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In the final part of a series on film appreciation leading up to the Dubai International Film Festival, we look at what makes movies good or awful. Kim Bigelow of the American University of Sharjah, shares five key factors that affect the success of films So, you're just walking out of the movie theatre and your first response is, "Well, at least the popcorn was good!" You've spent Dh60 for two movie tickets, bought popcorn and a soft drink and are not sure who you should blame for wasting your time and money.
Yet at another film, you might walk out of the theatre and say, "Wow, what a great movie!" So what's the difference? It's easy to say that a movie was good or bad, but what criteria can help us talk constructively about why it was so? Unfortunately, talking about what makes a great film has the same inherent problems as talking about what makes a novel, a painting or a composition great. Academics have made careers out of such discussions. The other difficulty is talking about a film without talking about dialogue, performance, lighting, camera angles and editing. Turning the script into the final film is what audiences care about and more than one bad script has been saved by on-set rewriting by the director, while many good scripts have been ruined by a heavy-handed director. Let us consider two films with a similar storyline and characters and see if we can determine why the end result of one film worked so well when the other did not. Dan O'Bannon wrote the screenplay to the science fiction classic Alien. He and Ronald Schusett also wrote the story to Alien vs Predator with the screenplay and direction by Paul W. S. Anderson. Here are some reviews of both films by respected film critics: (About Alien vs Predator) "It's a murky, empty-headed dive into the depths of the Antarctic and the heart of monster movie cliches that leaves you praying for most of the cast to get killed off fast, to put them (and us) out of our misery."
- Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune (About Alien vs Predator) "? anything that starts off this badly is doomed ? that's it. Just doomed."
- Sarah Chauncey, Reel.com (About Alien) "The way [Ridley] Scott meticulously raises the sense of menace and tension is worthy of Hitchcock."
- James Berardinelli, Reelviews (About Alien) "One classy and cerebral horror movie"
- Lou Lumenick, New York Post
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Now it is easy to pick and choose critics, but it would be fair to say that Ridley Scott's Alien is a sci-fi classic, while Alien vs Predator will be consigned to the dustbin of history. Both films have fabulous special effects, solid music and sound effects. The story formula for both Alien and Alien vs Predator is the familiar horror problem of heroes being trapped in a closed system and facing the problem of surviving the monster(s) and escaping the trap. In Alien, the closed system is the spaceship, Nostromo. In Alien vs Predator, it is being locked into the combination Mayan/Egyptian pyramid where the hunting game between aliens and predators is played out. This 'trapped with the monster' story concept has been used many times before. Whether audience members engage with this depends on them identifying with the characters, tone, suspense and style of the film, culminating in the logical and hopefully surprise-filled resolution of the action. One premise is that a good movie starts with a good story and script, a great movie starts with a great story and script and a bad movie ? well, you get the idea. Dan O'Bannon's script for Alien, which was directed by Ridley Scott, was considered fresh, original and scary, whereas the screenplay of Alien vs Predator was generally thought to be dull and predictable. But given that a film revolves around a great story, what elements make for a great story? And are there other elements that affect the success, or failure, of a film? 1. Emotional involvement
The most important thing a screenwriter and director must do is to get the audience emotionally involved in the premise of the film's story. The key here is sympathetic identification ? to make the viewer forget he is sitting in a theatre, and make him think he is somehow part of the situation, observing real characters trying to solve very real problems. In the 1979 film Alien, the job of scriptwriter Dan O'Bannon and director Ridley Scott was to get the audience to ask the question: "If an alien creature's offspring gestates in the human body before exploding out of someone's chest, has acid for blood, cannot be negotiated with, is virtually indestructible and homicidally aggressive and if I were trapped in a spaceship with such
a creature, what would I do?" If viewers are 'caught up' in the film, they may feel they are getting important survival information. The engaged viewer focuses on how the characters solve the threat of the alien because they may need that information should they find themselves in a similar situation (as unlikely as that may seem). This emotional involvement works best when viewers are so caught up in the story, they forget they are watching a film. 2. Playing by the rules
