What is the point of movies like up in the air or descendants

I think they're relatable in the same way any epic tale is: inasmuch as it uses them as stand-ins for real human experience. I don't need an Arc Reactor to empathize with the weight of power and the responsibility that comes with it, the necessity of sacrifice, etc. The Lord of the Rings is a more respectable version of the same thing, but it is still mostly the same thing.

That said, I'm making the comparison to demonstrate to the OP that it's normal human drama underneath every movie that works, whether it has the window dressing of "save the city/world" on top of it or not. And as you allude to, on a purely superficial level it seems like it's the big budget action films that should be interrogated here more than the character dramas which are, at least on the surface level, way closer to our lived experiences.

Big budget films are more accessible because they use the superficial stakes as a way to get people to that basic empathy, but yeah, I think the more you mature, the less you need that. Even if you can still enjoy the blockbusters what they are/different reasons, as I do.

Well, I think that we also need to take into account the range of emotions and sensations that can be provoked by a visual image.

For example, I alluded to the Mission Impossible series in my earlier post. I have a fear of heights, and when I saw MI:Ghost Protocol in the theater my heart was pounding and my hands were sweating watching the tower-climb sequence. My hands are actually sweating right now just thinking about it. It was a visceral, physical, adrenaline-driven experience. What was the plot of the film? Don't remember. What were the characters' names? Don't remember. The only thing that has lingered with me from that film is the intense response I had to some of the stunts.

Comparing that to another film I saw in the theater, Little Women, it's a different kind of response. When Jo tells Beth "Please fight", I felt all the emotional weight of confronting mortality in someone you love, of realizing that you cannot through willpower save someone, of being trapped in a horrible place between hope and acceptance. I started crying, got embarrassed, and then realized that literally everyone around me was crying. It was an emotional, cathartic experience.

I think that both kinds of experiences are valid, but for me personally the emotional experiences are the ones that tend to leave a bigger impression.

Now, one advantage that something like Lord of the Rings or (one of my favorites) Fury Road can have is that they can combine both types of sensation.

And this is where I really agree with your earlier point. I think that any great film--whether it's a realistic slice-of-life drama or a Marvel-esque action blockbuster--must have some theme that resonates with the people watching. Because if their emotions or conflicts don't make any sense to us, then we have no "hook" to be invested in the film.

Going all the way back to the original question of "what is the point", movies can have lots of different objectives. One filmmaker might genuinely just be trying to make some quick cash at the box office (*cough* Mac & Me *cough*). But on the opposite end of that, a filmmaker might be actively trying to alienate and criticize his own audience (Funny Games). There isn't one metric for what makes a film valuable. It's art. It's value is personal to each viewer.

The history of cinema also tells us that Citizen Kane, a film that is basically just a bunch of people talking to or about the eponymous Kane with little in the way of external action or spectacle, is the closest thing we have to a consensus pick for the greatest film ever made. I'll concede the point about a rich time period if only because it is technically a period film that was not only released in 1941 but takes place over the course of several decades, but the point still stands about it being driven more by its characters and dialogue than by action. Besides, if I'm a person who rarely gets on planes and never for work reasons, then technically a film about a guy whose entire job involves constantly getting on planes is probably going to be about as different to my own experience as one about a professional racecar driver/designer so who's to say which one I would find more immersive?

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Is it though ? if you looked at my top 10 movies...even wolf of wall street is just people talking without action. But scale is spectacle. Covering a rich powerful mogul over the course of decades with changing time periods is scale.

Speaking of up in the air....there is nothing interesting about a guy who goes around firing people when thats the only exciting thing in their life. Even if the movie was just about that process done right, it could be interesting but its not even about firing people...it is about his relationships in his life. Anna kendrick has nothing epic about her. She belongs in TV movies not in epic movies.

It's not about a man that flies around firing people. It's about a man who confidently believes has has the patterns of life solved and controlled, then discovering that "life happens" and there's no control. You kinda gloss over the other half of everything.


I agree about Anna Kendrick, but casting doesn't change the story. It just changes how some viewers might be distracted from that story, in some way or another. If that is really so distracting, then the movie may not be enjoyable. Reasonable. Still, that's all subjective and just goes back to the point Yoda keeps making that all of this is subjective opinion dressed up as measurable objectiveness. It's not.

