How Bad Dialogue Ruined Thor 4

full love and thunder makes a terrible mistake with its dialogue just listen to this and let me know if you feel that something is off I admire your commitment to each other it's a beautiful thing the last is something I'll never have after thousands of years of living you don't seem to know who the hell you are my hope for you is that one day you will find something to make you feel this shitty I have loved before it didn't work out they either die or grismal death or they'd dump you with a handwritten letter I don't know which is worse but it's why I keep everyone at arm's length it just sounds wrong like these two guys don't talk like they're real people imagine if you were walking down the street and you had two guys chatting to each other like this you'd raise an eyebrow and look at them because something about the way they're speaking would strike you as fake and artificial what's really interesting here is how in theory this scene should have been quite good the characters have a great Dynamic going on Thor Envy Star-Lord and how he has a group of people he loves Star-Lord feels sorry for Thor and wishes he could have his own family like he does but Thor could never do that because so many people he's loved have either died or left him he's unable to fall in love again all of those sentiments are brilliant in theory so why does this scene not work well it's because the dialogue you just heard is what happens when a writer fails to use subtext and what is subtext simply subtext is what is not explicitly said it is the information dialogue gives us that is not on the surface level to demonstrate the power of subtext let's rewrite that scene you just heard so the only change is that subtext has now been introduced we begin with Salo joking around with the rocket and Drax one of them tells a joke and they all start laughing we see them having a wonderful time then we cut a Thor looking at them holding a smile that's failing to reach his eyes and as their laughter grows louder Thor's face oddly becomes sadder he leaves the ship Peter notices his pain so follows are you all right asks Peter oh yes fine just just needed some fresh air says Thor with a laugh uh Peter gives Thor a long analytical look and the fake happiness on Thor's face begins to crack come back in says Peter me and Rocket were about to play a round of Intergalactic Gargle Blaster you're welcome to join in oh oh no I wouldn't want to intrude he replies instantly another long long silence Peter looks Thor dead in the eyes and thought tries to look at him back but can't stand the concern on Peter's face so he looks away this goes on for a while before Peter breaks the tension giving Thor a friendly hit in the arm saying stay safe though you as well he replies end scene that exchange is the exact same scene only now all that meaning is buried beneath what the characters are explicitly saying and look how much more authentic the characters feel now that dialogue isn't exactly Shakespeare I'm not sure I'd want to put my name to it but it gets the point across because that is the power of subtext any dialogue exchange is suddenly so much more captivating and realistic when you employ subtext properly when you analyze how real people speak subtext is use in every other sentence and what's quite fascinating about Thor love and thunder is how the device is used a grand total of about one time in the entire film again and again information is explicitly said to you the audience and my God does it ruin this movie's dialogue here's another example no leave me here claim my place I appreciate this line sets up a joke about how she's gotten her own belief system wrong oh I hate to break it to you but we're a warrior to get into Bali die in the battle you survived oh [ __ ] which is a joke of questionable hilarity like many are in this film but was it worth that stiff fake feeling line of dialogue which gave very stilted Exposition in order to set up this joke even if that joke were laugh out loud funny I'd still say no because it's such a stiff line it makes her feel like a two-dimensional caricature rather than a real person and worsening things her a Norse Warrior forgetting how Valhalla works that would be like a Christian priest forgetting the object on which Christ was crucified it's not exactly believable that they'd forget it but anyway if a little bit of subtext had been employed here if she had simply said leave me and let me die A Warrior's death making no mention of Valhalla it would suddenly sound way better as a line and he could still make the joke work alongside that if you really really wanted to keep it in why would she need to mention it it they're both from the same culture she would know that Thor understands what she means here but if you ask me the worst offender by far the worst offender in Thor 4 are the multiple narration sequences but the more he pondered a life with Jane the more he feared losing that life and although Jane didn't want to admit it she was scared of loss as well this whole section of narration it really is a chore to watch what I just played was a brief snippet court goes on and on multiple times in this movie explicitly saying aloud everything that went through their heads at the time and it's because of films like this that narration in movies gets such a bad rap I'd never say that narration film is inherently bad but it's quite interesting how often narration does feel like an endurance test it is often the Storyteller giving us a dry info dump and we the audience have got to just sit there and slog our way through it in order to reach the stuff that is actually ending entertaining Thor 4 Falls for this problem and it thought Thor 4 Falls for this problem and it falls four four Falls for this problem and it falls for it hard I can't say that line I can't I'm not even going to redo it I can't even say that line Thor four Falls for this problem and it falls for it hard there we go I said it finally uh this isn't to say that all narration is bad I can think of a couple of examples that are really quite good as they tell compelling self-contained stories within the narration like Lord of the Rings does this as did the tale of the Three Brothers in the Deathly Hallows both of those are quite fun to watch and now I think about it the Naked Gun takes the piss out of the detective genre by having the protagonist narrate over himself as he's doing these ridiculous things and it makes for great parody the problem with the kind of narration that Thor love and thunder uses can be shown by simply playing said narration because it all goes like this but beneath his God bod there was still a sad but just trying to get out because all of the Bots that Thor had worn and over the years couldn't hide the pain that he was feeling on the inside she sure it's very blunt and on the nose there's no subtext to it and that's a problem but what's the bigger problem here is how there's nothing this narration tells us that a good writer couldn't have told the audience anyway but without the narration by merely writing a good scene of dialogue with Thor is chatting