Most movies out there are unrealistic because they all cater to a fetish we all share
I love watching movies but the more I watch and think about what I'm watching, the more frustrating it all gets. I'm starting to find myself thinking about how bad the writing and story are more often than ever. What's really annoying me is how unrealistic things are and this is especially pronounced in action movies. The bigger the movie, the more glaring the plot holes. Things are so unrealistic, I'm finding it hard to immerse myself in the satisfying violence on screen.
Obviously movies can't always be 100% realistic and it's OK to sweep some inconsistencies under the rug for the sake of the story or advancing the plot. But what seems to be ruining movies for me lately is one simple realization - a lot of the movies out there cater to a very simple fetish of ours - we want to matter.
"The One"
Virtually all action, adventure or even sci-fi movies seem to come with a hero that is special, unique and the fate of the city/country/planet/universe/dimension/world always depends on them. There is always only a single person that could do what needs to be done and it's only them. There is only one pilot that can pilot on the whole planet, only one cop that can shoot right, only one inventor who can invent, only one wizard who can do magic and only one genius who truly understand science and technology. There is always somebody that is the chosen one who is the key to everything. That irks me to no end because it's absolutely artificial.
Obviously that's not realistic in any way and in life, there are always other people who can do a similar job. On top of this, most major problems that tend to be a major threat cannot be solved just by outstanding piloting or matrix manipulation skills. There is no war out there than can be won by a single person. Yet we see this happen in movies time and time again. And now when I've noticed the obvious, I can't enjoy movies because of this glaring problem. The stakes suddenly feel so fake and artificial, that there is no way for me to feel connected to the plot.
But the reason this keeps happening and the reason we see The Hero's Journey formula plastered all over the place is that it caters to one of the most common fetishes out there - we all want to matter. We associate ourselves with the protagonist, because we want to imagine that someday somehow we could end up in a situation where the fate of the world will depend on us. We want to see and identify ourselves with people that matter because we want that for ourselves. Of course the hard cold reality is that this is never going to happen. The world is far too complex and intricate for a single decision by a single person to be as decisive as it is in movies.
Why do I think it matters?
I really don't think we need this fetish and I really don't think we should be cultivating it. It's a good thing for us to realize that there are no simple solutions to grand problems. It think it's important for us to realize that we can't do everything on our own and that grand achievements are possible when many people work together over a prolonged period of time. It sounds like a boring old hippie type of message, but it is infinitely more realistic than what most movies are offering us - an overinflated sense of personal value.
In the grand scheme of things we don't matter that much, but we can all be a part of things that do. So rather than looking for a chance to single-handedly change the world, I'm more than happy to be a tiny cog in a project that might a affect the world for the better in some small way. I guess that's the personal worth type of fetish I'm more prone to. Like it or not, we all want to feel as if we matter and we all find a way to satisfy that need somehow. It's a delusion, isn't it?
One of the reasons why I am not so into super hero movies, is the artificial feel to it. Yet I also can't deny that through the history there have been some pretty amazing people who have done things that would deserve such title as hero. Maybe they were in the right place at the right time and decided to act and maybe so many others with the same skill sets and abilities would have done the same, but they where not there.
Certainly. There have been and are a lot of people deserving of being called a hero, but it's rarely this type of person we see in the movies. As you said, there are people who were in a situation when they needed to act, risk life and limb for others or even sacrifice themselves - those are real heroes indeed. But it's never the way it is in the movies where only this unique hero protagonist could save us, not because they are ready to sacrifice themselves, but because they are the chosen one. We want to see people that are unique and crucial because we want to identify with them and feel unique and special.
For instance, I recently watched Geostorm (don't ask me why I did that) and it really irked me how the movie presented one single person as the only one who could grasp how a space station with a constellation of satellites really works. He was the hero because nobody else could understand that complex technology as if he could have built anything like that alone and could hold all the engineering details of it all in his head. And nobody but him really understood this project. And that's absolutely ridiculous and unrealistic. It's just a tired old plot device to make him the chosen one.
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