Jurassic World: A Monster with no Teeth

Let's go back in time. Not to the Jurassic era, but to fourteenth century England, to the man sometimes described as the father of the modern English language - Geoffrey Chaucer. In Chaucer's day, an author would often present his story as adapted from an original source, rather than as a work of his own imagination. Refering to an earlier work gave the work an authority in the readers minds.

Perhaps it's a stretch to compare fourteenth century narrative verse to movies in the twenty-first century (and in no way, er, pretentious). But it strikes me how many movies there are where we know the characters and story before we see the film. Even where a movie isn't based on a well-known brand or franchise, quite often the trailer will give the whole story away anyway. For instance, I've been told that the movie 'Pixels' is a case in point, and the trailer is basically a two minute version of the film.

Always good to force in a Chaucer reference

One might argue that this is not so much about refering to the authority of a previous film – rather, it's about films presenting us with something that's already familiar (and 'Pixels' is a film about 80s computer games coming alive and invading earth – talk about familiarity!). Most films nowadays are sequels, based on a toy brand, based on a book, or are in a particular genre defined by specific conventions. We go and see them knowing exactly what to expect.

But I'd argue for many mainstream films, authenticity is also an important factor. We want to know that what we're paying money to see is in some way properly endorsed. For instance, any movie based on an Alan Moore graphic novel is going to be an easier sell if it's endorsed by the author. And ditto the Harry Potter movies – fans want to know that the franchise accurately portrays the world and characters in J K Rowling's stories, and as she intended them to be.

Superhero films have a favourite device they use to subtly convey their authority to us, the audience, and that's the cameo role - for instance, Stan Lee having a walk-on part in Spiderman, or Wolverine's two-second appearance in a bar during X-Men First Class. For other films, think about the A-Team movie where two of the four original A-Team actors appears as other characters. Or Leonard Nimoy's appearances in the most recent Star Trek films. We, the audience, feel a little more secure in the knowledge that – although the film we're watching may be a stinker, at least it's a stinker endorsed by the creator /original actor /original character.

There's another device I've noticed which I'd imagine is a favourite of the Hollywood money-men. Where you've had a half-decent franchise and then a couple of bad sequels, you simply ignore the bad films, and set the rebooted sequel at a point after the good film(s). So, Superman Returns ignores the Christopher Reeve movies Superman 3 and Superman 4 (actually I rather liked number 3). And then there's Jurassic World. Apparently, they want us to ignore Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and Jurassic Park 3. Actually I'd rather turn that one on its head and ignore Jurassic World instead – but more on that shortly.

The excellent Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent, helping his alter ego dislodge a fishbone

Jurassic World is one of the highest grossing films of all time – so much so, that they've already commissioned a sequel. But I'd argue that Jurassic World isn't that strong a film and that its success is due nearly entirely to the affection we still have for the original films. This is only my assumption, but I'd guess that all of us movie-goers who saw the original films in the 1990s saw the trailer for Jurassic World, and were excited that a) the theme park is actually open to the public (great idea!), and b) the original characters aren't involved, so no tortuous back stories of existing characters need to be laboured over. The film-makers can just start again, taking the best bits of the original idea with a whole new set of characters.

And here's the first problem … sequels often strive for authenticity by slavishly copying or lifting elements from the original film(s) that aren't really needed. In Jurassic World, you have the billionaire theme park owner who is eccentric but with his heart in the right place (think Richard Attenborough's character from the original film). You have the warden character and the geeky guy in the control centre, both of whom are echoes of the Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum characters in talking about respecting nature and not playing god. So, already the film-makers have restricted themselves without needing to.

The excellent Jeff Goldblum giving nerds a good name in the 1990s

I'd say the main problem is that this isn't really a dinosaur movie, it's a monster movie. We don't really get to see many different dinosaurs – the movie is only really interested in the T-Rex, the velociraptor, the sea dinosaur, the pterodactyl and the new 'Indominus Rex'. If we're talking of authenticity … I seem to remember that the first Jurassic Park was greeted quite favourably by the scientific community, as it was the first mainstream film to make the point that today's bird species are descended from dinosaurs, and it took the trouble to represent dinosaurs with (as far as we know) a degree of accuracy. By contrast Jurassic World isn't really interested in the range of dinosaurs or in an accurate depiction of them. I thought it was quite telling that, when the two boy heroes arrive at the dinosaur park, and open the windows of their room, the camera swoops out to a big crescendo of music that 'marvels' at the scene before us. The marvel isn't for any dinosaur, just the actual man-made theme park itself - and there's never any equivalent 'swell' of music that plays when we see the dinosaurs themselves.

