Are you stuck in movie logic?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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."

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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