Do you think the beginning of movies is often better than the rest of the film? Is this a common opinion or do others share this view?

Movies that do this well exist of course, but they are quite rare. The only blockbuster movie in the last few decades I can think of that pulled it off were the two Dune movies.

Because although it can be a downer to root for a hero that gets shot in the head in the final shot of the movie, it will increase the exitement for the next movie where the hero ends up in a predicament: maybe that guy also won’t…ah, no he shot the bad guy. But at least there would be some suspense left.

They are probably sensible rules, based on how many movies in the past have been terrible for not adhering to those rules. They make sense from a perspective of ‘when in doubt, follow these rules’.

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And that makes that for many movies, the beginning is in fact the best bit of the movie. It’s where the world is established; where sometimes there is some room to breathe, to get to know the world. Have some character defnition moments. For about twenty minutes - if you’re lucky - the movie is still setting up all the rules. Not everything has been filled in yet: ‘hey that’s a strange looking guy - wonder if he has something to do with what happens next’.

But forty five minutes in, everything is set up according to the golden rules of Hollywood writing and after that it’s basically a paint-by-numbers affair. Everything gets wound down according to the rules.

It’s a good idea in principle, but if that is all you ever do - and it is all Hollywood ever does - the audience will catch on and lose interest.

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So that’s why you can literally watch a horror or monster movie today and know that 30 minutes into the film, you will see its first real appearance. That there will be a crisis halfway through that - if you had never before seen a movie - looks like the protagonists are never going to recover from it, but in the final twenty minutes everything will flip.

That there are rules for the resolution of everything. Take ‘the big final fight’ between the hero and the bad guy. Regardless of genre, in 100% of the cases it will, once again, follow a strict set of rules: good guy makes a good initial show, then the tables get turned and the bad guy shoots/hits/stabs/whatever the hero within an inch of his life. Then some inspiration strikes him and he defeats the enemy, usually quite quickly. Worse for wear, but still alive, he gets the girl.

I think that the great problem here is that the people that still try to sell the gospel of ‘good storytelling’ are forgetting that the days you could fool an audience with that are long behind us. The big problem is that Hollywood insists on assuming its audience is stupid and you need to spoonfeed them a simple intrigue according to strict rules you always adhere to.

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I think it’s the old story of the modern art painter that learned to master classical painting before he knew why he was rejecting those techniques for something else: you need to understand the value of the rules before you can safely break them. But if you make that work, the movie is so much more interesting because of it.

The problem with (especially, but not uniquely, American movies, because they understand the craft so well) movies is that they fall apart into setup and execution. In the setup you can show the cool new things in your world, but in the execution you tend to end up with ‘that is the good guy, that is the bad guy. good guy has to almost lose and then win from bad guy’ - and that is the second two-thirds of your movie. Fun, but predictable, even when the movie is good.

The first draft is the condensed version of the book. Then lots of people from the industry do rewrites. More often than not, at the very end, they bring in some famous hero that is known for successfully ‘punching up’ the scripts: taking out more and more ‘fluff’, focussing on the ‘core’ of the story. What that means is kill much of the flavour of what made the story unique, condense it as much as possible into Joseph Campbell’s fucking ‘hero journey’-mold and the result is another ‘evil empire vs a plucky band of rebels plot’.

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This is true for good and bad movies. Good movies like Star Wars or Alien follow these rules slavishly, but they are so entertaining that we don’t notice it all that much. But take Star Wars: until they leave Tatooine, the movie feels like it can go in all kinds of directions. Once they’re in space, the course is literally set. Alien, same thing: it’s vaguely mysterious for the first 45 minutes, but it’s straight up horror (of the best possible kind) after that until the end.

Breaking those rules and make a good movie is very difficult, more difficult than just safely following those rules. Game of Thrones pulled it off when it killed main characters left and right. The Acolyte failed because they forgot to first let you care about the faceless witches and jedi they killed off dramatically. Acolyte is probably the best example I can think of why those rules that make stories so predictable are ignored at your peril.

I agree and I have the unpopular opinion that this is partially because of how set in stone the rules of especially American film making are. All these rules on ‘how to write a good screenplay’; ‘ten things you should always include in your story’; ‘three ways your plot has to advance in order to work’ …

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The rest is just following the screenwriters formula. A rule of three; the idea of a three act story, where the first is the setup, the second is where it all goes to shit and the third where everything is resolved.

