Elliot Kessler

Let’s face it: stories exaggerate all the time. We always embellish, whether the story is fictional or not. That’s why, with fishing stories, the fish gets bigger every time the story is told. That’s why we have shows filled with over-the-top drama, making something out of nothing. That’s why we have massive action movies with hoards of aliens and one lone hero to save everyone.

We enjoy these crazy embellishments. They make our stories more entertaining, adding to the drama and the excitement. Huge, over-the-top stories are fun, but what happens when you add embellishments to an otherwise grounded story?

Look no further than “Shang-Chi” and “The Commuter.”

Shang-Chi

“Shang-Chi” is a fun movie filled with fantastic fight scenes and a remarkable story that feels similar to classic kung-fu films. I enjoyed it immensely, but it did have a problem. What began as a fun action scene always blew up into an extravagant VFX showcase. The movie was still excellent but lessened because of this issue.

The two best instances of this are the bus scene and the final battle.

In the bus scene, we see Shang-Chi attacked by his father’s men in an attempt to get his necklace. Shang-Chi fights back, and we get an incredibly choreographed scene with some fun martial arts action. It was very entertaining and also mostly grounded. It wasn’t a realistic fight by any means, but it was still simple hand-to-hand fighting. Nothing more than that. That was special.

But then, a guy with a sword for an arm cuts the bus in half, and Shang-Chi and his friend, Katie, must survive the attackers while saving everyone on the bus.

While this change to the environment is good because it elevates the stakes for the scene, it takes away from the grounded tone. It turns the scene into something it isn’t supposed to be. It was a fun, entertaining fight scene but became a mindless CGI fest.

A similar thing happened during the climax of the movie. Shang-Chi is forced to fight his father to save the world, but his father believes he has to do what he is doing to save Shang-Chi’s mom. This is a fascinating conflict filled with emotion and drama. However, in typical Marvel fashion, this conflict is ended not by answering the thematic questions but by bringing a giant CGI monster into the scene for the heroes to fight. The whole thing only escalates from there until the once-grounded fight looks like something pulled straight from an anime. (I’m not bashing anime here. But this film should not have tried to be anime.)

While adding a massive monster into the mix might seem like it would make the stakes for the scene higher, it makes them lower because the emotional weight of the film has disappeared along with Shang-Chi’s dad. Shang-Chi no longer has any personal stakes. It becomes another basic save-the-world story. It’s not exciting or inventive anymore, which is a shame because this movie could bring Marvel out of the formulaic gutter it has thrown itself into. Still, it didn’t become anything more significant than a good movie because of its insistence on over-the-top action.

The Commuter

A thriller starring Liam Neeson and released in 2018, “The Commuter” was a fun, exciting film about an ex-cop on his daily commute back home after getting fired. On his commute, a mysterious woman meets with him and tasks him to find a person on his train and plant a GPS tracker on their bag. The reward is a hundred thousand dollars. Having just been laid off and having no way to provide for his family, the ex-cop takes the job. But things quickly get out of hand as innocent civilians begin getting killed.

I enjoyed this movie. It isn’t a well-known, popular film. It’s simply an enjoyable, original thriller. It isn’t a continuation of a franchise, it isn’t a reboot, and it isn’t based on a book. It’s simply a fun, exciting experience. I am all for original films. The unfortunate truth is that most of them get thrown into the pile of average movies. I don’t think “The Commuter” was average. I believe it was slightly above that. However, there were plenty of times when the film shoved something into a scene where it didn’t belong. Mainly, the film uses humor in scenes that cannot have humor if they are going to work. But the one scene that I thought was the worst was the train crash.

In the movie, Michael, the ex-cop, convinces the remaining passengers to get to the back car so he can easily find who he is looking for. However, the train has a problem when the conductor tries to stop it, and the brakes stop working. The train is about to round a corner, and the whole thing will be derailed. Michael has the idea to disconnect the last car, where all the passengers are, before the train crashes.

The last car is disconnected just as the train begins to derail, but Michael is in the wrong car. Michael gets flung out of his car into the rear car as the train is derailed, and the rear car goes skidding, drifting along two tracks until it screeches to a halt.

I’m not sure my description was excellent, but this scene was ludicrous. It was over-the-top and absurd, with explosions and debris everywhere. I found myself laughing aloud with the rest of my family at a scene that was supposed to be tense.

I would recommend looking it up on YouTube to get a sense of what this scene was like. This was supposed to be a very grounded, realistic film. It succeeds in that throughout most of the film. This is the one scene that broke it. This shattered the illusion that the film could actually happen. It was unfortunate, and it took the movie from being great to being good. This isn’t the only problem that the film has, but it is one of the two most significant issues I found when watching it.

When Insanity Is Best

Some may wonder why I consider a simple train crash unrealistic, while there are movies about gods, aliens, and dragons. Surely a train crash isn’t a big deal when we have movies like that, right?

Wrong.

As I said in my worldbuilding post, consistency is critical. Scenes only feel unrealistic when they deviate from the previously established rules that your story has set up. If your story has a magic system, then magic feels realistic. If your story has aliens, then aliens feel realistic. So, if your story is grounded, I expect it to follow the same physical rules as the real world. I don’t expect to see trains flying off the rails and exploding extravagantly. I expect a train to come off the rails and fall on its side.

I have no problem with over-the-top scenes. I love them. But they only work in an over-the-top story. For example, look at “Clone Wars” from 2003. It has some of the most insane, crazy action scenes you can find. That’s what the show is made of. But because these extravagant scenes are woven into the story’s core, I don’t find it ludicrous. It’s exactly what I expect to find in that show.

Conclusion

If you want to have over-the-top drama, action, or comedy, then your story should be an over-the-top drama, an over-the-top action story, or an over-the-top comedy. Don’t ground your story in reality only to add aliens at the end. It might subvert expectations, but surprises aren’t always a good thing in stories. Ensure the audience gets what they came for, and make your tone consistent.

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.