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Sorry. Chyp. And not because I know you're a HUGE Anna Kendrick fan.



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Exactly. There's a context, and then there's a conflict/disruption. How the characters handle that disruption--whether it's an invading alien space force or dropping a recently cleaned spoon--is what makes a film interesting.

And even movies with the most spectacle tend to boil down to some level of interpersonal elements (like trust or confidence) when it comes to actually handling the conflict.

It's ok, you are only human after all. Next time please leave out the little dig at my weight though eh

I see that you may need "scale", however that is expressed, whether with exploding planets or with "big" characters, but lots of stories ARE small and interesting. A lot of the drama in life is personal and it's as valid a way to make movies as galactic conflict.

I will recommend the ultimate in big movie de-programming. If you survive, you will be a person changed forever. It's My Dinner With Andre. Two fairly mundane guys sit at a table at a Manhattan restaurant and talk until the credits roll. It has characters. And water glasses.

Yet again, you are describing your personal level of interest as if it were universal.

Obviously people find it interesting: millions of people watched it, and praised it, and still sometimes talk about it. The idea that something isn't interesting or significant when "only" tens of millions of people watch it instead of hundreds of millions is absurd on its face. You wanna talk scale, appreciation the difference in scale between those two things would be a good start: 10 million isn't a small number just because 100 million is a larger one.

I'll leave this here again, too, since like most problematic questions it was originally ignored:

Realize that this is the position your argument has put you in: of not just arguing that rote ticket sales measure "significance" or that character dramas as a whole aren't "interesting" (and that this belief is shared by almost everyone), but you're also somehow arguing that theater owners and distributors are showing movies against their own economic interests.

And we're talking about it and studying it decades later. How about that?

All of this talk about My Dinner with Andre makes me realize how much I need to see it yet. Been on my “to see” list for well over a decade 😳

It really is special, but for better or worse is the question. It's the un-movie and, about as un-spectacle as anything can be that's not a camera pointed at a wall, waiting for the paint to peel. I have never quite figured out why since I have not seen it but once, but I came out of the theater liking it, in spite of the fact that my movie diet DOES include action movies.

A movie need not have action to keep one entertained. Dialogue, characters, these are but a few things that can keep a movie interesting.
It all depends on the movie itself.
Amadeus is amazing because of the characters involved. Good night and Good Luck as well. No action, just a great story with well written characters.

Quite true, but, trust me, Andre is special that way.

I have no doubt. I intend to watch it sometime.

Your comments about these two movies seem kind of empty and since both movies star George Clooney, I'm just assuming you have something against the actor and not really these movies in particular. Interesting that you're complaining about movies that earned Clooney Oscar nominations, so if you just want to dish George Clooney, just go ahead and do that.

Which is why I conceded the point about it being a period drama, but even so I don't think that alone is enough to make it a spectacle on par with the likes of Apocalypse Now. It'd be like comparing Darkest Hour to Dunkirk - they're both technically about the same thing, but can you really argue that one is as much of a spectacle as the other?

In any case, have you ever explained why that's not an interesting subject beyond just a general disdain for "everyday" stories? A job that involves having to come face-to-face with people in order to tell them that they're about to hit new low points in their life and deal with their highly emotional reactions in person sounds like a tough one, not an "exciting" one. It's clear that he attempts to maximise the efficiency of his traveling lifestyle as a means of compensating for that - if he's going to travel the country giving people bad news every single day, the least he can do is do it well (and that's part of why he has a side-gig giving seminars about how to live like him - in a way, it's kind of an inverse of Jordan Belfort teaching people to "sell me this pen"). Anna Kendrick doesn't need to be "epic" in this movie - nobody does. She needs to be the counter-point to Clooney who pushes back against him seemingly having all the answers worked out, but they are both proved wrong in one way or another - she can't do the job using her new method involving video calls and his complacency over the job



Of course the movie's going to be about his relationships - as much as he might think otherwise, he can't exist in a vacuum and his single-serving lifestyle might just be a way of shielding himself too much from life itself. That's what sticks about this movie. So many other films have had scale and spectacle to spare, but they've ended up being the cinematic equivalent of empty calories next to something this down-to-earth.

I always found being impressed by scale and scope to make a lot more sense when those things were genuinely difficult to create: when filmmakers had to actually build and blow up huge sets, for example. CGI means anyone can inject hollow "scale" into anything, though.