None the Worse for Wear
Nobody likes getting hurt. As much as possible we’ll avoid situations and activities that place us in physical danger. Adrenaline junkies flirt with suffering injuries or chancing death, displaying scars and old wounds as badges of honor, but they don’t actively go looking to harm themselves. No sensible person wants to break their body.
When we read, hear or watch another person suffer injury there are a host of reactions we can express: shock, queasiness, disgust, laughter. We might say, “That’s gotta hurt,” or be reduced to an exclaiming inhale of surprise because we can appreciate how it might feel. We empathize with the physical pain of others — not wanting them to come to harm (for the most part).
Film and television presents viewers with characters who are subjected to endless forms of injury. Not your everyday paper cuts and banging-your-shin-against-a-chair kind of injury, but endangering your life kinds of injury. Kurt Vonnegut said that characters have to suffer during a story in order for us to connect with them — to feel for them. Without pain or struggle why should we care what happens to them?
Apparently many screenwriters have forgotten about the need for empathy. In action and adventure movies in particular, the fragility of the human body is frequently downplayed or ignored. Characters are thrown into scenarios with a high chance of mortality and emerge with no substantial or life-affecting injuries, as if nothing ever happened. In these worlds people are made of rubber and magic — gifted with plot invulnerability and the writer’s disregard for dramatic stakes.
The heightened resilience of fictional characters in film and TV can be attributed to the constant pushing of boundaries. The action has to be bigger, the risks have to be greater, and the scale has to expand. The problem is that as the stakes grow characters are being subjected to more and more punishment — our suspension of disbelief falls over the edge, and the humans are no longer recognizable as such. How can we fear for their lives when we know they’re near-invincible?
Twisted Metal
There is a seemingly endless number of cinematic car chases and car crashes on our screens. Where many victims of car crashes are admitted to hospital or die from their injuries there are action stars who clamber out of a wreck, maybe with a small cut on their brow, or maybe their shirt has a little tear. They walk it off, and after a minute they’re fully recovered, and ready to leap into the next action scene.
If a plane falls out of the sky in an action movie or TV show you can rest assured in the knowledge that the hero will be safely strapped in and unscathed while the rest of the passengers are strewn about the cabin in pieces. Or the hero has been thrown clear of the destruction, with only superficial cuts and bruises.
Having recently seen Kong: Skull Island the survivors from several helicopter crashes come out with a few scrapes and bloody noses. There are no broken bones or physical traumas from the extreme forces they experienced during impact after their battle with Kong — Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson look more inconvenienced than physically injured.
Boom Boom Boom
Hollywood’s depictions of explosions has been misleading for a long time. In action scenes, characters can outrun massive explosions and high-speed debris or shrapnel is no cause for concern. The shock wave from a bomb or missile is rarely a matter of worry for characters, when in truth that is exactly what kills people. When Ethan Hunt is thrown like a rag doll by the blast of a missile in Mission: Impossible III? If the blast is enough to carry him it’s enough to kill him. The extreme pressures experienced by the body cause death, not the fireball. And what if it’s a nuclear explosion? For a screenwriter radiation is no big deal, either.
The opening scene of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker does justice to the real threat from a bomb. Attempting to flee from an IED that has been triggered by an insurgent, a bomb disposal expert, played by Guy Pearce, is caught by the blast and killed instantly. For the rest of the film, the viewer’s awareness of the danger the soldiers’ operations pose enhances the drama and suspense. The threat is very real, and if something goes wrong, they die.
Mano-a-Mano
I’ve expressed my reservations about violence as entertainment before. A supporting argument I have against many fictional depictions of violence is the lack of consequences. In the same way violence is misrepresented the physical harm to bodies as a result of violence is underplayed and misunderstood.
The devastating effects of bullets are simplified to ‘lethal’ or ‘non-lethal’ — if a bullet doesn’t kill you right away then it’s “just a flesh wound.” Bullets can be removed (even though that’s bad idea) and action heroes can be patched up with stitches, band aids and the cliché arm in a sling. Side effects from gunshot wounds don’t exist in the action genre — severed or damaged nerves aren’t a concern, blood loss isn’t a problem, and emotional trauma is never raised. If you’re shot but live you’ll make a full recovery — physical therapy for victims of gun violence doesn’t exist in fiction.
One myth that continues to this day and appears endlessly across film and television is the knockout punch. Whether it’s a karate chop or the butt of a gun to the back of the head people can be rendered unconscious with a single hard blow, only to wake minutes or hours later with no problems whatsoever. It’s an accepted staple that has no bearing in fact. If a person were to be knocked unconscious for longer than a minute it could be a sign of brain damage or internal bleeding. Stunning someone with a severe blow to the head causes lasting effects, sometimes even death. It’s irresponsible for screenwriters and filmmakers to perpetuate this myth as ultimately harmless and inconsequential.
Die Hard
The escapades of John McClane over the five installments of the Die Hard franchise exemplify how the increasing resilience of a character can numb an audience to the actions on screen. From the believable first entry to the ridiculous latest entry A Good Day to Die Hard, the franchise changed from being the template for action films to becoming the generic fare it once transcended.
In John McTiernan’s original 1988 film, McClane is not a superhuman figure — he is a flesh and blood character who takes a serious beating in his battle against Hans Gruber and his henchmen. When his wife, Holly, sees him in the final confrontation bloodied and shuffling on his glass-cut feet her reaction is simply “Jesus.” He has been through hell, and his injuries hammer home his weaknesses, but also demonstrate his bravery and duty as a cop — he won’t stop until he’s physically unable or until he dies. His character is reflected in his increasingly battered body.
When action movies are given the sequel treatment screenwriters will tend to want to raise the stakes, inserting their heroes into more perilous scenarios against greater odds. The problem is that heroes need to endure more punishment and continually survive these increased threats. They risk losing their grounding as relatable, physically fragile people, transforming into unrecognizable exaggerations of their former selves.
In Die Hard 2, McClane still takes a beating fighting terrorists at Dulles International Airport, but not to the same extent as the first. In Die Hard with a Vengeance he jumps overboard the second after a container ship explodes in a massive fireball and shock wave. By the fifth entry, McClane walks away after being thrown into a window by a spinning, out of control helicopter, then falls through a glass ceiling into a pool as the same helicopter crashes into the building and explodes mere feet away from him. Our reaction isn’t “wow”, but a shrug of the shoulders. McClane has become dramatically invulnerable, thus eliminating any sense of empathy or connection we once had with the character.
The human connection will make or break a film. Outlandish stories and action scenes grace our screens all the time, but if we can insert ourselves into these worlds through a realistic analogue, who feels like we feel, then we can accept them. Human characters need to stay grounded. They need weaknesses. They need to be broken. Without risk where is our compassion? Without pain and suffering and trial where is their humanity?
I don’t want my heroes and adventurers to be indestructible. What makes a strong and heroic character? Someone who stands and faces the limits of their mortality.
Coming soon: They Say You’re the Bad Guy
