After thinking for a bit about the piece I wrote yesterday on abrupt endings and tonal shifts, I began to realize how many movies I’ve seen that have suddenly seemed to change genres halfway through. Some of them do so a little more abruptly than others, and with varying success. The success depends on a number of things, but it has a lot, I think, to do with something Davide Mana pointed out yesterday: audience expectations.
Yes, there is a certain expectation that when you go to see a romantic drama, it’s going to be a damn romantic drama and not a disaster flick. However, I’d like to point out…Titanic. Perhaps this isn’t the best example because pretty much anyone going in to the theater knew the history involved, so there was an expectation of the disaster in mind. However, how would someone that had no idea about what happened to the Titanic think of the movie? That might be pretty shocking of a tonal shift to deal with. That being said, there were some tones carried throughout the movie, like hints of ‘danger’ earlier on with Rose’s fiance and his sidekick, that tied everything together so when the real danger kicks in later, it just feels like it’s the same danger amped up to the nth degree. So, yeah, audience expectations plays into this being able to work as a film.
Another example of tonal/genre shift was pointed out to me yesterday by C.J. Casey, and that is Psycho. Again, I believe that audience expectation played a large part of the shift being accepted, as this was something that Hitchcock played with in other movies, like The Birds. And, also, it’s Hitchcock. People have expectations not just based on the material itself, but also on the creative people behind that material. If I go to see a movie based on a Stephen King book I expect horror, not a romantic comedy or a musical. So, perhaps a small part of why the shift in Psycho works so well is because in some ways we, the audience, aren’t entirely surprised by it.
I think one of my favorites instances of abrupt tonal/genre shift is From Dusk til Dawn. That movie starts out as a gritty crime thriller, with two brothers kidnapping a family and holding them hostage. And then, suddenly, vampires! And it becomes a horror movie. There’s a lot of wtf-ery at first, but it’s such a great ride that you quickly get over the shift and just enjoy the rest of the movie. Another thing about this movie is that the overall tone isn’t changed too much; it goes from crazy, to crazy on steroids with a twist. It doesn’t hurt that the second half of the movie is a lot more fun and slapstick than the first half, so you end on an up note (even if mostly everyone is SPOILER). I should probably point out that this type of shift works out equally well in The World’s End when suddenly, aliens! (although, to be fair, that film was marketed as an end of the world flick, and it was actually the first half standard drama that caught me off guard.)
Defy audience expectations at your own peril. That is a lesson Hancock could have used. Despite the bizarre jarring tonal shift in the middle of the movie from action comedy to dramatic epic fantasy (I really don’t know what else to call it), I appreciated the movie for what it was trying to do. Did it feel disjointed? Hell yeah. This is one of those times where the abrupt change in gears just doesn’t work. The slapstick comedy in the beginning half of the film feels really out of place with the more dramatic elements in the second half. Personally, I much prefer the second half of the movie, at least there was a nugget of a more original idea there, unlike the first half of the story which was just same old action comedy fodder. The movie ultimately suffered because of its disjointedness, which had nothing to do with the story they were trying to tell. If you’re going to make something disjointed, and take people out of what they were watching and in to something else, it should be for the sake of the narrative, rather than to defy it. My suspicions are that Hancock may have suffered from too many people being involved ‘creatively’ so to speak, as well as terrible marketing (as it was clearly marketed as an action comedy with no hint about the second half of the movie).
Speaking of marketing, anyone remember those original pre-release trailers for Knowing? You know, the ones that are clearly about a disaster movie? I was expecting something like 2012 and walked out of the theater feeling betrayed by those trailers and thinking, ‘This wasn’t a disaster flick, this was a movie about faith….how did they…what the…I’m so confused…’. And right after the movie came out suddenly there were new trailers and ads marketing the film as such. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike the movie, not at all. The beginning of the movie certainly had enough disaster flick elements for me to be happy, but the story didn’t go where I thought it would, at all. So, my experience with Knowing comes back to that whole ‘audience expectations’ thing. If you go into something thinking it’s going to be one thing and it turns out to be something completely different, you might have a negative reaction even if the material itself is good.
I guess to sum up what I’m saying is that genre/tonal shifts can work if they’re done well. Even completely unexpected plot twists that take the story so far into left field that its no longer the same story anymore can work out (suddenly, Vampires!). But such things have to be carefully crafted, otherwise you risk alienating your audience.
The Unicorn Blues 