There are a lot of factors as to what makes a movie "good" or "bad." Perhaps an actor gives an outstanding performance, perhaps the cinematography is pretty, or perhaps the soundtrack is beautiful. The list goes on for a while, extending to art direction, sets, props, camera tricks, costume design, and editing. It's a complicated and multifaceted process that has brought us our favorite films like Jurassic Park, Terminator II, and Black Adam.
With these several factors introduced, today I'd like to analyze a very niche, je ne sais quoi aspect of filmmaking that's difficult to define. It's what sticks with them once the credits roll and the difference between mindless entertainment and a story - I'm talking about a movie's soul. The human aspect.
To better define this, I'll use the example that got me thinking about the soul in the first place. In Rian Johnson's latest Knives Out thriller, Wake Up Dead Man, a parish priest is found murdered. Benoit Blanc is called in to investigate the crime, and the prime suspect, Father Judd, is actually innocent. They team up to investigate the murder and clear his name, and eventually have to call a construction company. What follows is my favorite movie scene of 2025: After gaining the information they need, the secretary asks Father Judd if he can tarry with her just a little longer. She's been going through a hard time recently and starts sobbing, so Father Judd awkwardly excuses himself from Benoit Blanc, listens to her, comforts her, and prays with her, which ends up taking hours. Benoit Blanc is very frustrated by this disregard for the investigation's urgency, but Father Judd, exhausted, just lets him vent, and the movie continues.
It's not a scene you'll read about in the Wikipedia plot summary, none of the actors won an Oscar for this moment, and at the end of the day, it's just a phone call. But it's the most important scene in the film and has been noted as the most memorable part of the movie by many commentators. Why is that?
This is when Wake Up Dead Man proves that it has a soul. It's not just a fun thriller written by a writer; this is a human story with human characters and human moments. They act, think, and feel the same way we do. The things that happen to them have also happened to us, and we can relate to them. We can see ourselves in that situation, and the value portrayed is edifying.
The "soul" also exemplifies the movie's theme: This event later inspires the heavily atheist Benoit Blanc to let the murderer confess on their own terms rather than expose them dramatically as detectives like to do - in other words, he learns to understand grace. Offering kindness and empathy to those who don’t deserve it, but need it nonetheless. In the Barbie movie, Barbie sees an elderly woman sitting on the same bench as her and says, "You are so beautiful." In an interview with Rolling Stone, the director, Greta Gerwig, said of the scene:
"In early cuts... it was suggested, “Well, you could cut it. And actually, the story would move on just the same.” And I said, “If I cut the scene, I don’t know what this movie is about... To me, this is the heart of the movie."
Heart, soul, it's the same for this conversation. Be it finding out that the bride's child is still alive, a sunken ship on a starry night, a man walking into a bar, or reflecting on a life well lived, the soul is the moral of the story, and I've identified four key identifiers that can help us find the soul of a movie:
The Unsuspecting Soul
Sometimes a soul can sneak up on you in the moment you least expect it, the dramatic reversal now etched into your mind. A simple example to demonstrate the concept: In Top Gun: Maverick, Maverick is the same way we left him in 1984 - Defying authority, flying planes, and playing sports on the beach. He even has a fling with Jennifer Connelly! She comments about how she’s setting a bad example for her daughter and asks Maverick to leave out the window as if they’re teenagers. It’s played for laughs and Maverick drops out the window, but then he turns around and finds her daughter! My theater in 2022 was roaring with laughter. But then the daughter says “just don’t break her heart again.” The theater went from roaring laughter to absolute silence with that line. What Maverick was doing wasn’t just good times that I could comfortably watch, it had real world consequences and seriously affected the characters. This suddenly outlandish story is brought back to reality, and the stakes are that much higher.
The Disney Channel show Amphibia also comes to mind. After an entire season of silly hijinks, you get to the first season finale and everything falls into place for maximum drama. You'd expect the show to grow up afterwards, but it just doesn't. Not through the season two finale, not through the third season's mid-season point, not even halfway through the penultimate episode! I started to wonder if Amphibia really was "just another goofy episode filled with silly jokes for kids."