It's as if the dinosaurs themselves are considered old hat, and we need something extra now to keep our interest as an audience. And oddly enough, this is precisely the gist of the plot of Jurassic World – visitor numbers are falling and they need a new attraction. It's not enough for us to enjoy the dinosaurs as dinosaurs. It seems that everyone has grown used to the Jurassic Park brand, so we need to be enthralled with something more monstrous.

Biggus dinosaurus - wait, that should be 'Indominus Rex'

So, what we end up with is less a dinosaur movie, more a reworking of other 'monster versus monster' movies, like Alien v Predator or Transformers where the 'monsters' fight each other rather than us, the humans. The problem is that this puts a lot of focus on getting those fight sequences right – the choreography and CGI become the stars, whereas fight sequences should always serve the interests of the story. To put it another way, the audience needs to be emotionally invested in the outcome of a fight – we need to care who wins and who loses. When you have two 'monsters' fighting and no main human characters involved, we don't care so much, even though one of those 'monsters' may be perceived as a 'goodie' and one as a 'baddie'. The outcome feels much the same whoever wins.

I'd argue it's not that dinosaurs are old hat – more that the film-makers of Jurassic World lost sight of what made the original Jurassic Park film(s) so good. In the first film, there's only a very brief scene where dinosaurs attack each other, and it's at the point one of the characters is about to be eaten by a velociraptor. If my memory serves me correctly, the character is 'rescued' in the nick of time by a T-Rex who fancies a velociraptor lunch. I seem to remember this bit working really well, as it's entirely unexpected - the audience isn't aware there's even a T-Rex around at that point to pounce on the unsuspecting other dinosaur. Even in the original film, therefore, dinosaur v dinosaur fights are very limited, and they serve a dramatic function – to rescue a main character in the nick of time. Dinosaur v dinosaur fights in themselves aren't actually all that interesting!

How do you work the cooker, again?

And the scenes that work best in Jurassic Park are where humans are the prey i.e. where the audience is emotionally invested in the outcome. For example, there's the famous scene where the T-Rex attacks the car with the kids in it (the humour of this being that the kids are told to stay in the car where it will be safest). Or another very effective scene is where the velociraptors are hunting the children in the kitchen with all those shiny metallic reflective surfaces. Ok, so there's an equivalent scene in Jurassic World where the kids are attacked in the safari pod which I think works quite well – it's quite funny that the dinosaur can't quite get its teeth gripping on the surface of the pod which is just too big for its jaws. But for me, the scene is still lacking something. The attack happens, and then the scene sort of fades out – there's the 'cop out' jump from a waterfall that brings that scene to a close (the kids jump but it's too high up for the dinosaur).

So, what's so good about those scenes I mentioned from Jurassic Park compared to Jurassic World? Obviously, Spielberg's direction has a lot to do with it. And part of that is the way he uses a convention that's a classic staple of horror and suspense movies – where a character perceived as being vulnerable or needing protection is put in a life-threatening situation.

In those two examples from Jurassic Park, it's the children who are the potential victims. At a basic level, watching any character deal with a life-threatening situation invokes our inbuilt 'fight or flight' instinct. However, by putting a child in danger we instinctively feel that the odds are in the aggressor's favour and this offends our natural sense of justice. It also increases the drama: the point is that a child character is no action hero – they have absolutely no additional qualification or expertise to deal with the situation.

Where children are involved, some very primitive emotional buttons are pressed in us and a basic human expectation is violated – the expectation that vulnerable people should be protected. I'd argue that having children deal with something they shouldn't have to deal with just 'feels' offensive to us as an audience. There's an underlying assumption here which is 'where the hell are the adults, and why aren't they looking after these kids?'

