Thursday, January 14, 2016

Aristotle Meets Godzilla

As a boredom reducer for my treadmilling, I started to watch the 1998 Godzilla movie. At one point early in the film, time is of the essence to find out what's going on. So urgent are the authorities that they send a helicopter with a dozen armed men to bring back the earthworm-radioactivity specialist from Chernobyl and put him on the case.

Then comes a scene where he and another principal investigator are racing to the scene of a ship destroyed by this unknown beast. However, the investigators are racing overland in Jeeps--while helicopters accompany them at groundspeed. This makes for interesting spectacle, showing half a dozen vehicles driving along dirt roads, and two black helicopters flying in tandem with them. But Aristotle would have said that plot is more important than spectacle. We are forced to ask the obvious question, "Aside from its cinematic effect, why doesn't the scene show the investigators racing to the site of the shipwreck, arriving not in Jeeps but in the helicopters, while the support personnel come later in the Jeeps?"


Get the book and find out what makes good drama according to Aristotle:


And here's a book just on point--Aristotle for screenwriters:


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