I watched Rush Hour 3 (2007) with some friends on television. It was a stupid movie. I know this because at the beginning of the climactic scene of the film (at the Eiffel Tower no less) my friend noticed a banner or some sort draped on one of the trusses, and immediately predicted that it would prove invaluable to Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker when they made their escape. Five minutes later, the banner served as an admirable parachute.
Rush Hour 3 was not stupid because using a makeshift parachute to escape is stupid plot device, but because we knew it was the inevitable plot device they would use; namely, because it was following the “Rush Hour” generic convention. There are almost identical escapes made at the end of Rush Hour (1998) and Rush Hour 2 (2001). By reducing a movie to its generic elements, by exposing the movie formula, audiences obtain a sense of power and superiority over the film. The audience feels cleverer than the movie. When the audience can figure out what is going on before the film intends them to, the film no longer has narrative control.
Of course, not all generic elements are stupid when recognized. Some elements almost have to be incorporated once the audience identifies the movie as of a specific genre. Movies have failed at the box office because they were advertised as a different genre than it actually was. Thomas Schatz’s Hollywood Genres draws an analogy between genre / film and grammar / language, showing genre as a tool which helps audiences understand the movie.
On the other hand, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005) is a smart movie because it is aware of generic conventions. Harry Lockhart (Robert Downey Jr.) and Harmony Faith Lane (Michelle Monaghan) are both fans of Johnny Gossamer, a fictional noir writer in their world. Harry describes Gossamer books to Gay Perry (Val Kilmer), as always having taking on two cases, one rather pedestrian, and the other bizarre, and as the story progresses realizes that the two cases are interconnected. And there is always a big shootout at the end, where the hero kills 13 bad guys. The same things end up happening over the course of the movie.
Even less subtly, near the end of the movie, Gay Perry, who was ostensibly dead at the end of the shootout turns out to be alive, though crippled. Harry, who is also narrating, agrees with the audience that he hates these types of endings, where all the characters inexplicably turn out alright, and survive to the ending, because “the studio is afraid of a downer ending” but “this is what happened” so what could he do differently? As the narration continues other deceased characters return onto the frame, including real world ones such as Elvis Presley and Abraham Lincoln.
Within the framework of Schatz’s model of evolutionary development of film as described by Steve Neale in Questions of Genre, “genre progresses towards self-conscious formalism”. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang would be the culmination of many different genres. By overtly recognizing common generic elements, the movie preempts the audience. We are invited to laugh at the absurdities of generic conventions along with the movie, and we feel clever in the process.
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I sympathize with the frustration you felt while watching Rush Hour 3. There's always that clever someone who likes to guess aloud how it's going to end, and when they've watched many films in that genre they're likely to be correct.
ReplyDeleteI think your final sentence summed up the brilliance of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang best: "We are invited to laugh at the absurdities of generic conventions along with the movie, and we feel clever in the process."
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang had the first laugh because it preempted that annoying person who likes to predict the ending, but it still allowed us to feel clever because we understood what it was doing. In this situation both the storytellers and the audience feel like winners.
Steve Neale has a great quote in his article Questions of genre: "Genres do not consist only of films: they consist also, and equally, of specific systems of expectation and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema, and which interact with films themselves during the course of the viewing process. These systems provide spectators with means of recognition and understanding. They help render films, and the elements within them, intelligible and therefore explicable." This quote is the essence of what you talk about in your blog. Because you are familiar with the Rush Hour franchise, you knew the type of generic conventions the films would employ. Furthermore, you thought that these were stupid, so you could have predicted that the third installment would have been stupid based on your experience with the previous two.
ReplyDeleteYou say Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang is smart because it is aware of generic conventions. I would go one step further and say it is smart because it is aware of generic conventions and then exploits them. As Wynn says in his blog post titled "A Lesson in Generic Deconstruction from Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" http://1wynnhunter.blogspot.com/2009/02/lesson-in-generic-transformation-and.html), this film recognizes the film noir generic convention of using a hard-boiled, attractive heterosexual detective. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, though, gives us Perry (Val Kilmer), a gay detective instead. This twisting of typical generic constructions is that makes the movie so smart.
There is nothing I like more than self-deprecation. Even better when its someone ELSE deprecating themselves...
ReplyDeleteI think you hit the nail bang on the head when you say that Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is "smart," because it recognizes its own absurdities (or rather, the absurdities of its ostensible genre) and pokes fun at them. In my mind, there are two, perhaps three classes of "intelligent" cinema.
Class 1: a film that is so revolutionary and creative and original, that it sets the stage for an entirely new set of conventions, genres, or cinematic techniques against which all other films in the class are compared. For me, the best example I can think of is Charlie Chaplain's "The Great Dictator" for the genre of political satire. While perhaps not the best (and perhaps, not even the first) politically satirical film, it is, I think, the defining moment for political comedy, or at least its earliest successful execution.
Class 2: Films that, while still part of an established class, are so amazingly brilliantly, so utterly original and wholly unique that they redefine the class and set a new benchmark across which all other films, both subsequent and past, are compared. For me, an example of this would be The Matrix for action films, in that every other action film (including others in the Matrix Trilogy) are judged and compared to the original, watershed film.
Class 3: Films that are neither original nor wholly innovative, but are so meta-cognizant of its own shortcomings and those of its genre that it goes out of its way to expose and capitalize on them. This last class of intelligent films are the ones that can either resurrect or spell doom for a genre, in that they are the last-shot of a film class that has become so recognizable and formulaic as to be easily stereotyped and self-satirized that all of its conventions can be easily (and successfully) mocked in the span of just one film.
Kevin-
ReplyDeleteI admit I feel that same frustration when it comes to movies. If I can predict what is going to happen, what is the point in seeing the movie at all? It is refreshing when we veer off that path of predictability commonly found in Hollywood movies. Yes, they are "downers," but isn't it more fun when you don't know what to expect from one scene to the next?
Also, your last line brings up an excellent point in that the movie includes the audience rather than alienates it with the film's conventions. By expressing their grievances with film conventions via comedy I think the audience swallows this pill more easily. In using comedy, we can more easily see the fault in the continuous use of these conventions that have made movies so predictable without taking the analysis too seriously. After all, no one actually wants to think when they go see movies, right?
At the same time, though. I was rooting for Perry to make it and did want Harmony and Harry to end up together. Perhaps by poking fun at the conventions it made it more acceptable to end the film conventionally. I'm not sure what that may mean, but I guess they are conventions for a reason, huh?
I feel that certain movies, such as Rush Hour 3, are made formulaicly for lucrative reasons. These are just movies that are quickly strung together (script wise) because it is easy to do so.
ReplyDeleteWe, as an audience, notice this as we watch the film progress. We see how certain elements of the film are predictable.
However, I think this is more prevalent in sequels instead of the original movie. Everytime we see a trilogy, we usually come to the conclusion that the first movie was the best because of the originality of the film. However, when we see basically the same plot in a different movie, we kind of get annoyed.