The Problem With Modern Movies: Telling Rather Than Showing
A common rule in writing is ‘Show, Don’t Tell.’ This means that when we want the reader to know something, we should try to convey the information through actions rather than writing a few throwaway lines informing the reader.
An example would be if we needed the reader to know that it was cold.
Telling is: The weather outside was cold.
Showing is: Frost clung to the windowpanes, and each breath left a small cloud in the air. Emma pulled her coat tighter around her, her teeth chattering as she shuffled through the snow.
Which version is more engaging?
How Hollywood is Getting This Wrong
I encountered this problem while writing a review of the train wreck of the movie that was Expend4bles.
You can read that review here:
I Watched Expend4bles So You Don't Have To
For those of you who do not know anything about this movie franchise, in a nutshell, it breaks down like this:
The Expendables are a group of mercenaries made up of action stars from the 1980s and 1990s. The government can send them in when it needs things done with maximum deniability.
To date, there are four movies in the franchise.
Expend4bles cast Megan Fox as Gina, Lee Christmas’ (Jason Statham) girlfriend and fellow Expendable. As the events of the movie unfold, she is placed in charge of the Expendables after Barney (Sylvester Stalone) is killed and Christmas is fired from the team.
The problem is that the movie never shows us that she has any combat skills when introducing us to her character. Instead, there are a couple of lines of dialogue that are easily missed.
In fact, I totally missed these lines because I was busy making my breakfast at the time.
I bring this up as an example because a similar character introduction was used in the previous movie, and it was done well.
The Expendables 3 cast Ronda Rousey as a new member of the Expendables. Instead of telling us that she is a good fighter, we are introduced to her as she is beating the crap out of a bunch of drunks in a bar she is the bouncer of.
Instead of telling us she can fight, the film shows us her fighting ability.
Another great example that I recently came across was at the beginning of Godzilla Minus Zero. We are introduced to the protagonist, who is a Kamakazi pilot named Shikishima.
If the film were to tell us his back story, there would be some exposition telling us he is a disgraced Kamakazi pilot who did not do his duty.
Instead, the film gives us several clues that paint a nice picture of who Shikishima is. We see that the plane still has a bomb attached; Shikishima appears sullen and in quiet contemplation; when he lands the plane, the mechanics state that there is nothing wrong with the aircraft.
All these little clues tell us that he did not complete his mission, and from what we understand about Kamakazi pilots, the audience now knows that this man will
be faced with disgrace and dishonour.
We can empathize with him because for the few minutes we have spent with this character, we’ve seen the gravity of his decisions.
So Why Does Hollywood Fail to Show and Not Tell?
It is easy to throw in some exposition to explain things to the audience. A couple of lines of dialogue or some narration is often all it takes, but it doesn’t do anything to engage the audience.
Writing a good scene where we show rather than tell is hard work. It takes time and talent, both of which seem to have evaporated in today’s entertainment climate.
We see this all the time in character introductions, especially in military-themed movies. There is often a briefing scene where there is an info dump about the background of a character.
That’s not to say that dialogue cannot feed us information about a character. It can be a very useful device for revealing a backstory. The problem I have is when the dialogue doesn’t sound authentic or natural.
In the movie Heat, the detectives provide information about the criminals by listing the highlights of their criminal careers. This dialogue works because we, the audience, are finding this information out at the same time as one of the protagonists.
In this case, telling works because it is realistic. We experience it through the characters and find out the information at the same time they do.
In Suicide Squad, we are introduced to the characters through actual text on the screen and heavy exposition. The result is that we never get to know the characters in a meaningful or organic way. We are told who they are, but all this exposition and dialogue don’t connect us to them.
It would have been better for these characters to have their origin stories developed in previous films rather than a few minutes of exposition.
Final Thoughts
I think my biggest issue with a movie telling rather than showing stems from the common practice of being on our phones during a Netflix binge. When we are distracted by our little screen during the ‘boring talking parts’ of a film, it’s easy to miss critical plot points that should have been shown through action rather than words.