Narration is boring. Montages have the potential to overstay their welcome. Exposition in dialogue is dumb. There’s already so much going on in the movies that adding more set pieces would actually generate the opposite effect. Busy movies feel like they rush and a lot happens in a short span of time (think what if tom bombadil). The only way was to actually cut more stuff to focus even more narrowly on fewer plot points, to gain time where to insert set pieces that illustrated the time passing, with slower pace. When a movie has very few things going on in a long time span, it feels like it’s illustrating a very long span of time. This is a balancing act that all screenwriters and directors have to face. For example, look at interstellar vs. Castaway, which one objectively is about a longer period time, which one actually leaves you feeling like the characters experienced a lot of time?
I didn’t mean explicitly “narration” when I said narrative exposition since that isn’t it’s definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative). Regardless I agree with all your points in isolation and when taken to an extreme. But a well crafted script that includes ALL possible methods of helping the audience appreciate the passage of time is the goal. No movie, except a literal 1:1 real-time story, can ever communicate the passage of time in any way OTHER than some form of exposition.
Your interstellar vs castaway example is exactly my point. If they had tried harder with LOTR they could have made it clearer to the audience the length and duration of their travels. As it stands, and as you said, it was a balancing act to stay with-in acceptable movie run time, hit all the hard plot points, include some exposition (again to hit important plot points), and create a movie that didn’t bore people to tears.
They already did all the incluing exposition they could. Only infodumping was left to do (the examples I gave). They actually did infodump at the intro of the first movie. They could’ve cut more plot points. But people would’ve complained it wasn’t loyal to the book even more, as they did at the time. Unless you turn it into a dozens of episodes over 9 seasons series, you won’t have time to convey the passing of time. Then you run the risk of it being boring. What we got was already a miracle. Look at what they did with The Hobbit, they butchered it for exposition.
Fair points. I guess it just comes down to opinion on how effective they were at, and how important it was to, make the audience appreciate how long the journey was. I actually don’t have an opinion per say if they did it well or not. Like you said, it’s sort of a miracle they accomplished what they did, and as a movie I think it was great and a damn good book adaptation.
That or just some other more effective narrative exposition to give the viewer a better sense of time.
Narration is boring. Montages have the potential to overstay their welcome. Exposition in dialogue is dumb. There’s already so much going on in the movies that adding more set pieces would actually generate the opposite effect. Busy movies feel like they rush and a lot happens in a short span of time (think what if tom bombadil). The only way was to actually cut more stuff to focus even more narrowly on fewer plot points, to gain time where to insert set pieces that illustrated the time passing, with slower pace. When a movie has very few things going on in a long time span, it feels like it’s illustrating a very long span of time. This is a balancing act that all screenwriters and directors have to face. For example, look at interstellar vs. Castaway, which one objectively is about a longer period time, which one actually leaves you feeling like the characters experienced a lot of time?
I didn’t mean explicitly “narration” when I said narrative exposition since that isn’t it’s definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative). Regardless I agree with all your points in isolation and when taken to an extreme. But a well crafted script that includes ALL possible methods of helping the audience appreciate the passage of time is the goal. No movie, except a literal 1:1 real-time story, can ever communicate the passage of time in any way OTHER than some form of exposition.
Your interstellar vs castaway example is exactly my point. If they had tried harder with LOTR they could have made it clearer to the audience the length and duration of their travels. As it stands, and as you said, it was a balancing act to stay with-in acceptable movie run time, hit all the hard plot points, include some exposition (again to hit important plot points), and create a movie that didn’t bore people to tears.
They already did all the incluing exposition they could. Only infodumping was left to do (the examples I gave). They actually did infodump at the intro of the first movie. They could’ve cut more plot points. But people would’ve complained it wasn’t loyal to the book even more, as they did at the time. Unless you turn it into a dozens of episodes over 9 seasons series, you won’t have time to convey the passing of time. Then you run the risk of it being boring. What we got was already a miracle. Look at what they did with The Hobbit, they butchered it for exposition.
Fair points. I guess it just comes down to opinion on how effective they were at, and how important it was to, make the audience appreciate how long the journey was. I actually don’t have an opinion per say if they did it well or not. Like you said, it’s sort of a miracle they accomplished what they did, and as a movie I think it was great and a damn good book adaptation.