Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures
Movies Are an Escape From Reality
If you squint hard enough, you can find a flaw in just about anything. But…why? It’s okay to turn your brain off for an hour and a half. Yes, you are paying good money to go see a film, but it comes with the territory of a fictional piece of art, not real life, that you are watching up on the big screen. Not everything has to make perfect sense for a story to entertain, and we seem to be forgetting that more and more with each passing year. Soon, a “good movie” may not even exist with the way our insane standards are heading. Enjoy yourself and let go. That’s why you’re there.
Over Before It Begins
Driving the Story
The film Prometheus would be a prime example of WAY TOO MUCH criticism. The movie was torn to shreds by its critics, and a shining example of one of the many “flaws” people had to point out involved a scientist and an worm-like creature that eventually goes berserk on him. Everything from his sudden change in disposition to why he would go anywhere near this thing was critiqued, yet it needed to go down in order to move things along and show that disaster was imminent. How else were we supposed to know just how nuts this planet could be? Sometimes, logic needs to be thrown out the window in order to keep things going, or for future scenes to even take place. Yet, no one seemed willing to give this visually stunning sci-fi film the benefit of the doubt, and it’s become the case with almost all new films.
The Devil is In the Details
Ignore It, You Might Like It
The Internet Isn’t Helping
One thing you’ve probably noticed when filmmakers (particularly of new films with mixed reviews) are interviewed is that they tend to steer clear of what people are saying online. Can you blame them? Internet message boards anymore are a joke. What starts as intelligent conversation almost always ends with petty bickering about the most minute details and name calling. Forget that plot holes can actually drive a story for the better (and all the other previous points made), if it doesn’t make 100 percent sense or has to be individually interpreted in any way, it’s stupid and the guy who liked it is wrong for thinking otherwise. And let’s not even get started on websites like Red Letter Media and How It Should Have Ended, which, while funny, only encourage unnecessary hair splitting all the more.
Where Do We Draw the Line?
The bottom line is, plot holes are necessary and can make films more enjoyable. There are plenty of great movies that wouldn’t even exist without them. If you are walking into a science fiction or action flick especially, you should be along for the ride, not critiquing every second of it. Yes, a good movie should make you think, but every movie (except some documentaries, perhaps) should be an escape from reality. It’s perfectly okay to have standards, just don’t let those standards get the better of you to a point where you consider everything you watch garbage. You’re bound to see a stinker every now and then — just make sure you personally aren’t the cause of it.
