[eslaught]

It's because if you explain what's going on, you stop the action. And viewers/readers don't like that.

In fiction it's called an info dump. As an aspiring science fiction author, virtually every beta reader I've had has told me they don't like them. I want my fiction to make sense, but you have to be subtle about it. To avoid readers complaining, you have to figure out how to explain things to the reader without it being obvious that you're explaining things to the reader, or stopping the action to do it.

Movies are such a streamlined medium that usually this gets cut entirely. At least in books you can have appendices and such for readers who care.

[lelanthran]

> In fiction it's called an info dump. As an aspiring science fiction author, virtually every beta reader I've had has told me they don't like them. I want my fiction to make sense, but you have to be subtle about it. To avoid readers complaining, you have to figure out how to explain things to the reader without it being obvious that you're explaining things to the reader, or stopping the action to do it.

The whole "The audience wants to know, but they don't want to hear it" problem.

Usually solved by having characters do something that shows their character. If it's from the past, have a flashback, don't have a narration.

Like real life, people hate sermons.

[DoomDestroyer]

I would argue that it is the opposite. People expect an info dump and everything explained to them. I remember watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier (I think it was the last movie I watched in theatre) and pretty much everything was explained to the audience. Guy Richie has character intro screens like Street Fighter in his movies.

Even in movies where everything is explained e.g. in Blade where they will have a scene where someone explains how a weapon works, I've noticed in a recent viewing of the movie that people forgot the explanations of the gadgets he has. In Blade they have a James Bond / Q like conversation between the characters to say "this weapons does X against vampires" and sets the weapon for later on in the movie and people forgot about it.

I watched "The Mothman Prophecies" and quite a lot of the movie was up to interpretation and there was many small things in the film that you might overlook e.g. there is a scene in a mirror where the reflection in the mirror is out of sync with his movements, suggesting something supernatural is occurring and he hasn't realised it yet. While I love the movie, there is very few movies like that.

If you watch movies before the 90s. A huge number of movies will have characters communicate efficiently and often realistically.

[actionfromafar]

Current movies have Reed-Solomon error correction (repetition of concepts, names and explanations) built in so the stream receiver (human watching movie while still holding smartphone in hand) can recover from missed data (scenes).

[everdrive]

It's interesting, because old comic books have this as well. For decades (I'm not sure if they still do it) every issue of Wolverine would have some silly bit where Wolverine is talking to himself to remind the reader that the has an adamantium skeleton, razor-sharp claws, enhanced animal senses and an advanced healing factor which can heal from almost any wound. Every single issue, nearly without fail.

It's silly to the reader (and especially to an adult reader) but it's also obvious why this was present: the comic was meant for kids, and also Marvel never know when they might be getting a brand new reader who is totally unfamiliar with the character.

[DoomDestroyer]

> It's silly to the reader (and especially to an adult reader) but it's also obvious why this was present: the comic was meant for kids, and also Marvel never know when they might be getting a brand new reader who is totally unfamiliar with the character.

The same was present in any serials such as Conan.

There is a description of Conan and where he comes from, how black his hair is, how manly he, how he is the "noble savage "etc. every story.

Conan is definitely not for children. It verges on erotica in many of the stories e.g. in one story there is a older woman whipping a younger teenage girl while tied up and it is made known to the reader the teenage girl is "young" with the implication that she is probably 14 or 15.

Also every Conan story typically ends up with him using sheer overwhelming aggression to defeat super natural entities and then escape with the girl.

I with there was more "King Conan" stuff. But it is a property that Hollywood doesn't really understand.

[3eb7988a1663]

There is something about super healing that writers feel obligated to re-iterate to the audience. In Heroes, the Cheerleader was taking ludicrous amounts of damage to give everyone a reminder that she could regenerate quickly.

[DoomDestroyer]

It drives me insane. I don't mind if there is a reminder of what happened like a season ago, but often it is literally the episode before.

[boznz]

TV series really annoy me on this with the "Previously on.." 3 minute time killer at the start recapping the major points of the plot

[stavros]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MFtl2XXnUc

[ido]

Most/all streaming providers allow you to skip the recap.

[troupo]

> People expect an info dump and everything explained to them. I remember watching Captain America

People don't have an expectation of that. The number one rule of movie making used to be "Show, don't tell".

With the rise of streaming this changed. People "watch" movies while chatting on their phones, doing home chores etc. A lot of movies in the streaming era spell everything out because people no longer watch the screens.

[DoomDestroyer]

> People don't have an expectation of that. The number one rule of movie making used to be "Show, don't tell"

I am aware that it is supposed to be like that however around the 90s/2000s this changed.

> With the rise of streaming this changed. People "watch" movies while chatting on their phones, doing home chores etc. A lot of movies in the streaming era spell everything out because people no longer watch the screens.

This was in a movie theatre and this was still in the era where it was considered rude to be speaking on chatting on the phone in the cinema.

[ep103]

This is my wife starting up a 20 minute conversation the moment the first actor shows up on the screen xD

Don't worry, I love her anyway. But yes, we're restarting the movie because no, I don't have any idea what happened either, you were talking. ahahaha

[scott_w]

> Even in movies where everything is explained e.g. in Blade where they will have a scene where someone explains how a weapon works, I've noticed in a recent viewing of the movie that people forgot the explanations of the gadgets he has. In Blade they have a James Bond / Q like conversation between the characters to say "this weapons does X against vampires" and sets the weapon for later on in the movie and people forgot about it.

That’s because you’re seeing the rule of cool in action. The explanation itself makes the item interesting enough that the (2 seconds) setup gets the audience excited up watch a grenade blow a vampire’s head off.

