Last Friday in class we discussed the typical "American plot line" that Hollywood movies follow. The main character usually starts out fortunate, then his luck goes downhill, then uphill and he ends up happier than he ever was. These types of movies supposedly leave the audience the most satisfied because the audience wants the characters to be happy and defeat the bad guy (or overcome whatever obstacle was the conflict in the story).
This weekend I watched the new Star Trek Into Darkness that just came out on DVD and I had the "American plot line" in mind while I watched it. This is where the spoiler alert applies. If you haven't seen it, don't read on. So basically, everything starts out normally and everyone is happy. Then things get ugly when this bad guy, Khan, comes into play and tries to kill everyone. So far, this seems exactly like the plot line for Hollywood movies. Then Captain Kirk dies while saving his whole crew from Khan, which threw me off a little bit because based on the American plot line, things should've ended on a good note not with the main character's death. Then, (surprise surprise) Captain Kirk gets brought back to life and the day has been saved again. I got a little bit annoyed that it becomes pretty easy to predict movies when you realize most of them follow the same plot line. Even though I was annoyed that the end was so predictable, many movie critics wrote in their reviews that they enjoyed the ending. A critic writing for The Atlantic writes that he liked the ending and it "flagged" his interest.
I think that Hollywood should start supporting more movies that don't follow the "American plot line" because I find them redundant and more predictable.
It's true, many movies follow this plot line that always, no matter what the obstacle, ends in a happy ending, by some miracle. I too wish Hollywood would start supporting a more interesting and unpredictable story line, but I could see why they may be hesitant. Americans feed off of this fairy tale ending, in which the guy and the girl end up together or the good defeats the evil. They may be thrown off when they aren't perfectly content with the situation when the credits roll. After all, the end is the most important part for the directors when making a movie, as it is the last impression the audience receives. Movies like A Walk to Remember or Casablanca, where the ending isn't necessarily that of a fairy tale, are examples of great movies that were successful without having this perfect, blissful ending. The question is, would all movies be that lucky if they chose an alternate ending instead of sticking with the norm and taking the easy way out?
ReplyDeleteAlthough it seems like a movie would be interesting that didn't follow this regular plot line, as Jacqui and Tricia suggest, I personally feel that a movie following this current plot line is destined to be a winner. For me, the movies I see that do NOT follow this traditional plot line do not leave me as satisfied as the ones that do. A movie I saw this summer called "The Spectacular Now," follows a bad boy and a good girl. The traditional hollywood plot would have showed the bad boy being changed into a good boy by the good girl. In fact, it did just the opposite. I left the movie feeling uneasy about the way the story ended up. This leads me to disagree with Jacqui and Tricia, and say that I hope hollywood continues to make movies with their classic plot-line.
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