The ultimate dinosaur gobstopper

Ok, so perhaps this is more of a personal view (I have two young children myself!)

But there's an interesting point here. Jurassic Park is a film about survival – about the survival of a species, or more specifically the resurrection of an extinct species. So it's fitting the film should invoke our own instinct for survival /self-preservation.

For these scenes with children to work you need a final ingredient – which is the knowledge that the adults, while absent from the scene, aren't very far away. This might seem like a paradox, as you'd think there'd be more of a thrill if there are no adults around who could possibly rescue the children. But I'd argue the opposite - dramatically speaking, if no adults are around, there shouldn't really be any surprise when the kids are actually eaten up. Why wouldn't they be eaten up, when the odds are stacked so highly against them? And this may be a reason why, for me, the scene in Jurassic World where the kids in the safari pod are attacked doesn't quite have the impact of the equivalent scenes from Jurassic Park. The adults are on their way – sure – but they're not nearby in the way they are in Jurassic Park. In Jurassic Park it works the other way round - 'where the hell are the adults when we know they're close by?'

I think a fundamental reason for why Jurassic Park worked so well (and why Jurassic World doesn't) is that the film never forgets these animals are actually extinct. So, when dinosaurs and humans are pitted against each other, it's bringing together two species that were never meant to interact. We were never supposed to share the same timeline. It's a 'what if?' scenario. What if man and dinosaur had to co-exist or fight it out – who would win?

"First we take Manhattan ..."

The first film never forgets that these are caged animals waiting to overcome the restraints that are keeping them in captivity. The first film isn't explicit in this, but the logical extension of dinosaurs potentially overrunning the island is the threat that they might then overrun the mainland too. Extrapolate that further, and there's then the intriguing dramatic prospect that they could become the dominant species on earth again - millions of years after they became extinct. In that scenario it's then man that becomes the species under threat. So, actually, it feels like there's quite a lot at stake in the story.

The point is that Jurassic Park has a lot of fun drawing attention to the incongruity of having two species together that were never meant to be together – and it emphasises this by having the dinosaurs interact with man-made objects or environments, such as when the T-Rex attacks the kids in the car, or when the velociraptors hunt the children in the kitchen. There's a great bit towards the end of the film where, as the characters flee the visitor centre, the dinosaurs they've left behind are fighting each other, and the banner 'When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth' flutters down on the carnage. I think that makes the point quite well – the wording of the banner smugly assumes the dinosaurs are shut up safely in their own cages as museum pieces, when they're busy causing mayhem and destruction.

As Indiana Jones would say: "It belongs in a museum"

You could argue there's an equivalent scene in Jurassic World where dinosaurs rampage around a man-made environment and it's where the pterodactyls are let loose over the theme park village and attack the crowds. But the problem is – that's all that happens. There's nothing more to it than that, possibly besides the bit where a low-flying pterodactyl with a human in its beak is then swallowed up by a leaping sea dinosaur.

Which brings us to the central idea of the original films, something lost in the reboot, which is … that Nature always finds a way. You can't expect to bring dinosaurs to life and control them. And this is, for me, a big problem with Jurassic World - all the dinosaurs are far too well-behaved! At one end of the scale, you have all the small innocuous dinosaurs that we briefly see in a petting zoo being patted by toddlers. And at the other end of the scale you have all the scary monsters behaving in contrived and predictable ways.

So, the velociraptors develop a bond with their owner, the T-Rex is released from its compound and duly understands it has to fight the Indomitus Rex dinosaur. Then in the final fight scene, all the dinosaurs instinctively understand they have to join forces to bring the new dinosaur down. In that scene you have a) the T-Rex, b) the velociraptor and c) the sea dinosaur all fighting for the common good! And in the very final scene, the T-Rex is stomping around on the helicopter pad back on the island looking wistfully out to sea looking like it wants to wave or give us a knowing wink or victory salute. I know this is a family film, but the bit where a dying dinosaur is comforted by the warden character and has a thankful expression on his face was pretty bad.

Pass me the sick bucket

What's wrong with having the dinosaurs behave like this? Well, it's attributing human characteristics and motivations to wild animals (well, ok, extinct wild animals). If I was being rude I'd say it's about Disney-fying these animals. It's neutering them. It's making them serve pre-determined interests. In effect, it's not letting them have a life of their own within the story. And it doesn't work, because the audience smell a mile away that it's derived.