But then, after three seasons of nothing, Amphibia takes its time. It grows up. It rips off the band-aid and finally, finally becomes the epic fantasy you'd expect while having a last ten minutes that are heart-wrenching in ways you'd never expect. In the interest of remaining spoiler-free, let's just say that tears were shed and I consider it to be a finale that rivals Felina. Everything else I bring up you can expect spoilers, but I'll leave Amphibia vague because it's just that good. (The same thing happens in Cats, which, after two hours of annoying characters singing annoying songs, suddenly becomes good for "Memory.")
Perhaps the best example of the unsuspecting soul is from The Sixth Sense, a horror movie full of scary imagery, scary makeup, scary jumpscares, and creepy atmospheres. But it's more than just another horror movie with ghosts because of one scene right at the end... and no, it's not the plot twist. Because the kid can talk to ghosts, he uses this ability to give his mom a message from his grandmother, bringing her closure on an unanswered question and turning his curse into a gift. It's a really touching scene that stands out because of the violent landscape it came from, and Toni Colette was even nominated for an Oscar for this role.
Horror movies are uniquely situated to become cheap joyrides that rely on shock and gore to create drama, so having emotional weight is what seperates The Sixth Sense from the pack and turns it into a genuine story. It's the juxtaposition and reversal that creates space for the soul here.
It is therefore imperative that our stories have a bit of edge to balance them out; opposites attract, after all, so an unexpected moment of tenderness in a war-torn environment, stark realism in a fantasy setting, or drama in a comedy help us connect even better.
The Writing
Sometimes the soul expresses itself in a superbly written line. It can be beautifully simple (Train Dreams), pure poetry (Blade Runner), or just… the best writing ever (EEAAO). What matters most is that it's honest and sincere. A lot of writing can come off as tacky when it's overwritten, so making it relevant while not necessarily expressing the theme outright is vital. Don't do this.
In Jurassic Park, one of the coolest movies ever, one of the most captivating scenes is one without dinosaurs - it's when they all sit around the table and discuss the ethics and practicality of resurrecting dinosaurs. That's because the main theme - the soul - of Jurassic Park is that of reckless scientic pursuit and discovery, which Ian Malcolm terms "the rape of the natural world." It's interesting stuff and sets the context for why Jurassic Park isn't just a monster movie where humans get chased by dinosaurs, it's man vs nature. The dinosaurs came back, illogically, unnaturally, and this is just natural selection taking care of things. You can shoot or kick at a velociraptor, but the knowledge that you're not at the top of the food chain anymore isn't something you can fight against. It's a bit gritter than the sequels' rock 'em sock 'em approach where they just create something with more teeth each time.
The Little Mermaid wouldn't be nearly as impactful without the lyrical intricism of "Part of Your World," and The Wizard of Oz wouldn't be half as emotional without "Now I know I've got a heart, because it's breaking." Good, solid, memorable, relevant thematic writing is the night and day difference between a movie with a soul and a movie that goes through the motions (I'll talk about these bad examples a bit later).
Maybe I'm a sentimental sap, but I connect so well with Forrest Gump every single time I hear about the first time he met Jenny.
“Y’know, it’s funny what a young man recollects, cuz I don’t remember being born and I don’t recall what I got for my first Christmas and I don’t know when I went on my first outdoor picnic, but I do remember the first time I heard the sweetest voice in the wide world."
To paraphrase Tad R. Callister, "[This is dialogue] with a heartbeat—messages that live and breathe and inspire." The entire movie is full of beautiful lines like that. His description of the sunrise, asking if his son is like him, his words at Jenny's grave, Bubba's last words - Forrest Gump is a very funny, very entertaining historical comedy, but these pieces of dialogue are what blast the depth into Forrest Gump.
