like you said. There was a clear effort to contain the attack, and while they didn't SHOW everyone biting it onscreen (would have raised the rating) there were clear repercussions.
Then you've got movies that mow down innocent bystanders and never mention it again. Usually disaster movies or more cliche action flicks. It's either a sweeping statement, or just there to look cool. That always seems a little weird and off to me.
That's why I enjoy stuff like Person of Interest, where each episode is dedicated to saving or stopping someone who would be a dead extra in any normal action movie. And they always feel it deeply when they fail.
TLDR: If it's war or antagonists I don't have as much of an issue with it. But people dying in front of you tends to have an effect, in real life. It should in movies too, at least a little.
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Date: 2013-08-14 05:08 pm (UTC)I also get really frustrated at mystery novels where the serial killer kills like ten people before the crime is solved so that the plot can have more action. NO! You guys should be doing better than that!
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Date: 2013-08-14 05:10 pm (UTC)I love action movies. LOVE THEM. I adored Red and I adore Red 2 not as much but a lot (Byung-hun Lee got to speak his own english lines FINALLY and he was awesome and I know what I want for yuuuuuletiiiiiide). Action movies are my favorite movies, and I have many specific "comfort" favorites that, while I do turn on Persuasion when I need a romance pick up, most of the time, I turn on Aliens.
My answer is YES, I think there should be consequences for all the murdering of the extras. More consequences equal better movie. Studios say NO because audiences are dumb and need TENTPOLES with HAPPY MAKING EXPLOSIONS that do not talk about death because that makes people sad and not buy stuff. This is a stupid argument, like many Hollywood studio arguments. And Hollywood is the place where action movies are made, not so much with indies, because you need money to blow shit up prettily (and safely).
I think this is why my faaaaaavorite action movies are the ones from the 70s and 80s, when directors and producers had more leeway to address issues. Like, your Terminator example. After the events in Terminator, Sarah Connor is in A LOT of trouble because it is considered she did many of the murdered done by the Terminator, and she keeps crazy talking about robots. It deals with those consequences of killing ALL THE PEOPLE and makes it into a plot point with character development. The ending is also effected: she and John can't live on the grid because of all the things they did to save the world now.
Die Hard, the first in the series and considered one of the (if not THE) greatest action movies of all time, has a lot of consequences for every bad guy that John McClane kills. Hostages are killed for many of the bad guys he takes out, bad guys make person vendettas for murdered friends/family. He gets pretty fucked in a way that isn't magicked away from scene to scene. In later movies, McClane has been pretty brow beat by all the things that have happened to him, and his career has been stalled or lost because of all the damage he does EVERY FUCKING MOVIE. I can't say this for all of them because I kind of hated the Live Free one and have not seen the latest Russian installment. Die Hard 3 is ALL ABOUT the consequences from the first and second film, and the main plot point revolves around the police force trying to save massive amount of life and that makes them miss a giant bank robbery. (Not a great film, but a super entertaining movie with Samuel L).
I agree with you on Avengers! Part of the reason I could deal with a lot of the action-movie explosion sequences in a way that wasn't just popcorn chomping is because it had the heroes dealing with trying to save every day people, the consequences of an alien invasion.
A tv series that I really liked recently was The Fall, a BBC drama about a serial killer with a female cop as the lead. It was about a serial killer in a... very realistic and unporntastic (the serial killer is not fetishised as AWESOME), but it also showed a lot of the "extra" death that comes these sorts of situations. There was no ignorance of what happened to so-and-so, it was part of the plot.
I think a lot of why Hollywood movies DON'T do this their view of time. You, the audience member, are only "willing" to give up so much time to a movie, is how the argument goes. And if the movie took time to deal with every death, you won't have time for origin story and other plot. Which I think is why you see these consequences in serial movies or tv series more than anywhere else. Whatever to the whole argument, but that's what happens.
And then I babbled and it was only kind of about your question. HITTING ENTER NOW.