[DoomDestroyer]

The gadgets were often used several scenes later, or much later and integrated with the other action with Blade.

[scott_w]

I mean... yeah, that's exactly what happened and that's how filmmaking works?

[RichardCA]

If you go back and watch the first two seasons of HBO's Westworld, you will see Anthony Hopkins' character repeatedly doing exposition dumps out of his mouth. The difference is in how he does it, that he is in such complete command of his craft that he can work out exactly what the screenwriters intended without drawing any attention to it.

And Trekkies will remember the time Larry Niven wrote a screenplay for TAS and gave all the exposition dumps to Leonard Nimoy. See how nicely he handles it?

https://youtu.be/B65HEhBR-1s

[stavros]

That's very interesting, would you happen to have any example videos of Hopkins in the show?

[RichardCA]

https://youtu.be/fs9Wyuub3jY

Once you develop an awareness of how SF screenplay writers do this, you can't unsee it.

Babylon 5 was particularly egregious, I was never a fan but I was puzzled that JMS had to do rely on it so heavily. It was like he created the character of Delenn just to be an exposition dumper and Mira Furlan faithfully did what was asked of her. Screenwriters also call this diegesis if the writer goes all the way and uses dialog to explicitly feed the narrative to the audience.

https://youtu.be/VhD0hbGEDSU

[bitwize]

My favorite is Con Air (1997). As they're marching the prisoners onto the plane, a warden explains to a colleague who everyone is so we know just what a dangerous crowd the protag is in with/up against.

"That's So-and-so. Drug and weapons charges. Took out a squad of cops before he was finally arrested."

"That's Such-and-such. They call him The Butcher. He eats his victims after he murders them."

"That's the ringleader. Runs the whole drug trade along the entire west coast. Anybody crossing him has a death wish."

Then Nicolas Cage's character, the hero, comes out. He gives a toss of his luxurious hair (must've been smuggling Pantene in his "prison pocket"), everything goes slo-mo, and I swear to you, a beam of holy light falls on him like he's Simba from The Lion King.

"Who's that?"

"Oh, him? He's nobody."

[DoomDestroyer]

> Then Nicolas Cage's character, the hero, comes out. He gives a toss of his luxurious hair (must've been smuggling Pantene in his "prison pocket"), everything goes slo-mo, and I swear to you, a beam of holy light falls on him like he's Simba from The Lion King.

Don't forget the scene near the end where he says to Bubba (I think at least that is his name), "I will show you that God exists", and in almost every other movie it is left upto interpretation whether God is really protecting/guiding the hero.

However in Conair, Cyrus shoots at him at point blank range and I think every bullet misses and/or grazes him. As he is walking through the plane to finally confront Cyrus there is a number of events that should kill him e.g a propeller flies through the fuselage and narrowly misses him and kills Jonny 23. There is really no other way to interpret it other than Nicolas Cage is very literally demonstrating that God exists.

The movie is not subtle about anything. It was the last "All American" action movie, where the hero beats everyone by just punching them harder and believing in Jesus. I quite like it.

[bitwize]

That's like when Ernest undergoes his own version of the Trial of the Blade, the Stone, and the Arrow in Ernest Goes to Camp!

[GeoAtreides]

you weren't kidding one bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqKCkk8qWxs

[DoomDestroyer]

You should see the rest of the movie. Nic Cage essentially proves the existence of God by punching guys in the face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm9eKCPGHb0

[recursive]

Maybe some people like that. I have no idea how common this is, but if everything makes sense, I find that kind of boring. I like to have at least a little bit of ambiguity or mystery to chew on.

[DoomDestroyer]

I really enjoyed the Mothman Prophecies (only watched it recently) because you were really never sure if the Characters involved weren't suffering from some sort of mental illness, or if things were just an unfortunate series of events. It also has a bunch of trippy visual effects in there that don't appear to be CGI.

My friend and I had a completely different interpretations of what happened in the final act. Well worth watching the movie.

[everdrive]

Yep, I totally get it, and my initial observation was made when I was maybe 17 or so. Sometimes these topics do get put into movies, such as the sequence in Shazam where they test his newly-found powers -- but even that was played more for laughs and was really just an entertaining way to acknowledge that much of the audience probably never heard of Shazam.

[ashtakeaway]

If we succumbed to everyone's complaints we'd have a much more dumbed down version of everything. Consider if you had a concussion on the right temporal lobe and had hypergraphia as a symptom of the resultant temporal lobe epilepsy. I'd write everything I'd want to write regardless of who complains. Philip K. Dick was one such person.

[eslaught]

It depends on what you care about. If you're writing purely for yourself, then by all means, go ahead and do so.

I've found there's a balance to be found in listening to others vs yourself. Usually, if multiple people give you the same feedback, there is some underlying symptom they are correctly diagnosing. But they may not have the correct diagnosis, or even be able to articulate the symptoms clearly. The real skill of an author/editor is in figuring out the true diagnosis and what to do about it.

In the communication example, this means rooting conflicts in the true personalities of the characters and/or their context, so that even if they sat down to have a deep chat, they still wouldn't agree. E.g., character A has an ulterior motive to see character B fail. Now you hint at that motive in a subtle way that telegraphs to readers that something is going on, without stopping the action for what would turn into a pedantic conversation. At least, that's what I'd do.

[closewith]

No, you need to be able to potray humans well enough to convey their motivations, goals, emotions, etc without explaining it. Anybody can explain a character, but that's not interesting to read.

[magarnicle]

The Matrix already has quite an info dump when he joins the real world that halts most of the momentum (on a re-watch, at least). I would not want even more of that.

[hammock]

That doesn’t answer why we don’t do it in real life, for people like parent commmenter who actually are interested in it