From May 2008:
Some people say that as long as you have a wham-bang-thank-you-ma’am finish, the dreck that preceded it will be forgiven. I say that if people give up watching your film because of the preceding dreck, no-one’ll appreciate the time and care and effort you put into that big finish.
If you asked me twenty years ago for a What’s Hot and What’s Not list, amongst the big hair, stove-pipe pants, and cellphones literally the size and weight of actual bricks would be:
Not: action films that ended with a – yawn – mano-a-mano fight*.
In those blessedly naive days, I thought filmmakers of the latter kind of film had run out of money and had to cobble together some sort of ending. Or they’d climaxed too early. Or that the film just sucked. As I got older matured, I began to appreciate endings in which the antagonist didn’t get a multiple injection of hot lead. Instead of shrieking, Shoot the yellow-bellied cocksocker! at film’s end, I found myself nodding sagely by proxy – Let him live with his/her misdeed.
It was okay because it felt appropriate. It resonated.
The best stories – and storytelling – will do that. It’s where all the elements screenwriters juggle with – plotting versus characterisation versus pacing – come together and become an experience.
Jeopardy doesn’t have to be a firefight every ten minutes. Increasing stakes doesn’t mean a progression from saving a city to saving the world. I want the protagonist to work for my hard-earned entertainment dollar. I want them to suffer. And then, once eighty or so minutes have elapsed – as with Life If Only It Was Fair – then the protagonist can prevail, whether by mushroom cloud or bare knuckle fight.
* Which were, come to think of it, really thrillers.