But what they also do, is squeeze every story through the same mold of storytelling. Just think of all these amazing books that have been used over the years as inspiration for blockbusters. The fans of those books always say the same thing: they don’t recognise the story beyond some very superficial elements, the names and the visualisation of the settings. And if you see those ‘making of’ documentaries of the movie and see how the writing process took place it is hardly surprising.

There was a brief moment, after the end of the studio system in the late 60s and the advent of the blockbuster with Star Wars in 1977, that movies briefly broke the mold. That you didn’t quite now where stories were going. That, not seldomly, the point of the movie was not that the good guy won. Star Wars was in fact at the time seen as a breath of fresh air after a decade that gave us so many bleakly told, gritty and realistic stories. Star Wars was so successful that we almost stopped making those weird movies again, and that is a shame.

Hi everybody! I have been looking at posts on narcs and narc abuse on here and if has really helped me out a lot. I am currently struggling with my situation and need some advice/support. I met a narc last year, everything seemed to good to be true. Love bombing, always texting calling and taking me on dates. Everything changed when someone warned me about him out in public in front of him and who he is. This caused a conflict with us and the love bombing seized. he would tell me that everything is okay and i can come and talk. He would set a time limit on me and kick me out after that. he would then text me like everything was fine and we hung out again and after that he completely ghosted me for one week. He came back and texted me a week later laughing about the ghosting and acting like nothing had happened. he continued to text me ( not like in the beginning) make plans with me, then on the day of the plans he would just ghost me. One day he would act interested the next silence. i contacted him a month later and he acted like nothing happened. He was on a vacation and sent me a picture of another woman ( someone he allegedly met on the trip) to strike a reaction but i never gave him one. After the trip he came to my place and was extremely rude, accusing me of going on dates with a bunch of men. The next day he accused me of being an alcoholic and that he wanted nothing to do with me but said well maybe we can be "friends" then ghosted me i assumed at this point it was over and i would never hear from him again. He contacted me on the holiday a month later acting like everything was great. We ended up hanging out a month or so later and when we hung out it went well, i thought things were going in the right direction. after we hung out.. silence. I would try to text him and if he replied it would be very short then he just stopped replying. He ghosted me for almost three months. I thought he was done this time and of course he popped up again like nothing happened. At this point i was getting sick of if so i questioned him as to why he dissapeared and always does this. Of course he had some sob story about a injury and family member dying of cancer. I felt pity for him and he gave me an apology.. so i took him back stupidly. things seemed to be going smooth for a couple months, of course until his family member died and his injury got better he never contacted me and was distant. Menawhile, i was there for him during the difficult time for him. He lied to me about the funeral and never wanted to chat. I was chasing him and he would always claim nothing was wrong but when i said i thought he used me when he was down he could not handle it and would always tell me he didnt care and to go away. I would get so upset i would try texting him to work it out he would barelt respond and if he did he would not be nice about it. we did hang out a couple times after that, he would ignore me after. One day i was like hey i think you are seeing someone else, and i was like well ixam seeing someone so no problem if you are he said " buy bye good luck with your new guy stop contacting me" i was devastated and tried to get into contact with him for weeks then i just gave up and accepted it was over. He ended up contacting me a month later acting like everything was fine. He wanted to go out and have drinks i told him i would. He and i both seemed to have a great time. He ends up ignoring me again. I kept texting him trying to figure out what was wrong. He kept saying everything was fine and i said ok can we hang out again? He said maybe i was like why? He just kept saying maybe … our last conversation we had… i said what is wrong ? He said nothing is wrong everything is fine. I asked him why he keeps saying maybe. He said " maybe but i dont want to see you right now" i said why? He saix " im just not feeling it, if i wanted to date i would" i said why did you contact me less then a week ago wanting to go out? He said i didnt.. even though he did. So i said should i just move on or what? He said whatever you want to do. So i said that he was really confusing me and asked him if he had anything more to say before i move on? My messages were turning green so i panicked he blocked me and reacted irrationally. I said " omg did you block me? My messages are not going through. Even texted him on my work phone asking what was up. And called him twice ( please dont judge me i know it is pathetic i never was this type of girl before him) so he replied and said " Ok I'll block you now" then immedietly blocked me. He has never blocked me before since I have met him he will just ghost. Is this ths final discard aka " grand finale? Did i just push him too far? this has upset me so much its hard to even function.