And nowhere is this more evident than in the hypothesis that the hero is somehow the alpha velociraptor, and is able to influence the behaviour of the other velociraptors. Ok, I know this is just a film, but just think of the zookeepers in real life who develop a bond with the lions they look after, who are, all the same, mauled one day by those same lions, for no apparent reason.

I reckon that the makers of Jurassic World missed a trick here. If they had applied the fun and ruthlessness of the first two Jurassic Park films, rather than make this guy the hero, they should have killed him off – perhaps just at the point the audience feels that he's safe with his velociraptor 'pack'.

I have magic powers

Ok, so I've gone on long enough.

There's no space other than to just briefly mention in passing the skewed logic of a film where it's the hero who's to blame for the Indomitus Rex dinosaur being let loose in the first place, by falling for the ruse of thinking it's escaped. Or the fact the bad guy had a point – his idea is that the velociraptors could actually be used to kill the Indomitus Rex dinosaur, and this is, in fact, what happens and saves the day.

But just a few ideas I've had since watching Jurassic World that – to me at least – would just be a little more interesting. How about a situation like the Hunger Games, where people compete with the dinosaurs for money? It could be something very rich people pay for – to go on dinosaur hunts, with disastrous consequences. Or a black market type situation, where dinosaur baiting goes on 'underground'. Or even, to have dinosaurs doing what the original films threatened and actually taking over the mainland. Something, anything, except don't make Jurassic Park into an action hero film. In my view, they spliced together two movie DNAs that just don't work together. 

Skyfall Dissected

***SPOILER ALERT: ENTIRE PLOT AND DENOUEMENT REVEALED***

In my last blog, I wrote about the story ‘templates’ we carry inside us, that we instinctively refer to whenever we watch movies – by which I mean, we have specific expectations of what seems ‘right’ in a story. Whether a film meets these expectations, and – crucially – how it meets these expectations is fundamental to our enjoyment of the movie.

We may know nothing of the film we are about to watch, but even so, I’d argue that our expectations are determined within the first few scenes of the movie. We know very quickly whether we are watching - for instance - a superhero movie, a heist movie, a romance, a tragedy and so on, and we therefore know what to expect from it – if not, the details of exactly how it will develop or end.

However, the James Bond franchise is fairly unique in that we have very specific ideas not just about what should happen but also how it will happen.

We know that there will be an opening action sequence that will try to outdo previous Bond movies, we know that the story will take us to a number of exotic locations, we know there will be two Bond girls, and we know there will be a villain who is intent on world domination who Bond has to stop at all costs.

The elements of a Bond film are so firmly established that they have been parodied many times over, not just in the original 1960s Casino Royale movie, but also in the Austin Powers films – and in numerous Rob Brydon impressions (“We’re not so different, you and I, Mr Bond”)

It’s inevitable that, as more and more Bond films have got made, the newer films have even come to reference the older films – whether intentionally or not. You can’t have a Bond film with skiing without invoking memories of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Any rooftop chase, any traintop fight, any fight on top of an aircraft, any car, motorbike or speedboat chase will invoke memories of the appropriate movie (at least for James Bond nuts like myself!). Even plotlines are being re-used, and as innovative as Skyfall is, you could argue it’s a repeat of the Goldeneye story – former British Secret Service Agent turns rogue, and plots against his former employers.

What I really liked about Skyfall is the way it embraces those traditions, storylines and plot elements and gives some emotional depth and resonance to them. I was interested to hear Sam Mendes talk about this on BBC radio’s Front Row programme, and explain how the writing team set out first and foremost to tell an engaging story, and only later did they add the ingredients we might expect from a conventional Bond film. In other words, the traditional Bond elements were made to serve the story, and not the other way round.

