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The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

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231 points frogulis | 1 comments | 15 Jul 25 03:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.295s | source
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Duanemclemore ◴[15 Jul 25 04:32 UTC] No.44567845[source]▶
I don't know if calling it a "New Literalism" is helpful. I just don't know that a penchant for literalism ever went away.

Now, what IS relatively new is the "ruined punchline" phenomena that they identify (without naming) on the movie recap podcast Kill James Bond, which is that contemporary movies always ruin jokes by telling one, say... "x" and then having another character chime in with "Did you just say 'x' !?"

I think there's a fear of losing attention because you're asking people to think about something other than the eyewash happening right in front of them by inviting them to have to -think- about a movie.

Anyway, to close: "No one in this world ... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people..."

- HL Mencken

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justanotherjoe ◴[15 Jul 25 05:02 UTC] No.44567959[source]▶
Can you describe more about the "ruined punchline" thing? Cause that sounds natural to me. Like in Jurassic Park, Alan Grant hears "We clocked the t-rex at 32 mph" and he goes "Did you just say 't-rex'?". Actually they repeat it like 3 times more to really lean into it.

And I guess my point is that Jurassic Park doesn't feel modern or clumsy in this particular execution.

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1. AlexandrB ◴[15 Jul 25 15:21 UTC] No.44572110[source]▶
Part of it is overexposure. The same thing happened to snappy "Joss Whedon" dialogue. This stuff worked really well in Buffy and Firefly, but Whedon was good at writing dialogue like this and he knew when not to use it. We've now had 15+ years of various writers at Disney doing crappy Whedon impersonations and this style of dialogue has worn out its welcome for many.