Similarly, The Good Place, a show about an Arizonan and a Floridian who end up in hell (that's an over simplification but you get the gist), has several heartwrenching moments sprinkled throughout. Since it's a half-hour NBC comedy about philosophy (what?), you can expect not only some hilarious writing but also some soul stirring writing. When Eleanor Shellstrop is confronting the human nature and feelings of abandonment, the beauty of the line adds to the feeling, and when Michael can't get rid of Janet, the eloquent way in which he expresses himself is superb.
Good writing and memorable dialogue is just a very important factor for any story, really.
Imagine this: If a cool action scene - where my focus is on the fighting - can be diminished by generic placeholder dialogue, then imagine how a dramatic scene can be enhanced by superb writing!
The Interpretation
While not a requirement, something I noticed in my research was that the soul could be a moment of self reflection for the audience. What emotions are the characters feeling? What are they thinking? Have I ever felt that way? When the filmmakers trust the audience enough to extrapolate their own themes and meanings from the story they are watching, our minds are engaged and we connect with the story on a personal, almost spiritual level. We also discuss it afterwards with those around us, which is important for word-of-mouth.
I don't know why, but somehow, a sunrise or a sunset is somehow one of the most soulful things a movie can show. The uncertainty or hope that each one can bring is always a wonderful metaphor for the plight of the protagonist. So... #lifehack I guess. Not a lot of bad movies have their characters watching the sunrise/set, but a lot of good ones do.
Let’s look at one of the most famous scenes in all of cinema for this - the binary sunset from Star Wars. It's 40 seconds of a two hour movie, hardly anything when you think about it - Luke Skywalker watches the sunset as the music crescendos - simple enough. But we have to ask ourselves, why are we watching this? Why are we here? It's not so we know that Luke wants to leave Tatooine - we established that in the previous scene with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru - so why, what are we supposed to feel here? We have to look at the screen and find it.
To me, this is where we see ourselves as Luke Skywalker. His journey isn't just about leaving Tatooine or joining starfleet or being where his friends are, even though that’s all important, it's a longing for the outside world - a world he doesn't know, a world that seems so marvelous and ripe for exploration. When Luke Skywalker looks out at that sunset, it's not just him looking. It's me. It's you. It's all of us, because it taps into a universal feeling of restlessness and knowing your destiny lies elsewhere. He wants more than what he has. It’s a difficult moment to define, but it’s the soul of Star Wars. That is why this scene is so important, so iconic, and so revered, even 50 years later.
I have so many examples of this and I want to talk about them all because they're all so amazing, but I'll stick to just my favorites.
The Wild Robot - after raising her gosling son Brightbill, ROZ finally has to let him go migrate with his own species - he is, quite literally, leaving the nest. He asks if she can give him a boost, which she does, and the geese fly away. ROZ sees that her task is complete. There is then just the briefest moment of hesitation before ROZ frantically runs after the flock. She hangs off of a cliff and desperately looks for Brightbill. She needs to see her son one more time before he leaves. That moment of inexplicable running, the words not said, is a human moment - even though this is a robot saying goodbye to a goose. I have geese in my backyard - they're jerks. So why am I crying? We have all felt that same impulse, there are people we just don't want to say goodbye to, that we run after until we can’t run anymore. When the geese soar away, it is so emotional because it feels like our hearts are flying with them. Then, later on in the movie, she literally places Brightbill inside of her heart. I didn't see this movie in theaters, but I am sure there was not a single, solitary, dry eye in the audience by the end. Or Inside Out, when Riley comes back after running away. You can only imagine how tight her parents must be hugging her, and the relief they are feeling.
These nonverbal moments are also very well contrasted against their overexplained/oversimplified parallels (I'm going to pick on Netflix for this), and this is where we tie it back to the writing part of the soul. Will stuttering for five minutes about how he realized he's gay is far less emotional than him crying out the car window after talking to Mike about being unable to express feelings, or Steve realizing Robin was talking about a girl. The latter two moments require connections and inferences on our part, it actively engages us, and we're curious as to how the other characters will react, meanwhilst we watch Will's monologuing passively.
