Guilty Pleasures – Part I
OK – I admit it: I love B-movies!
The kind that takes you on a ride to the edge of your seat and back, all the while you just keep them popcorn commin’.
It’s a pure and simple love of the pleasure of great storytelling – the script can be outright ridiculous (and often it is), but if it’s told the right way? Boy, it doesn’t come any better! The downside, however, is that you often get disapointed. They just don’t make crappy films the way they used to anymore.
But still, certain rules apply:
1) Within it’s own world, some kind of logic has to be present
2) You have to relate in someway to the character no matter what
3) There is a continous drive forward
4) If you introduce an object, an element, a characteristic in the beginning of a story, you use it again later.
A guy I really love to hate, is giant disaster film maker Roland Emmerich. He’s a guy, who’s incredibly good at destroying stuff, but when it comes down to telling the story of what comes next, I usually feel a strong urge to leave my seat. Case in point: “2012“.
Brief recap: Ancient maya wisdom tells us the world is coming to an end on december 21st 2012. All over the world strange signs appear and in LA an estranged husband tries to keep a relationship with his family.
Guess what? The mayas where right. The world comes to an end. Whole continents crumble and disappear in roaring mega tsunamies and earthquakes like you’ve never seen them before. But then what?
Apparently the noble and wise leaders of the world have seen the signs, and taking heed accordingly, together they have secretly been building giant arcs to save humanity! This is where you apply rule #1…
Thing is, you can’t take away Emmerichs flair for setting up a scene. The first trailer for 2012 is on my personal top five of Best Movie Trailers Ever. It’s simply brilliant, and a stroke of genius in terms of short format storytelling (69 sec’s only). Simple, original and deeply disturbing – and it made me buy the ticket.
Another example, not quite a B-film (it doesn’t deserve that mark of honor), but a film I really really dislike: The CG animated “Chicken Little“. There is not one single likeable character in that film. Neither for the good nor the bad. In turn the whole film comes across as calculated and unsympathetic from the ‘sweet’ karaoke sequence with Chicken Little and his moronic friends to the cliché carthartic moment when he saves the day by actually hitting a homerun at the pinultimate moment in superslow. I find sadistic slasher Freddy Kruger of “A Nightmare on Elmstreet“-fame infinitely more interesting as a character. Even though I’m not that much into splatter films anymore, at least Freddy’s got humor, and in the end the film has it’s own bizarre charm, because I relate to his character (rule #2).
But why a rant on B-films on a documentary site? Because we share the love of a well told story. More on that in the next blog post. “Return of The Guilty Pleasure, part II”