The R&D department in happier times

One simple example is the role that gadgetry plays (or doesn’t play) in the film. Whereas in previous films Bond is given unnecessarily sophisticated devices, in this film, much is made of the fact he is given just a gun and a tracking radio. Indeed, there are two exchanges between Bond and the villain where they both take it in turns to gloat over their use of something so simple as a radio device. Having something so simple as a radio device is seen as ‘old school’ which is a key theme in the film. Bond uses a cut throat razor to shave, and just in case the audience have missed the significance of this, the writers have Eve commenting on this being something very traditional. Later in the movie, Bond drives ‘M’ in the Aston Martin from Thunderball, and then the denouement of the film itself takes place at Bond’s ancestral home, where Bond has only one shooting rifle, and homemade weapons at his disposal.  There’s clearly an agenda going on here – the film-makers are making a not so subtle point about the Bond films not needing to lean on technology and gimmickry for their dramatic impact (even though one could argue that previous Bond films have often done the opposite). They’re recognizing that what Bond does best is real-life stunts and live action chases. And of course, Bond kills Bardem’s villain not with a gadget dart fired from under his wrist, or with an exploding pen, but with a simple knife in the back.

I liked the way that, even when the makers of Skyfall do the standard Bond stuff, they manage to do something a little different with them. Mendes opens the film with a long shot of Bond where Bond walks into focus – which I see as a riff on the famous gun barrel opening of the traditional Bond films (the traditional Bond opening sequence in fact occurs at the end of Skyfall). Then there are the one-liners that Daniel Craig delivers in as humourless a way as he can possibly contrive. His comment ‘A waste of good whiskey’ when the first Bond girl is killed in the William Tell scene is really laced with heavy irony, and is not meant to invite audience laughter. When Craig walks through the train carriage having leapt off the digger he makes a very subtle adjustment of his cuffs – the kind of gesture that occurred frequently in the Brosnan films, but is somehow less cartoonish as acted by Craig. Again, a very small detail, but I also enjoyed Craig’s reactions in fighting in the casino circled by giant lizards. Twice he gestures the lizards to the bad guy he’s fighting, in a way that draws his combatant’s attention to their mutual danger, and (I thought) to the absurdity of the situation. In previous films, Bond (and the audience) wouldn’t have batted an eyelid at something so unrealistic. Craig’s reaction here again serves to make his Bond much more rooted in the ‘real’ world.

Skyfall’s villain does indeed live in a secret base on an exotic island location, but this base is simply a deserted town – but if anything, this creates a bigger dramatic impact for being more realistic and not being, for instance, a rocket complex hidden inside a volcano. The sobriety of this particular Bond is underlined by his lack of a triumphant one-liner when he kills Bardem’s villain.  His comment ‘Last rat standing’ seems to acknowledge that this is in some ways a pyrrhic victory – which indeed it turns out to be when M dies a few minutes later.

 The Bond villain parody - in happier times

Another feature I particularly enjoyed was the economy of the writing. Every scene is used to further the purposes of the plot. When Bond is taking his marksman tests, he can’t fire straight because of the shrapnel in his shoulder. He gauges out the shrapnel in his shoulder with a knife (thus showing this is a tougher Bond than previous incarnations), and the shrapnel is then analysed by the forensics team, which enables them to identify Bond’s assailant from the opening sequence. The last known sighting of this guy was in Asia, so Bond now jets off to Asia. In other words, the writers don’t just send Bond to exotic locations for no reason – they take care to establish a chain of logic that shows why he’s going there.

The economy of the writing can be seen even in the small details – in one scene, Bond is exercising doing pull-ups on a bar, after which he collapses through lack of fitness. In a later scene, Bond has to rely on his upper body strength to hold on to the bar under the elevator.  Without the earlier scene, the audience would assume this is easy for Bond. Instead, the earlier scene provides us with the information that Bond isn’t fully fit, and this therefore introduces an element of risk to the elevator scene as to whether he’ll be able to hold on (this being Bond, we obviously know the answer to that!)

  

Okay, so I’ve talked a lot about the way Skyfall takes the ingredients of a standard Bond film and does something slightly different with them – but I’d argue that this is only part of the reason why the film engages our interest.

I’d say that interest in the film is created by a number of key narrative strands: Bond’s rehabilitation and his attempts to prove he’s not a spent force; M’s attempts to survive the political fallout from the crisis engulfing MI6 and – in the last act of the film – the attempts on her life; and Mallory’s ascendancy to the head of MI6, and the audience’s changing attitudes towards this character. In other words, the film is held together by its character development.