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Date: 2013-08-14 05:13 pm (UTC)There's also a level of "bad guys kill people because that makes them bad," and then there's the next level of "the 'good guys' don't actually care about who all they're taking out either," and the first bothers me but the second even moreso. Like, I always feel bad for the random bodyguards and functionaries and so forth. Just doing their job! But then, I was also the kid who complained that all those poor Stormtroopers were probably just conscripts from planets in the Empire the first time I saw Star Wars too, so. (We didn't know they were clones then! Although the point still stands. POOR CLONES.)
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Date: 2013-08-14 05:17 pm (UTC)Huh, I hadn't thought about there being more leeway in the 70s and 80s, but I think you're right -- to a certain extent they do seem to deal with that more in the older stuff. Like, that is one of the thing I actually remember really enjoying about Die Hard! A lot of people die, but it does matter to the people who are still alive. Bad guys dying matters too, which is one of the things that often bothers me in modern action movies -- when the definition of "bad guy" becomes so broad that our heroes can get away with killing tons of people with no consequences whatsoever. Just because someone is an asshole doesn't mean it doesn't matter when they die!
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Date: 2013-08-14 05:22 pm (UTC)I feel like the number of "extra deaths" is part of this whole blockbuster escalation mentality where you must always be RAISING THE STAKES but then it also has to be funtimes popcorn movie so the Hollywood move is now "kill off bunches of faceless extras because LOOK HOW GRIMDARK (another FUN TREND) and SRS this movie is but don't show the actual impact of their deaths as anything other than brief moment of hero manpain because this movie is also supposed to be fun enough to get multiple viewings and DVD purchases."
And, I mean, you can't have it both super fun and super srs bsnss without it getting ridiculous or the movie failing to succeed on either the fun level (because seriously, SO MANY DEATHS) or the invested serious level (because there's no impact to the deaths, except to make the heroes look like dicks or self-involved angst junkies (BATMAN)), so I think that's the conundrum we're at now. I like that Avengers seems to be balancing it! I hope more movies do the same.
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Date: 2013-08-14 05:28 pm (UTC)I was reading The Mary Sue recent and a much of my other favorite industry blogs, and there is this big push because you can't make as many movies these days due to economic reasons to make the same fucking movie over and over again. Same formula, same idea, because you know that made money, so it will make it again.
So this evolution of "we don't have TIME to DEAL WITH THAT to get to XYZ plot point as required", and then you kill more people because that's what you do.
The whole conversation with Kick Ass 2 is that it is SO BLOODY and jarring how it goes from "you should feel bad this person died" to "this person's death is meaningless" from body to body. I was thinking of seeing the movie because I really like HitGirl, but after reading more about, nope. No money for that movie!
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Date: 2013-08-14 05:33 pm (UTC)Heather has a good point too though that it's a lot easier to balance it if you've got an extended continuity like in TV shows or miniseries, which is sort of the place Avengers is at now with their FIVE BILLION INTEGRATED MOVIES. So I wonder if maybe it's harder for individual movies to deal with that than Avengers can with the knowledge that it's going to get a sequel for people to wander around going "oh yes, the rebuilding of New York, that's a serious thing!"
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Date: 2013-08-14 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-14 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-14 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-14 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-14 07:16 pm (UTC)I also read somewhere that current action movies actually show a lot more onscreen damage WITHOUT the resulting bodies to keep the movie PG13, though I can't cite a source. It's this weird combination of trying to show the least consequences possible while still upping the amount of things destroyed.
One of the things I remember from Terminator 2 is John's insistence that T-800 doesn't kill people. It definitely stretches suspension of disbelief (me: what about internal wounds? what if they get a concussion and then die later in the hospital??), but I liked that it at least acknowledged the issue and tried to show the good guys avoiding casualties.
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Date: 2013-08-14 07:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-14 07:39 pm (UTC)I didn't remember that at all about Terminator 2, but I am really glad to hear it! While the Batman-style no-kill rule can totally get ridiculous, I am more and more starting to prefer that to the alternative . . .