The second major factor affecting the success of a feature film I call ?playing by the rules'. This means that providing the director has created an imaginary world filled with imaginary characters, he or she is required to be consistent with how the characters and situation play out the story. Sometimes these 'rules' are just common sense. For instance, if one of the rules for the story is 'aliens have acid for blood' and if the alien's blood splatters on the hero, then the hero must get burnt. If the hero magically does not get burnt, then the film is not playing fair. This results in audience disengagement and usually makes people very angry. In the 2004 film Alien vs Predator, Paul W. S. Anderson violates the audience's basic commonsense by having the heroine, Alexa Woods, tell corporate president Charles Bishop Weyland and the rest of the team that it is stupid to go into an unknown, potentially dangerous situation in the Arctic without proper equipment, training or preparation. Woods indicates she won't lead a team on such an ill-prepared mission. Immediately afterwards, everyone, including Woods, ignores this sensible advice and proceed blithely into a trap. The audience can only assume these characters are extraordinarily stupid and deserve whatever happens to them. Anderson also breaks the basic alien character rule by having his alien creatures gestate and turn into full-sized monsters in a matter of minutes. The O'Bannon/Ridley Scott rules for alien growth rate is that after the alien jumps out of its cocoon and attaches itself to a human, it takes about a day of gestation before bursting out of the chest of the victim. The baby alien then takes about one more day to grow to its full size. Anderson's aliens go through the growth process so quickly that it violates the audience's basic understanding of how the aliens operate. Again, the audience may feel the director is "not playing fair". 3. Believable characters
The third major challenge facing the scriptwriter is believable character motivation and interaction. One of the elements of believable characters is their recognition factor. In real life we meet all kinds of characters, from unreasonable officials to rude waitresses to kindly grandfathers. One of the great truths of people we meet is that they all have flaws. We know there is no such thing as someone who is completely good or completely bad. If the characters in a movie are simplistic, comic book stereotypes of hero, villain and heroine, the audience has only general character types to empathise with. An audience likes personalities it can recognise. It is the scriptwriter's job to create characters with depth, with layers of motivation and behaviours that help viewers more easily accept the reality of the film situation they are watching. In Alien, Sigourney Weaver's character, Ripley, is a capable if untested lieutenant. The captain, Dallas, is a highly competent professional. The science officer, Ash, is seen as having a friendly exterior, but a completely cold-blooded interior ? characteristics that become understandable when it is revealed Ash is an android, one that is programmed to sacrifice the crew in order to save the militarily valuable alien creature. Then there are the two unhappy, griping union workers, Brett and Parker, wonderfully played by Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto. The characters in Alien are multi-dimensional and interact with each other and the alien monster in believable ways. In Alien vs Predator, only Charles Bishop Weyland, president of the Weyland Yutani Corporation, has any identifiable character flaw, that being some form of asthma, a weakness which guarantees his being caught and killed by the aliens. Everyone else, even the ?nerd' characters, are wonderful human beings who love their families and are just trying to do their best. The characters in Anderson's film have all the depth of a sheet of cardboard. They are not recognisable as ?real' people because they are basically perfect, without any identifiable human flaws. And if characters are too perfect, then they are less like the rest of us. 4. The inner bad guy
One of the most important elements in a film is the character of the villain, monster, or whoever takes the form of the story antagonist. It has often been said that one can talk about a good person for five minutes, but can talk about a bad person all day. In many ways, an audience engages in a story not because of the nobility of the hero, but by identifying with the needs and goals of the villain. In each of us there is the hidden desire to have control over others, to do whatever we want when we want, to take whatever interests us at the moment. These child-like desires, over time, are replaced by socially correct attitudes. Yet, as much as we understand how we should behave in a socially responsible manner, lurking near the surface are desires to throw aside these responsibilities and duties. We often envy the villain or hero because he often acts the way we wish we could. For example, the monster in Alien seems to act without any restrictions. The viewer understands why monsters of villains must be brought under control, but his understanding of the villain's or monster's behaviour allows him to secretly cheer for their success. In Alien, Ash says to Ripley: "You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? It's the perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility." Ash has been programmed by a corporation to preserve the monster, even if it means sacrificing the crew. This refers to a corporate hostility at least equal to the alien. This creates a multiplicity of villains the audience relates to with a kind of love-hate ambivalence. Isn't it awful that they are acting that way and wouldn't it be fun to have that freedom? It is this very ambivalence which helps engage the audience. 5. Sequels
Finally, when deciding whether a film is worth watching, one word of warning is necessary: never go to a sequel! Sure, the sequels to Indiana Jones, The Godfather and even James Cameron's Aliens were well received, but they are the rare exceptions. The history of film sequels is a history of implausible storylines carried by dimensionless characters. The Bela Lugosi Dracula films eventually deteriorated into such goofs as Abbott and Costello meet Dracula. Then there are Blair Witch 2, Grease 2, Speed 2 and other poor sequels. And when a particular sequel franchise begins teaming up monsters such as the excrecrable King Kong meets Godzilla or Alien vs Predator, the audience can take solace in the knowledge that it is unlikely that any more such horrors will be made.
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