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Don’t get the wrong idea, Pandas: we absolutely adore stories with a twist! In fact, we live for them. Yours truly is a massive fan of projects like The Matrix, Coherence, Triangle, Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor, The Truman Show, 12 Monkeys, The Butterfly Effect, etc. I would love to talk your ear off about these movies all day long. And I’m constantly on the lookout for more similar stories.
We love it when filmmakers incorporate ideas of hidden worlds, misperceptions, conspiracies, and warped interpretations into their stories. And if they leave a trail of subtle hints and breadcrumbs for keen audience members to follow—even better! Sometimes, it takes a second or third viewing (along with a sprinkling of articles and YouTube reviews) to fully understand the story.
However, no matter how many captivating twists, layers, and easter eggs this story has, it still has to be presented in a somewhat approachable way.
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The audience needs to be able to follow along… for the most part. This isn’t to say that filmmakers should be catering to the lowest common denominator. Not by a long shot. But if you want your film to be widely viewed and discussed on a global level, you have to be willing to compromise in certain parts of the project.
This might mean ruthlessly editing your script for better clarity and running your story by various focus groups to see if people ‘get’ it. Films have to be entertaining. They have to be meaningful. They should make us reflect on our relationships with other people and the world at large. If the filmmaker is the only one who’s entertained and found meaning, there’s a serious disconnect. The movie is then more of an intensely personal project than something that ought to be shown on the silver screen.
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Bored Panda reached out to the Reddit user who sparked the entire interesting discussion, and they were kind enough to share their thoughts on a few things.
We were very curious to get the OP's thoughts on whether or not all films should be easily understood by the audience the very first time they're watched.
According to the author of the thread, it's not just up to the filmmakers to cater to the audience.
"I don’t think they all need to be easily understood by every one on the first viewing," redditor u/IDontLikePayingTaxes shared their perspective with Bored Panda.
The audience, in turn, needs to put in the proper amount of effort to understand the movie, too. "Sometimes, it’s the audience's fault if some people don’t understand exactly what’s going on in the first viewing," the redditor explained.
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In other words, just because someone doesn't 'get' the plot, themes, or twists, it does not necessarily mean that the script or direction is at fault. In some cases, the audience itself needs to pay closer attention to the events, dialogue, and details.
Bored Panda was also interested to find out about the inspiration behind the captivating online thread. The OP was happy to shared this with us and referred to a popular 2016 sci-fi mystery.
"I watched Arrival for the second time and actually paid attention and got so much more out of it than the first time," u/IDontLikePayingTaxes shared with us.
"I was wondering if others had similar experiences so I decided to post the question on /r/movies."
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I love all the obvious stuff that is pointing the themes out but I was too mesmerized to take in the first time.
The problem is that some filmmakers and scriptwriters don’t get (or ask for) a different perspective. They believe that their vision should be completed ‘as is.’ Humility, then, is essential here. And that means asking for blunt and brutal feedback.
It’s easier for someone to understand complex ideas when they’re surrounded by that particular story day in and day out, during the creative process. These same ideas might be nigh incomprehensible to your average moviegoer. It then falls to movie industry pros to either slightly simplify those complicated ideas for the sake of clarity or to rework them entirely in favor of more down-to-earth ones.
Some ideas, no matter how brilliant, might be too complex to cover in just a single scene or a few lines of dialogue. In that case, the filmmakers need to lay the groundwork earlier on in the story. Or they need to find some creative metaphors that would help their audience understand the core issues without sacrificing the depth of the ideas themselves.
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Imagine The Matrix movies without the iconic red and blue pill scene. It summed up a huge chunk of the project’s essence in a memorable way that has ever since become an intrinsic part of pop culture. Without that scene, the issues that the film covers would have been that much harder to comprehend.
Of course, you always have the freedom to film your ideas as you see them in your mind because you fully believe in your vision. You want your project to be genuine. And complicated. And bizarre!
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