Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Fictional universes vs. fact

Due to the fact that I find movies and TV believable, it's important for me to make a list about the things that make them unreal.
1. Obviously, the time. Details like opening doors and putting on your socks are left out. In movies like Lord of the Rings, epic landscapes whiz by when you really want to stop and take them in.
2. People tell stories that are complete with music, sound effects and actors, giving no account for why the storyteller can remember all that dialogue so vividly, or how a pair of Asians with poor English skills can remember a salesman's conversation in its entirety.
3. The Joker cannot logically be both a 40 year old retired businessman who travels the country in a mobile home, a chemically scarred madman who tries to kill everyone in NewYork, and an obsessive compulsive novelist. Also, the schizophrenic insurance man who starts an underground fighting ring couldn't possibly be the same man who made scientific breakthroughs in the field of gamma radiation research and also be the man who created astounding magic tricks back in the 1800's. It's important to note that an actor will appear in movies that don't have any relationship to their previous movie, despite them being a person in that movie. It is analogous to an uneducated man in real life who has gone through an entire career in the IRS while simultaneously being a spy, a college professor, and a prominent neurosurgeon without the necessary transitions between the jobs.
More observations to come.

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