And it’s okay to have characters say what they’re feeling, that’s an essential part of storytelling - but there’s a difference between a well-written scene that leads up to that feeling being expressed and point-blank looking at the camera and droning on and on about how you’re feeling so we understand the arc this character needs to go on (A personal favorite of mine is the quirky best friend pointing out that our heroine needs to go on more dates).
We’re gonna pick on Netflix again, this time the live action Avatar. Compare these two moments:
In the live action show, Aang is told his destiny is to become the Avatar and fight the Fire Nation. He's confused by this and says as such to Appa: Then he goes on a midnight stroll to clear his head and gets stuck in a storm. This... works. It's basic cookie cutter exposition dumping, but it works. But when we compare it to the source material, we see how much we lost with this simplification:
Not even talking about how changing "I never wanted to be the Avatar" to "I can't save the world" is character assassination, we can see how the soul was lost in the depiction of the scenes. Watching the cartoon, you feel for him and his monumental task. Riding on Appa through the wind, the sun setting, the amazing musical score, the way the clouds’ shadows move over them, the isolation of the height. It feels… dark, yet hopeful. It's far more impactful and memorable a scene than Aang talking to Appa.
We see this again in the scene where Aang leaves the Northern Air Temple. We all know that Aang seeing Gyatso’s skeleton is sad, and “I really am the last airbender” is iconic, but the ending scene is the one that always stuck with me: Momo steals food from Sokka and everyone laughs - any other show would have ended this way. The ending stinger is a staple of television. But then you see Aang flying away on Appa, the wind rippling through his clothes, the same music playing, and the temple slowly disappears into the background. Mist overtakes it, and Aang leaves the temple - his home - to go live in a world he doesn’t recognize.
You can only imagine what he is thinking.
And this moment is completely missing in the live action.
The Beauty
A soul should be beautiful and it is often inspiring. The 2025 Superman is, by all means, just another overstuffed and overly comedic superhero movie. Every time it almost becomes good, Krypto is there to ruin the scene, nearly every supporting character has one memorable moment to compensate for the fact that they're flatter than a pancake, and there's just not enough murder. Cough. But I will be darned if the ending scene doesn't single handedly compensate for all that. Seeing Clark's world revolve around him as he connects with his humanity and smiles is one of the most heartfelt movie scenes in recent memory. The movie is just so dang earnest in how it portrays Superman - watching it for the first time, all I could think was "that's our boy." It's impact on the audience was undeniable, and the "Punkrocker" song is now synonymous with good deeds. You end the movie smiling and leave the theater on an overwhelmingly positive note.
The soul can come from the beauty of a well fulfilled character arc. Seeing Puss in Boots confront Death has us cheering because he literally defeats him with the theme of the movie - "I will never stop fighting for this life", just as the "What's Up Danger" scene is amazing not only because it has amazing visuals, music, and reversals, but also because it carries the weight of seeing Miles become Spider-Man. The Batman's ending is amazing because we see Bruce become the symbol of hope that Gotham needs, The Clone Wars' finale is amazing because we see Darth Vader clearly acting as Anakin Skywalker.
The beatiful imagery used in all of these is also important - the settings for Puss's confrontation with Death, Miles falling while he rises, the sunrise accompanying the dawning of a new understanding of Batman, the isloation of Darth Vader surrounded by a clone graveyard and destroyed Republic Attack Cruiser (holy smokes) - the visuals can add a lot to the soul of a movie. It can't save them, because otherwise Oblivion would be a masterpiece, but it certainly enhances. When the visuals are how we see the soul, a movie can become a moving portrait as it does in 1917, which shows the beauty found even in war-torn cities.
A lot of old Disney movies get their souls from the beauty of romance. Romance is an inherently beautiful thing and something that all people strive to feel at some point in their lives (and from a storytelling standpoint, it makes for easy character growth) so it seems like a ripe source for connecting to audiences. But romance actually ends up being one of the hardest things to sell to an audience - we can believe that a man can fly well enough, but when two married actors are making out, well, we know that it's fake. So when Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Tangled make me feel the butterflies, I can tell that the movie has effectively gotten to me.
