#its especially EGREGIOUS when it happens with morally questionable characters tbh

[tomwambsmilk]

I feel like I've noticed a weird thing in some movies lately where they sort of feel like watching visual representation of a sparknote. You know how when you read a sparknote, it gives you the beat-by-beat of everything that happens plotwise, but without any of the depth? It might say "Character A goes to a party and argues with Character B, and then they profess their love for each other. The next day Character A goes to work and cries in the copy room because they feel uncertain about the relationship." But if you read the book those two lines are a good 50 pages of narration and dialogue which explore the nuances of Character A's mindset and their relationship with Character B. So if you just read the sparknote, you might know what happens, but you don't necessarily understand the characters and everything they're meant to convey.

And I feel like I've seen a lot of movies lately that feel like a sparknote. They want to convey that Thing Happened so they'll show a scene with two lines of dialogue establishing Thing, and then they'll jump to the next scene with two more lines establishing Next Thing, etc etc through the whole movie. And these movies tend to also be the WORST for on-the-nose dialogue, because the dialogue just exists to Establish Things. For example - I went to see TBOSAS last night, and the whole idea of Snow turning into his father is Established with exactly two scenes - one where Tigris tells him that she remembered seeing hate in his father's eyes, and another at the end of the movie where she says he looks just like his father. Boom! Established! They want to establish Snow's influence on the final form of the games, so they have a scene where Snow stands up and lists all the types of pageantry he thinks would make the Games more appealing. Boom! Established! They want the audience to know that Snow is in love with Lucy Gray, so they have a scene where he visits her and wipes away a tear with his handkerchief. Boom! Established!

But.... where's the exploration? People are complex, and so the most fascinating and interesting characters have multiple facets that need to be explored in a variety of circumstances. What does 'becoming his father' mean to Snow? Probably not just one straightforward thing that can be readily established in two scenes. What does Snow admire about his father? Is there any degree of internal conflict in the idea of becoming his father? There's just so much you can't learn in a movie like this. Why does Snow love pageantry? What does he understand the relationship between pageantry and politics to be, and how does that evolve over the course of the film? What is it that draws Snow to Sejanus when he's so despised by the rest of the Capitol elite that Snow wants so desperately to be a part of? Does Snow really love Lucy Gray, and if so, why? What does she represent that he can't find in the Capitol? The movie doesn't even need to give solid answers - honestly, questions like these hit better when there's enough ambiguity for audience members to have different interpretations - but there needs to be SOMETHING for us to work with.

And I think what drives me most insane is that when a movie like this comes out, if there's a big enough name behind it people will laud it for making its primary character 'inscrutable' ???????????? bitch that's just bad storytelling????????? Look, if you mean 'inscrutable' as in 'can't be put into one simple box' - sure, great, but that's not what these characters are. You straight-up just don't know anything about their interior lives, which is such a major misstep that I can't believe people are celebrating it just because Christopher Nolan did it (yeah I'm still pressed about Oppenheimer, the other great example of sparknotes storytelling that got endlessly celebrated just because Nolan did it. It's crazy to me that Oppenheimer has the higher RT score because at least TBOSAS has redeeming elements)