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Date: 2013-08-14 08:04 pm (UTC)I did see Pacific Rim recently though and there was a great shot where a building was being destroyed in Hong Kong and the camera followed the destruction into the building, through empty office spaces so we could see that no people were inside. Even though an evacuation that thorough in HK of all places seemed wildly improbable it was still a huge relief and allowed me to enjoy the show much, much more.
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Date: 2013-08-14 08:40 pm (UTC)Like, the trend seems to be that as long as our heroes don't directly kill anyone, we can continue to consider them heroes, but that's maddeningly hairsplitting when it's heroes like Batman and Superman, who are pretty much our modern mythology's icons of No Killing Allowed.
You know someone's a villain when they kill with specificity and care -- they murder. You know someone's a hero when they kill via negligence.
See also: American foreign policy? . . .
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Date: 2013-08-14 09:49 pm (UTC)(It's also one reason why I think they should have kept the waitress flirting with Steve scene - it helps ground down the resulting battle, because we've already seen some of the normal people doing their normal thing, and now they are being shot at.)
But my patience is worn very, very, very thin for a lot of other action movies. Because, yes, I think there should be consequences generally. An actual cost, beyond Grimdrak Lots Of Bodies Lol (uggggh). And same for what people have said about crime procedurals, too - often the deaths are a set-up for Shiny Cool rather than Actually Finding Justice. And a lot of movies aren't an army, like Avengers, but just a small group of people, so the deaths are There To Be Cool? Or grimdark. Or a combination thereof, which doesn't work.
It's partly why I love Pacific Rim so much - they showed the empty buildings. And they also showed young Mako's utter terror, and how it's still with her - both consequences, and trying to contain the damage.
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Date: 2013-08-14 11:07 pm (UTC)For an interesting example, I ended up seeing both of the "they've taken the White House!" movies that came out this year, and despite having basically the same premise, there was a vast difference in how they felt on that front. Olympus Has Fallen seemed to kill practically everybody and was definitely over my line, while White House Down (which I also liked a lot better for many other reasons) had vastly fewer gratuitous deaths, and I think was a better movie for it.
I'm also struck by the points about destroying skyscrapers that other people are making, because I do think I flinch at those more than filmmakers expect or intend me to. Both because it's hard to believe they'd be empty, and because I assume they're going to fall even if the movie just shows the initial damage.
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Date: 2013-08-15 12:01 am (UTC)I am also of this impression! And even when they show bodies, they tend not to show bloody or mangled ones to keep the rating. And I am of two minds about this. I don't like seeing maimed and mutilated and dead bodies, but I also feel like it contributes to people underestimating the actual damage violence does.
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Date: 2013-08-15 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-15 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-15 05:55 am (UTC)One thing I remember about the first Iron Man was how the collateral damage was handled. Jon Favreau, as a director, chose to show people scrambling/being helped off a city bus BEFORE it got demolished. Someone like Bay would never waste time with that. To me, it's a bit of reassurance when I see extras making it to safety.
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Date: 2013-08-15 07:35 am (UTC)I have the same issue with serial killer novels, especially if the serial killer kills all their victims (in increasingly gory detail) apart from the plucky protagonist. Jeffrey Deaver's The Bone Collector is one of the few where this doesn't happen - the victims are put in situations of imminent danger, but if the protagonists can solve the clues (or if the victims save themselves) they do get to live. Having the occasional victim survive actually increases the tension for me, because it is so unusual that it makes me think that the ending is less certain.
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Date: 2013-08-15 10:06 am (UTC)I thought she'd turn out to be Someone Of Interest in a later movie; the little flirting scene included would have made a whole bunch more sense of Why We Are Following This Waitress Around.
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Date: 2013-08-15 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-15 12:55 pm (UTC)Also, wow, that last is . . . kind of a hell of a really good point.