A believable friendship can do this as well: The moment of tenderness between Frodo and Sam at the end of all things is my favorite part of The Lord of the Rings movies. Helm's Deep is cool and all - gosh, it is so cool - but I absolutely love how, when the ring is finally destroyed, Frodo and Sam just reflect on how much they miss the Shire. Like dying soldiers reminiscing about home, they talk about things they wish they had done, and Sam heartbreakingly confesses: "If ever I were to marry someone, it would have been her."
There's also a lot to be said for the musical production adding to the souls of a movie, because in every single one of my examples, these scenes are accompanied by amazing music. I just don't know enough about music theory to analyze that aspect. I barely know enough about films as it is.
So, #5. Music. Have good music, I guess.
Important Reminders
Another thing I’d like to reinforce is that, just because you cry, or the movie is sad, doesn’t mean the movie has a soul. It doesn’t make it an inherently good movie, either. Yeah, I feel sad when Neteyam dies in Avatar: The Way of Water, but that’s just because Zoe Saldaña is an amazing actress and it really does feel like she lost a son. Otherwise, that kid had 10 lines of dialogue and 5 of them were “bro.”
People die all the time in movies, often times in very sad ways - Yondu, Vanessa, Professor X, Miguel’s family, Professor X, Vision, Rachel, Professor X, Uncle Ben, Spider-Man, Professor X - but that doesn’t make it inherently good. I might even be moved to tears, but that's because I'm a human with empathy, not because the story made me reflect on the themes, messages, and the impact the story has. The destruction of Ginza in Godzilla Minus One is terrifying and heartbreaking to watch, and Shikishima's reaction to it all is superb, but the soul of the movie is when he overcomes his death wish, the engineer forgives him, and he chooses to live. Gambit dying is sad, but the soul of "Remember It" is Magneto crashing into a statue of Xavier, which then falls and crushes countless mutants. Rachel dying is sad, but The Dark Knight's finale is literally a fight for the soul of Gotham, which is resolved when the inmates choose to self sacrifice. Then you have Batman taking the fall for Harvey Dent, juxtaposing the lives and endings of Batman and Two-Face. That's the soul, even if it's not the emotional low point in the story.
It's also important to recognize that a soul cannot save an otherwise mediocre movie. I despised the Mean Girls musical, but I would be lying if I said I didn't connect with Cady and feel the human drama on a personal level when she just breaks down and cries into her mom's lap. She's just a teenager dealing with drama, after all, give her a break! The gravely tones of "Misty Mountains" perfectly capture what Tolkien described in The Hobbit, but it doesn't save the movies from being mediocre. The LEGO Ninjago Movie is full of soul and I actually love it the more I rewatch it, but that soul didn't save it's box office numbers or save the LEGO franchise from being sold to Universal, who would proceed to do nothing with it for the next five years, leading to the cancelation of The LEGO Batman Movie 2, which would have been the greatest movie of all time and featured the Justice League fighting the Avengers with a script from the guy who made Community. It would have made up for years of pitiful LEGO DC offerings - the last time we got a Wonder Woman minifigure was 2020 - and was said to have been a Godfather Part II character deconstruction of Batman and his friendship with Superman, which would have been the best iteration of their friendship seen outside of a How It Should Have Ended cartoon because DC absolutely dropped the ball with Cavill and Affleck. But I digress.
The Consequences
There are also very grave consequences for not having a soul. There are a lot of movies I like, I really like, but I can confidently say they don't reach the depth they should have because they don't fully utilize their soul. Kpop Demon Hunters might have been my favorite movie of 2025, but that's because it's funny and snazzy, not because it connects with me on a personal level. Fs in the chat to Jinu, but the potential "soul", Rumi confronting her adopted mother, is both derivative and half-baked. The mom had, like, two scenes before this. The D&D movie is another movie I feel suffers from this. Even though it is a terrific, hilarious, and well cast masterpiece that I recommend to everyone, the dead wife smiling through the bedsheets isn't enough of an emotional core unless you've never seen a movie before. Some movies also get by just fine with a by-the-numbers moral and simple lesson: The 2004 Mean Girls is a good example. It's one of my favorite films, and I consider it to be the greatest comedy ever made, but it doesn't have any moments that fit what I'm describing here. No slight against the movie - it's still a 10/10 - but there's nothing super deep going on.
