I’ve seen a lot of movies and if there is one thing I have
learned it is that everything is dangerous. Now granted I learned that lesson
mostly from horror movies, but still, the lesson is important. Every possible
thing you could ever let get close to you is a potential instrument of your
death. And not a pleasant death either. The most brutal and horrific death you
could possibly imagine.
Part of me says blame Stephen King. Mr. King has made a
career out of taking innocent things and making them scary. That idea that your
quiet little suburban neighborhood is full of threats is a recurring theme in
the works of King. True, most people find clowns to be scary but after seeing
Pennywise in the TV adaptation of IT, I think more people developed a case of
coulrophobia than ever before. And I am sure every classic car owner has had a
brief flash of Christine (killer car movie) when looking at their beloved
automobile. Cujo, Cat’s Eye, and Pet Sematary (I just realized the film’s title
spells the word Cemetery wrong) pretty much destroyed the idea of the beloved
family pet for many.
The entire horror genre seems to be about taking things we
trust and let our guard down around and turn it into the stuff of nightmares. A
fun summer camp becomes the hunting ground for a serial killer (Sleepaway Camp
AND Friday The 13
th film series). A beloved children’s toy is
actually a sadistic murderer (Child’s Play series). Forget the toy, the
children themselves are dangerous (Children of the Corn, Village of the Damned,
Orphan, The Omen, and a bunch of other movies). Even the act of getting a good
night’s sleep is a dangerous (Nightmare of Elm Street). Absolutely nowhere and
nothing is safe according to the movies.
One could assume I am just being paranoid. That all these
threats are the result of mere fiction and things like this don’t happen in the
real world. Well to them I say “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in
the water…” That’s right, JAWS. Freddy might be fake but Jaws is real. A Great
White Shark can bite an adult male in half. And they do just swim and eat and
make little baby sharks. Plus those terrifying serial killers in films like
Leatherface were initially inspired by real serial killers like Ted Bundy and
Ed Gein.
Plus just because an item isn’t possessed by an evil spirit
doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous. Nearly 18,000 people die every year from
accidents that happen around the home involving items they never worried about,
right up until they killed them. Faulty wiring, poisons, slippery floors,
accidents waiting to happen. No need for an evil doll or a demonic car or even
a rabid family pet, you’re lucky to get out of anyplace alive.
To be honest though, the real thing people need to be afraid
of us is other people. As scary as monsters and ghoulies are, the true thing
that racks up the most kills in any movie are just ordinary people. The kindly
old lady, the trusty handy man, the
random hook up, all these people have turned into violent killers in the realm
of films. And it’s not just the strangers people might encounter in the outside
world. Many a family member has been portrayed in films turning bad and killing
people. Norman Bates killed his mom before the movie Psycho even begins (if
that’s a spoiler you really need to watch more movies). Carrie’s mom would lock
her in a closet and tried to stab her. Jack tried to hunt down and kill his
wife and child in The Shining. Joshua and We Need To Talk About Kevin both
depicted horrible cases of sibling rivalry, with older siblings plotting the
death of their new baby sibling.
After listing all these various forms of movie death, I can
understand why there are so many conspiracy theorists out there. If you let
your mind dwell on it, there really are a lot of things out there to be
paranoid about. But if I really worried that much about death I’d never leave
my house. I’d probably never even leave my bed, which means I wouldn’t have
seen all the movies that have me scared. So since the price of fear is not
seeing cool movies, I shall endeavor to not let the many things out there scare
me.
When I first started taking classes to become a
screenwriter, several people warned me against doing scripts that were set in
the past. Apparently they felt there is a very small market for historical
dramas. But looking at all the films there are depicting historical events,
that advice seems counter intuitive. It seems most people only get any sort of
knowledge about the past from movies. Now of course when I say “most people,” I mean “me.” I was
always a decent student in school but history was never a subject that I found
all that interesting. And so it was the realm of films that I was left to learn
about the past. Thankfully I am a smart enough cookie to filter most of the
truth from the bullshit, but most people aren’t as smart as me.
As hard as it is for people to believe, the movie 300 is
based on a true story. Actually it’s based on a comic book that was based on a
true story. That seems to be the problem with most adaptations of historical
events into films. We are seeing them through several filters. So many of the
facts are colored by the visions of the author and filmmakers. As such, most
people probably think the ancient Spartans fought in capes and loincloths. I
doubt they would have the reputation of such legendary warriors if they never
mastered something as simple as armor. But since Frank Miller, the artist of
the 300 comic, was inspired by the
statue of Leonidas at Thermopylae (the
location of the actual battle) and that statue is nude, he drew the characters
as such. It’s an artistic choice, which is to be respected but not trusted.
Mel Gibson did not single handedly win the Revolutionary
War. Hitler was not assassinated in a movie theatre. Dinosaur and Man NEVER
shared the earth at the same time (also the continental drift of Pangaea
happened over centuries, not instantaneously like Ice Age would have you
believe). The problem is that drama and history are sometimes at odds with each
other. Trying to tell an interesting story must be economical, meaning many of
the finer details of history are edited out for time. 
The worst thing than editing history for dramatic license is
when people write supposedly historical dramas in order to put forth their own
agenda. This seems to be the popular craze among political pundits and
religious hucksters. As much as conservatives love screaming “Liberal
Hollywood,” it always seems to be them showing huge amounts of bias when
putting forth their version of historical events. A film I remember in
particular is an American Carol which is a comedic (at least it was listed as
such, though it wasn’t very funny) was nothing more than a non-stop bashing of
every Liberal/Democratic belief there is, with no subtlety about it. And their
documentaries are straight up propaganda, so I find the term “Liberal Bias”
almost hilarious sometimes.
A lot of problems also with telling a historical story is
that films require a hero. The story needs someone for the audience to root
for, and while a protagonist can be flawed, and the flaws can be what make them
interesting, sometimes the rougher edges of what is in a person’s past need to
be sanded off. Many movies have been made about America’s race to space, but
little has been mentioned of the former Nazi scientists who helped us get
there. The Revolutionary War was fought for freedom, but we rarely see the
slaves still working in the fields. There is a need by filmmakers to polish
their subject matters before putting them to film.
The truth is, your average film is usually ninety minutes
long. Longer in some cases, but usually between ninety minutes and at most
three hours. That’s not a lot of time to get a lot of information across.
Anything that is not essential to the story is going to get lost in the
shuffle. In all honesty, a film should
never be judged against history. History spans centuries with a cast of millions.
Hollywood just can’t compete. All Hollywood can do is entertain. So if you want
to be entertained, see a movie. If you want to learn history, read a book. Just
not the book based on the movie.