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Date: 2013-08-15 12:58 pm (UTC)When we came out of Pacific Rim, my friends were like, "but where was everyone else in the city during Mako's flashback?" and I said "well, either she was accidentally left behind during an evacuation, or we're seeing her personal perception of being REALLY ALONE." Either of which is plausible, but I think that flashback is super important to the film, overall.
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Date: 2013-08-15 01:00 pm (UTC)But yeah, word, on all the destruction of major city buildings -- and maybe this comes from living in a city, and having a constant sense of how much damage it really does. Skyscrapers are REALLY NOT THAT DURABLE. And a LOT of people use those things!
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Date: 2013-08-15 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-15 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-15 01:03 pm (UTC)I also find that reassuring! And even though the airplane sequence in IM3 was kind of ridiculous, I really loved it -- both because of extras making it to safety, and because it wasn't just about superheroes saving the extras, but extras having agency in saving each other.
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Date: 2013-08-15 01:04 pm (UTC)AND AGREED. Which is why I don't read a lot of serial killer novels.
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Date: 2013-08-15 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-15 02:10 pm (UTC)But it's great when the movies remember these things! One of my favourite moments in Iron Man 3 was totally the mook who threw down his gun - "THIS JOB SUCKS AND I'M LEAVING." I feel you, dude, being a mook must be a TERRIBLE JOB. XD And Pacific Rim did at least have a small subplot that shows what it's like to be a panicking civilian in the middle of a kaiju attack, not just the Big Damn Hero in the giant robot.
Also, this made me realise that The Green Hornet, despite being totally ridiculous, actually kind of subverts this. The climatic action scene happens in the newspaper offices that the hero OWNS so while the offices are being totalled, at least some of the civilians you see freaking out are familiar faces who've been in the background all movie. The hero WORKED with these people. (And then, after the movie, presumably has to pay to fix his OWN BUILDING, which serves him right)
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Date: 2013-08-15 07:46 pm (UTC)I wonder if the skyscraper reaction is also a 9/11 thing? Like, the Chitauri whale-ship wings the skyscrapers in Avengers and I expect them to kind of implode and fall, because that's my real-world visual reference for what happens when something hits a skyscraper. It would actually be really interesting to look at what kind of city-destruction happens in movies and whether it's changed over time or between genres or stuff like that. Thought-provoking!
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Date: 2013-08-15 09:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-15 09:55 pm (UTC)It really, really, really is, I think. And yeah, I always thought it was her personal perception of it - they are in her head, not Actually Seeing Factual Events. I thought how Pentecost arrived really highlighted that, with way too much detail than she'd actually see from down below.
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Date: 2013-08-15 09:57 pm (UTC)...which really makes me want to fic about her, now. Oops.
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Date: 2013-08-16 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-16 12:49 pm (UTC)Hah, yeah, I loved that mook too. POOR MOOK. Also, wow, I would never have actually expected that from the Green Hornet! Now I'm almost curious to see the movie. (MORE HEROES SHOULD HAVE TO PAY FOR FIXING THE PROPERTY DAMAGE.)
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Date: 2013-08-16 12:52 pm (UTC)It's interesting, I feel like there was a time right after 9/11 when tearing down skyscrapers in action movies was Too Close and Not Okay, and now suddenly we're tearing them down bigger and boomier than ever.
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Date: 2013-08-16 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-17 09:48 am (UTC)I might be biased because it did have Jay Chou, but I recall The Green Hornet being this strange mixture of INCREDIBLY DUMB and yet SURPRISINGLY SMART. The Big Reveal Scene alone was already worth the price of admission. XD Talking about this is making me kind of want to re-watch it, just to see how the rest of the movie fares.
(They TOTALLY SHOULD, yeah Batman, I'm looking at you. I guess the bright side with the Iron Man movies is you can probably assume Tony is footing the bill for most of the property damage, since the bulk of it happens to HIS PROPERTY...?)