Then there are a few movies that just have no soul at all. Tenet is my go-to example of this, taking such a lack of interest in its own characters the main character is just referred to as "the protagonist." It's conceptually cool and the action is dope, but the reason it didn't connect with the audience is because it's impossible to connect with a story that has no soul. In this case, it doesn’t feel corporate, but it feels like Christopher Nolan was more interested in showing the mechanics of the time reversal than connecting with the audience. Inception, meanwhile, has you cheering over a pinwheel in a safe.
The new Fantastic Four movie was cute and kitschy, but I couldn't help but feel hollow while watching it. Aside from the fantastic first ten minutes where the retro future acclaims their heroes, the rest of the movie is unbearably by the numbers. There's the precise amount of drama needed to qualify as conflict and not much else. It made me wonder if there was a longer, more emotional cut of the movie that had to be trimmed to get it under two hours (Mole Man, a tertiary antagonist, agrees to help them in an off-screen conversation with Sue Storm), or they couldn't do anything too profound for fear of losing the target audience.
I feel that way with Dune: Part Two. It was as if they saw the misplaced idolization of the Joker and Norman Bates and had to reinforce that, no, Paul Atreides is not the hero. He's taking advantage of a religion to form a jihad, abusing the power given to him to exterminate his enemies to settle a personal grudge, and, as cool as nuking a force field is, Arrakis should be saved by its own people. Which feels kind of unnecessary to have spelled out for us when the entire point of Dune is that it is a critique of the white savior narrative and weaponized religion. The fact that Paul's jihad goes on to kill billions of people is what lets me know that he's bad, not that Chani said so. Gosh, they did Chani dirty with the second movie by having her be the writer's appointed mouthpiece. Consequently, Dune felt very empty (despite my having loved it), because it was about as subtle as "what are we, some kind of Suicide Squad?"
Preachy
A big part of the reason I wrote this essay is because of a deluge of movies I've seen recently that felt... hollow. With so much corporatization, globalization, committee fact-checking, boards of directors, and Netflix CEOs demanding that it be watchable through the miniplayer and advocating for the iPhone Lawrence of Arabia experience, a lot of things are feeling more sinister than they should. Even innocuous things like The Devil Wears Prada 2! When a movie lacks an emotional core, it no longer feels like a generic blockbuster; it feels like a corporate product designed to reach the widest audience possible and be as palatable as possible.
We don't "watch movies" anymore, we "consume content." Things aren't to be enjoyed so much as they are to be picked apart in lengthy essays such as this one, and something is only successful if it's liked because the majority makes right. We're not supposed to own, we're supposed to subscribe. We don't go out to eat; we have food delivered, and we don't shop; we create accounts at stores. Half of my ads are about getting rid of ads, and everything has a Pro+ version. Love is an emotion that doesn't gain traction, passion is overrated, caring is cringe, empathy is entitlement, beliefs are brainwashing, and critiques and criticisms garner clicks.
Once upon a time, the internet was a tool used by nerds to talk about Star Trek, but, like any emerging technology, it was exploited and prostituted the minute it became legal. Be it reputable news outlets, unreputable news outlets, company announcements, movie trailers, you name it - you heard it online first. Social media used to be a revolutionary way to keep in contact with people you don't see often - eg, it was a tool with a specific purpose - now, there are influencers who post funny daily 15-second reels and make a living off of Instagram. Some days it looks like the only reason Vine died is because no one could sell an ad in seven seconds.
