Here is something I wrote last summer that pretty much sums up how I feel on this topic.
SUNDAY, JUNE 1, 2008
Implausibility vs. Impossibility in the Movies
Amy and I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull last night. It was good, but not great. I never thought I'd say this about an Indiana Jones movie, but there were some parts of it that were downright slow. I kept saying to myself, "OK, the big action sequence that you've been waiting for is right around the corner," but that corner never arrived. I thought the movie was cool from the standpoint of continuing (and tying up some loose ends about) the Indiana Jones story, but from the standpoint of an action movie I've seen much better. Heck, people pan the bejeezus out of Temple of Doom, but I think it blows away Crystal Skull despite its fair share of near-impossible exploits on the part of Dr. Jones.
Which brings me to the point of this entry. It occurred to me last night that in order for me to fully enjoy any reality-based action movie (and by "reality-based" I mean something set on earth, with humans being subject to earthly physics...no superhero movies or sci-fi stuff), I require the actions performed by characters to be implausible at the most. Impossible just doesn't cut it.
Temple of Doom has a great illustration of my theory. There's a point early in the movie when Indy and Short Round get ejected out of a mountain while riding in a dinghy, and survive a fall down a several-hundred-foot waterfall to the lake below. What makes this ridiculous is that no human could ever survive such a plunge. Yes, I realize that I'm watching an Indiana Jones movie, but I simply cannot suspend my disbelief in the face of such an absolutely impossible feat. I mean, it's impossible. IMPOSSIBLE. It would be like having a character fall off of a 100-storey building, and then get up and dust himself off hardly the worse for wear. You never see that because it'd be ridiculous, right? But somehow when a character's falling into water, it's suddenly possible. Amazing.
My biggest issue with Crystal Skull is that it contains not just one, but several of these moments. Stuff that makes you groan and say, "As if!". It's almost as if the screenwriters read back the scene and then say to themselves, "That's physically impossible, but our audience won't care! They just want to be entertained!" Well guess what guys, some of us actually like some cleverness injected into the stunts we see on celluloid. I'll suspend my disbelief if you extend your imagination, OK? Deal.