with cork perhaps and because of how well-written the dialogue is because of all the subtext laid between the lines the audience now knows all about what happened between end game and now all about Thor's fear of falling in love again no hard to watch expository narration necessary ultimately narration in film has a tendency to be quite boring not because it's inherently boring as a device but because narration is often used as a last resort by writers trying to get their Exposition across because they can't think of any other way to do it and that's fair enough frankly like every writer knows what it's like to be in that situation however unskilled writers are more routinely made desperate enough to resort to narration because they don't have the skill to inject sub text into the story itself in the way good Writers Do and also because they're unskilled writers they can't write good narration anyway as they fail to use the device in fun ways such as to generate really quite good humor and great characterization in Deadpool or to tell a genuinely gripping Standalone story such as the defeat of Sauron or the Three Brothers trying to outwit death in Harry Potter subtext is hands down the most efficient effective way of delivering Exposition that exists in a very brief space of time good writers can convey so much more Exposition than bad writers can using subtext and even better they'll do it without you even realizing that they've given you Exposition let me think of a quick example to prove that let's say we have a man at home and then a woman walks through the door he says how was work and she Huffs through the nose before replying oh you know then she forces a brief smile that quickly devolves into a tired expression he walks up to her concern on his face but before he can say anything she asks completely out of nowhere did the plumber finally come today now that dialogue again isn't exactly Shakespeare right but just from that brief exchange we can gauge so much information that is not explicitly said that her job is wearing her down and does so regularly we can discern that these two are romantically engaged by how he cares for her although that's not exactly subtext I don't think but what is subtext is how she asks that random segue of a question about a plumber to stop him from asking her what's wrong what does that tell us that she doesn't want to talk about it perhaps because she loves him and doesn't want to unload all of her crap on him and just sour his mood or perhaps she hates being pitied she hates looking weak potentially hinting at the floor in her character we also know that they're having problems with their plumbing and also that the plumber has stood them up at least once because she uses the word finally when asking if he came by indicating that she's frustrated we can also discern that this guy didn't go to work today while she did as he was there to meet the plumber implying that he's either self-employed or sick or on holiday or has another reason to stay at home while she's at work that right there was three lines of dialogue just three but look how much work those lines are doing don't just look at the sheer quantity of exposition given out look at how those three lines achieved all of this with seemingly such little effort this isn't obvious Exposition like this is why we're here unobtainium because this little gray rock sells for 20 million a kilo that's the only reason it's instead subtle Exposition that is what subtext does it doesn't just make dialogue feel way more natural which it does it makes the story feel just so rich as every line every action has so much meaning behind it if you can Master subtext you never have to worry about your story having blunt lazy on the nose Exposition like this after thousands of years of living you don't seem to know who the hell you are because not only have you given out that Exposition laid between the lines you've done it without the viewer even realizing that you've given them Exposition you've done it so subtly but what I think is the main power of subtext is how we humans love puzzles and the more subtext you have the more puzzles the audience has to solve how many times have you played a game you're just on the brink of solving a problem and then the character says aloud a huge hint on how to solve it just as you're about to solve it yourself and it frustrates the hell out of you because you would have rather solved the puzzle all on your own that is the principle behind subtext we love it when we're challenged and we hate it when we're treated like babies and our problems are solved for us Andrew Stanton the director of Wally and Finding Nemo but exactly the sentiment down perfectly by saying it confirms something I I really had a hunch on is that the audience actually wants to work for their meal they just don't want to know that they're doing that that's your job as a Storyteller is to hide the fact that you're making them work for their meal it's this well-organized absence of information that draws Us in I first started really understanding this storytelling device when I was riding with Bob Peterson on Finding Nemo and we would call this the unifying theory of two plus two make the audience put things together don't give them four give them two plus two the elements you provide and the order you place them in is crucial to whether you succeed or fail at engaging the audience editors and screenwriters have known this all along it's the invisible application that holds our attention to story I honestly think that if you as a writer had to write down impermanent marker a note on your wool this would be it this is a great Mantra to remember every time you ever write a scene how can I not explicitly say something but rather present the audience with clues that they can use to figure it all out for themselves when you pull that off in every scene all the way through your story that is the mark of a true Master of the craft don't give the audience four give the audience two plus two always bear in mind the simple truth that bad writers give us the answers but great writers they instead give us the clues I reckon Thor love and thunder would have been a way better movie if taika white easy had employed that Mantra into his script um like one other thing I'd like to say is that when I made this video I nearly got fished uh basically I was expecting a package for a Christmas gift I missed the delivery and then I got a text from UPS saying I needed to pay a re-delivery fee so I got my card out and it was only when I started to type in the numbers that I realized oh oh no this is definitely a scam like by pure Cosmic fluke I got the message when I was expecting a re-delivery from UPS themselves and they 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Channel: The Closer Look

Views: 1,995,157

Keywords: thor, thor 4, thor love and thunder, mcu, marvel, dialogue, how to write dialogue, how to, writing, creative writing, the closer look, the closer, closer look, video essay, video, essay

Id: wP9dt5NBNSM

Length: 15min 16sec (916 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 12 2022