I'm going to sound cringe with the word usage, but bear with me. As the internet became more common alongside house computers and mobile devices, a "normification" occurred on the internet. Just as Facebook used to be cool before the old people got to it, the internet itself used to be cool before corporations started trying to monetize every surface of it. Now it feels like everyone is out to sell something. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard parents say, "My kid really likes [x], and I always tell 'em, make YouTube videos! Then you can profit off of it!" And the kids just want to have hobbies, and, I dunno, stay offline? Passion doesn't need to be sold to be valuable, and not everything needs to be slapped on a box and sold. I mean, seriously, Microsoft. You're telling me that I need to pay 0.99 cents to get the hvec video extension so I can play my own home videos now? You included this basic feature for free just a few years ago, I update my software one time, and I have to pay to get it back? Screw you!
With too many people online, and by giving the loudest ones microphones, internet forums become increasingly common/validated places for opinions, despite them being designed to segregate people by interest, separate them from opposing opinions, and being overrun with bots. What is that going to create, long term? What does it take to feel right or justified about something? Two or three links? Five comments from inactive Reddit users on a post from four years ago? I didn't like Marc Hempel's art in The Sandman, I thought it was overly ugly and absurdist, so I looked it up to see if I was alone in that. I found a Facebook post complaining about it and nothing actively praising it, so I just assume I'm in the right. It doesn't matter if there's a million Marc Hempel fans; it doesn't matter if I looked up "Is Marc Hempel's art in The Sandman bad," and Google gave me the negative results first, my first three clicks and a quick read of poorly spelled internet comments destroyed any chance of subjectivity that my now objective opinion could have had. The system is designed to take away our critical thinking, eliminate our empathy, and to always assure us that we're right. A society where everyone sticks to themselves isn't a society at all, it's an isolation chamber, and we're actively reaping those rewards.
This directly affects the way that corporations - not movie studios, corporations - will make movies. As much as I lambast the "miniplayer" comments, they are right. People can't seem to stay off their dang phones! People are forgetting that phones are like any other tool and that, once they have served the purpose you picked them up for, you can put them down - You wouldn't go doomscrolling with a screwdriver. I don't like to say it, but how many parents have you seen use an iPad as a pacifier for a crying kid? That's not a solution, it's a distraction, and sets a dangerous precedent.
The problem with all this is that human beings are meaning seeking creatures. We don't live our lives looking at a graph hoping to maximize whatever factor we find lacking, we live our lives forming human connections, learning, loving, losing, laughing, and evolving. We don't try to survive on the lowest common denominator of joy, we want to live our lives to the fullest. We have dreams and passions, a destiny to fulfill, and stories to tell.
So when I want my movies to have a soul, it's because I love stories. I really do. I grew up reading and rereading Greek myths, Aesop's fables, and the Brothers Grimm. When I was eight, my dad was a history teacher, and every Thursday he would invite other history teachers over and they would just talk about stuff that happened, and I would always sit contentedly in the corner and listen. In The Land Before Time VIII: The Big Freeze, there's a pachyrhinosaurus that seems so knowledgeable. It's later revealed that he just always listened to interesting people tell their stories, so he became very wise, and I always felt like him. That's why I love the people who tell their life stories at the cash register! I just like hearing stories and imagining things.
So in today's age, when film and TV are the most common forms of storytelling, I want to feel that there's a human being behind the curtain with whom I can shake hands and ask "are you a human, too?" And they can say, "Yes, I am, now hear this story I am passionate about with a theme I find relevant for today's problems. Look at how intricately it is connected and monitor your own feelings to find how the story will impact you."
Stories, however fanciful, reflect our reality. Distort it a bit, maybe to make it a bit easier to digest or to avoid any parallels too close for comfort, but they are fundamentally human stories designed to appeal to human feelings. So when I watch movies that don't feel like human stories, that feel written to be content and maintain subscriptions, I don't feel my human emotions engage in the way the great classics have taught me they can. Beowulf, Gilgamesh, Little Women, A Wrinkle In Time, The Little Prince, The Lord of the Rings, To Kill A Mockingbird, 12 Angry Men, WALL-E, Ben-Hur, Spirited Away, Life of Pi - all of these are just as relevant and as imaginative now as they were then. Can I say the same about most things released since COVID?
As you might have guessed, this was just an excuse for me to ramble about movies I like and diss Netflix. Veni, vidi, vici, Q.E.D.
Comments
Post a Comment