At the beginning of the action, Bond is not just unfit and unproven - he’s assumed to be dead, and it takes the entire film for him to prove he’s got what it takes to continue in the Secret Service - both to his employers, and perhaps to himself.

He spends much of the earlier part of the film unshaven and failing fitness tests – and until the final act of the film, as he admits himself, it’s been the Bardem character who’s been taking the initiative. If we’re talking story templates, this is one of the most powerful there is: where an untried and untested character initially ‘fails’ but eventually rises above the odds to claim victory eg Rocky, The Matrix, 8 Mile and so on.

I’d say that the best way of understanding Skyfall is as a transitional Bond film. Essentially it’s a two hour swansong for Judi Dench as M. I say this, because – to some extent – Bond’s supposed death at the beginning of the film foreshadows M’s death at the end, and prepares us for it (late in the film, Bond’s underwater fight in the icy loch is in some ways a reprisal and reminder of the earlier underwater drowning scene).

So, the film is bookended by two key deaths: Bond’s supposed death, and M’s real death at the end. They’ve written the script so that, in dramatic terms at least, it’s seen as necessary that M does die as she is accountable for the deaths of various British agents and has made some morally dubious decisions. In the opening sequence, Bond wants to help a fellow agent who is about to die, but M orders him not to. Again, it’s M’s decision that Eve shoots without a clear line of sight with disastrous consequences for Bond. M chooses her own interests (the interests of Queen and Country) above an individual agent’s life. For the first half of the film, she’s under siege politically for her handling of the crisis, and it’s only when she’s allowed to speak during the hearing scene (just after the film’s halfway point) that events start turning in her favour.

And it’s at the hearing that we first see Mallory in a more sympathetic light, first, when he interrupts the Chair so that M can put her own views across, and then when he risks his life in the gun fight that ensues – thus proving he’s not the deskbound pen-pusher that Bond suspects him to be.  Mallory then walks in on Q as he’s laying a false trail for Bardem – and tacitly sanctions support for the unofficial operation that Bond is leading. In other words, at the same time the film is giving Judi Dench a good send-off, it’s also busily building up Ralph Fiennes as the next M.

I say that Skyfall can be understood as a transitional Bond film, but I wonder to what extent Daniel Craig’s reign as Bond can be seen in the same way. We are already three films into his tenure –even so, I think it’s telling that right at the end of this film he’s being asked (by the new M) whether he’s ready to start work. It’s also taken three films to establish the new Q (who hadn’t featured in the previous two films), the new M, and the new Miss Moneypenny. It’ll be interesting to see whether they continue with this approach in the next Bond film, or whether Craig Bond film 4 will be the equivalent of the first film with a new Bond.

Lazenby: the ultimate transitional Bond. But what a great movie OHMSS was!

It’s also interesting to note that technically Bond is only a few missions into his career, and yet a big theme of the film – as noted above – was about being too old for the job. I read this as a reference not to the character’s actual age or stage in his career, but as a reference to the Bond franchise. But still, it makes the chronology of Bond quite intriguing and contradictory – in exactly what mission did Daniel Craig’s Bond drive a 1960s Aston Martin? A question for another day and another blog!

The Stories we carry within us: Why there's no such thing as a 'new Story'

It may be stating the blindingly obvious, but I’ve recently been realizing that many Hollywood mainstream films have what I would call a ‘self-evident’ plot structure. What I mean is, when you’re watching a film and you know roughly how it’s going to develop, and even how it’s going to end. Which is rather odd, when you think about it. Why would we watch something when we know (roughly) how it’s going to turn out?

When we watch Batman, Spiderman, Rocky – or even the King’s Speech for that matter – we know that the story goes something like this: First Part: establish character or character’s special power > Second Part: character goes through some kind of crisis > Third Part: Denouement: character is pitted against his nemesis, boxing opponent or stutter, and wins.

