Re: The fate of 1917 at the oscars and how it was inevitable
 

That's true, my favorite war movie is probably The Battle Of Algiers, which hardly has any character development, and is very situation based. Schindler's List is also a favorite which has a lot more character development.

For me anway, I see GBU as entirely about character development. It's a story about tense accomplices learning how to respect and become somewhat reluctant friends but keeping their distance because they realize that "a scorpion is still a scorpion".


I'm not sure what a war movie is without character development. A documentary of events only?

Sort of, yeah.

Oh well, it's just I found that they were not really being reluctant friends but just pretending to be so they can each reach the gold. So I didn't think it was character development much, when they were just pretending, and were still the same characters in the end, it seemed, without going through any drastic changes. It felt like more of a plot driven story to me than character driven, not that that's bad though.

But when it comes to 1917, I have seen six of the best picture nominees now, and of those six, I think I would put 1917 third, after Parasite and Jojo Rabbit. So of those six, I agree that the Oscars picked the best movie.

Interesting take, and I see what you mean. I'd like to flesh this one some since GBU was the earliest grown-up movie I can remember having significant impact on me growing up.

1. I might be wrong, but I think the strongest point where the character development enters into play is evident when Good sees Ugly being rebuked by his brother. He even offers him his cigar in kindness immediately after.
2. Also, he says to him "Planning on dying alone?" in the classic showdown-walk down the street. BTW, such things in westerns were obviously in the category of Horrible Ideas, especially without your gun already drawn. But the way it was "done" in this genre.
3. Keep in mind that Good could well have killed Ugly in the end and ended up with twice the money.

The only two dimensional character of the three that I can see is Bad, who consistently has no depth whatsoever, no growth, doesn't change a bit, and was there as literally, just "the bad guy".

Re: The fate of 1917 at the oscars and how it was inevitable
 

Oh okay, yes there little things here and there throughout the movie, but I just felt the characters never really changed in the end. It's not something like Oldboy for random example, where the main character is a completely different person compared to at the beginning of the movie, as far as character development goes.

Well to be clearer with my prior posts, AIUI character development doesn't directly require that the characters themselves personally evolve. It's just that they need to be complex and life-like enough for us to become invested in their story (hate them or like them). And then an important clue of whether or not they meet that criteria is if they themselves can change over time.

But yeah, I see what you're saying. Of all the classic(?)-era westerns (maybe 20's to the 70's), which movie would you say had the most thought out and complex character growth?

Re: The fate of 1917 at the oscars and how it was inevitable
 

Oh I see what you mean, perhaps I got character development confused with character evolution. So maybe what I meant was that 1917, didn't have a lot of character evolution in it. But as for westerns a lot of them suffer from characters being the same throughout, which isn't bad cause they are still fun, but it still feels like a limitation.

If I had to pick ones where the characters change into a different person at the end, off the top of my head, I would say The Searchers, and maybe Little Big Man, but maybe that's not a huge change that the Little Big Man character goes through?