10 Famous Movies That Screwed Up The Most Important Part
2. Argo - The Nuance Of Process
The problem with true stories, especially true stories based on harrowing events, is that the events become infinitely less harrowing when we know everyone gets out alive. The best way to combat this is to make your movie less about the 'what' and more about the 'how'. The problem with Argo is that its entire marketing campaign was about how a bunch of Americans escaped Iran, then the actual movie was about whether or not those Americans would escape Iran, as opposed exploring the how they actually got out in, say, Sorkin-esque detail. Take for example another true story, Apollo 13, directed by Ron Howard. Most people knew the astronauts stranded in space made it home okay, so Howard made a deliberate effort to make the movie entertaining in ways that didn't rely solely on how the story played out. He used NASA's 'Vomit Comet' to shoot actual zero gravity footage of the actors, generating a wondrous realism that ignited the imaginations of film-goers everywhere. He shot inside NASA's facilities, exploring the rigors of training with an unmatched authenticity. He focused on the era, and how in reality, not a heck of a lot of people cared about Apollo 13 going to the moon at the time, until things went wrong. Apollo 13 was a movie about how enthralling the process of all this stuff was, versus trying to say the results of that process are the entertaining parts. It's the difference between erotica and pornography, which makes Argo a porno. While the movie does spend some time introducing us to the wacky world of Hollywood and the various inner workings of the CIA, the movie never truly dives into the material in a way that makes the exploration of those elements worthwhile. You don't feel any more knowledgable about how Hollywood works or how the CIA works by the end of the movie. By the time Apollo 13 ended you had an incredible appreciation - and understanding of the astronauts, the countless people supporting them, and what, specifically, their jobs entailed and how they did them. Worse, Argo relies on manufactured drama - to the point where the movie invented a scene where all the American hostages had leave the house they were holed up and head to a market square for a 'location scout' just so the movie could have another moment that's supposed to be tense, but wasn't, because we all know everyone gets out alive. The big climax, as the hostages are interrogated by airport security officials? Same deal - why spend all this time showing up these tense moments when we know how it plays out and everyone lives happily ever after? It was Alfred Hitchcock who said a bomb under a table is tension, and a bomb above a table being diffused is action. Argo attempts to go for the bomb under the table method, but forgot that everyone sitting at the table was impervious to explosions.
