May 1, 1997
The Visceral Experience
The Tyrannosaurus Rex bends the defused electrical fence with its massive body, each step resonating. It lets forth a deafening scream as its eyes focus to search for a human victim. In this moment, as the T-Rex lets forth another scream, the audience decides, "I believe it," and enjoys the film and fears the onslaught of the T-Rex. Or the audience decides, "I don't believe it," and doesn't enjoy the film at all.
This is the "visceral experience" of film.
The visceral experience is what one experiences when one unconsciously decides that a given scene on the screen is real and becomes a participant, not just an observer, of the movie. It is you running from the twister in Twister; it is you avoiding asteroids in the Millenium Falcon in Star Wars; it is you avoiding the scorching flames in Backdraft. You either believe it and enjoy it, or disbelieve and don't.
So what does this mean to you? Well it explains a lot about why some people love movies and some people don't. The question is, how much does it take for you to believe and how much does it take for you to disbelieve? And of course, what makes us believe or disbelieve are different.
Independance Day is one of those movies that is controversial in this regard. I loved it. The special effects were awe-inspiring. I enjoyed the film because I threw away all context of real characters at the beginning. To me, with all the "in" jokes to the sci-fi crowd, Independance Day was as much a satire as it was a sci-fi film; in fact, more so. Because of this, I could throw away the plot and enjoy the effects at the outset.
But what does this have to do with the audience in general? A lot. Because many people saw it as a sci-fi film with completely unbelieveable characters and a, well, stupid story line. In other words, they decided to desbelieve the special effects because the story forced them to reject it. Let's face it, loading a virus into the mother ship probably threw more people off the believability path than flying cups in old sci-fi movies. I mean don't they have a virus checker? Of course this was a poke at War of the Worlds.
As a film maker, what could have been done to make Independance Day a greater success? Well, a real plot. In fact, I'm certain I would have enjoyed the movie more if it was believable even though I enjoyed the satire (and the movie as a whole). The writers thought that "in" jokes were more fun.
Now, let's take a look at Hollywood and the fact that Hollywood blockbusters are supposed to be fluff. Now this is an interesting concept because we voted with our wallets. And we overhwhelmingly voted for empty storied films like Independance Day, Twister and Jurassic Park. Yes, check out their storylines, they were all pretty near empty.
The overwhelming reason why they succeeded is because of the visceral experience. The feeling that we are actually there is one of the most powerful aspects of film. It overridingly draws people to theatres. So next time you watch a big-budget fluffy Hollywood film, you don't need to make excuses. Hey, you just wanted to be there.
Sunny Hirai
Movie Making Editor
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