If you think about it, it’s odd we should all want to see stories enacted for us, where we know roughly (if not exactly) what’s going to happen. Why would we do this? Again, it may be to state the blindingly obvious, but I think the answer lies in the fact that although we might know what’s going to happen, we don’t know how it will happen.  I think much of our viewing pleasure relies on us having some idea of what kind of story we’re watching and therefore how it might develop. We go into the cinema with a set of story ‘templates’ in our mind which we automatically – and without thinking about – refer to in watching a film. For the Lord of the Rings we might access that part of our story knowledge which covers ‘The Quest’. For the Kings Speech, the story that gets invoked is probably a ‘Battling against Adversity’.

The analogy that I think helps here is to think about how poetry works. There’s (more often than not) a rhythm underlying a poem that we understand as a metre, and the interest of the poem is created by the ways in which the poem either does and does not conform to that underlying beat.

So, while we’re watching or reading The Lord of the Rings we have various in-built assumptions: that good will triumph, that the heroes will prevail – either by being victorious and staying alive, or by giving their life in a cause that’s ultimately successful. I think our expectations give us a structure which helps us mediate our emotional responses. So, we ‘get through’ the times of crisis in the film – as it were – by retaining the knowledge that it will all work out in the end. Such a structure is important, because otherwise stories would be reduced to a series of random events. Without an idea of what should and should not happen, why should we be surprised if it all goes wrong?

I’d say that, in particular, Hollywood mainstream films and kids’ films wear their plot structure very close to the surface. Within the first few minutes, the audience instinctively knows the general thrust of the film, who the bad guy is, and what the main character’s ‘mission’ is. It’s clear when we watch ‘Happy Feet’ that this will be a story about a character being different from everyone else, and finding acceptance – even adulation – within his community. Within the first ten minutes of ‘Finding Nemo’, it’s clear this is a film about reuniting Nemo with his parents – and we instinctively know that this reunion will take the rest of the film to accomplish.  When you think about it, it’s amazing how strongly rooted these templates are inside us. If ‘Finding Nemo’ ended with Nemo dying, or Nemo’s Dad dying, we, as an audience would feel cheated – we’d feel that in some way, this didn’t work. By all means, have one of the characters appear to be dead; by all means, have one of the characters believe that the other character is dead (in fact, one or the other, or even both scenarios are generally essential in these types of stories); but don’t actually have the character die. 

At the very least, the film-makers would have to find some kind of meaning in Nemo’s death – in other words, it would have to be written as a Tragedy, and – once again – we’d actually be aware of this fact right from the beginning of the film. Even if you didn’t know Hamlet as the most famous play in the English language, you would know instinctively that this is a story with an unhappy ending, a story about various wrongs committed before the play began, and which will now be put right at the cost of the hero’s life.

This all goes back to the ‘contract’ set up between the story-teller and the audience which is in place from the moment the film /story /play begins.  When someone starts a story with ‘Once upon a time’ (or its equivalent), our expectation is that this is a story that will be worth listening to.  Our response if a story does not live up to our expectations is not to lose faith in stories or films, but to identify the flaw – quite rightly - within the film itself. We might not even know exactly why it doesn’t work – we might blame it on the actor, on the special effects, on certain parts of the story – but we just know instinctively that the film doesn’t work. 

Conversely, there’s a particular kind of satisfaction we get when we come out of a cinema having seen a really good film – one that renews our faith in film-making, or in humankind or even – by extension – ourselves. I’m not banging a drum for these particular films, but I was struck by the fact that the Kings Speech reportedly had audiences spontaneously applaud at the end. And I remember the same happening when the Full Monty was first released (at least, it happened at the showing I was at). The audience’s experience here is about the film hitting the spot and needing to express that recognition collectively – despite the fact that the actors, director and film-makers are probably many miles away at that precise moment, and can't hear us.

I believe that we all carry around with us a set of story templates which are deep rooted in our emotional lives. These aren’t individual to us, but collective (although we may carry individual ‘variations’ or predilections for certain kinds of stories). The ‘against all odds’ story, the couple get together after  misunderstandings story – and so on. When we are satisfied by a story it isn’t just that the story is gripping or compelling on its own terms; it’s also in the way this individual story gives voice to the deeper story we carry within us. 

To put it another way, the need for stories starts when we are very young, and never leaves us. When we are children we want to hear the same stories repeated over and over again - and perhaps our adult experience of stories is simply a variation on this.