Serenity, or how not to start a movie
Feb. 17th, 2024 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chris_gerribI recently watched the 2019 film Serenity. this was relentlessly recommended to me by Amazon Prime, and represented by the trailer as a modern film noir. That was mostly a lie.
Again, in writing, one can learn from bad writing, and in this case Serenity was a master class. The film opens with a lengthy segment in which Matthew McConaughey's character, as the captain of a deep sea fishing charter boat, obsesses about catching a very large tuna. Then it segues into a story in which Anne Hathaway's character tries to get McConaughey's character to kill her abusive husband. About 75% of the way through the story, we learn that everything we've seen is merely a computer game, written by an abused kid, and that McConaughey's character is a representation of the kid's dad who was killed in Iraq.
When we start to tell a story, we make a promise to the audience about what kind of story we're writing. This movie completely breaks that promise. There's a reason you've not heard of this movie.
Again, in writing, one can learn from bad writing, and in this case Serenity was a master class. The film opens with a lengthy segment in which Matthew McConaughey's character, as the captain of a deep sea fishing charter boat, obsesses about catching a very large tuna. Then it segues into a story in which Anne Hathaway's character tries to get McConaughey's character to kill her abusive husband. About 75% of the way through the story, we learn that everything we've seen is merely a computer game, written by an abused kid, and that McConaughey's character is a representation of the kid's dad who was killed in Iraq.
When we start to tell a story, we make a promise to the audience about what kind of story we're writing. This movie completely breaks that promise. There's a reason you've not heard of this movie.
