Whiy yes, I did just completely forget to post a film review last Thursday. Well done me. Schedule resuming normally this week. Also, spoiler-phobes, be warned that the end of several films (including Toy Story 3) are discussed below.
When an artist, or a viewer, knows that a film will be the last in a series, they suddenly have license to raise the stakes in a way they couldn’t before. One of the biggest reasons it’s hard to create stakes in an ongoing series is a certain reluctance on the part of the creators to either put major characters in enough jeopardy that the audience believes they’re actually in danger, or to invest in more than one or two characters in the first place. The former problem is one that Western comic books often face; the latter is closer to a James Bond scenario, where supporting players come and go and are largely interchangeable.
Stakes, however, are about more than the logical knowledge that a character might or might not die. And Pixar used this knowledge, more than anything else, to create a terrifying sequence in Toy Story 3. Even though it’s the end of the series, and so one or two characters might be lost, I doubt anyone would really believe that the movie would kill all of the main characters at a go outside the context of the shot. As the toys head toward incineration, a small part of your brain knows something will stop it. But when you trust a filmmaker, as an audience member, you also trust that bad things could really happen. (I could not get over the fact that Disney’s The Princess and the Frog actually killed its comic relief.)
For my generation, I don’t think things were ever the same, movie-wise, after Mufasa’s death. All bets were off, at that point, and it was the first time many of us lucky to have our parents imagined what it would be like to lose one of them.
This is not to say that killing or threatening to kill beloved characters is the only way to create stakes. In Inception, it’s established very early that killing someone in a dream just wakes them up. Though pain is on the table, there’s a safety net in place. But by the introduction of limbo, Christopher Nolan cleverly removes that safety net without violating the premise. Your body can’t die in a dream, but go too deeply, and the mind can get trapped. It’s terrifying, and at the same time supports the greater story he’s trying to tell.
Stakes can go awry, however. Danny Boyle’s Sunshine is 2/3 of an excellent movie, but the last act disintegrates. In part, I feel it’s because it veers away from why it’s so important for the characters to be where they are in the first place. It’s not just their own lives they’re fighting for, but the survival of the planet. The points at which the film is most grounded are those where their struggle is reset in this context; when it’s veers too close to a locked-room horror movie, it gets silly.
Sometimes the first film in a series can have good stakes because it isn’t clear that it’s going to be a series. Obviously, Harry won’t die in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone; even if you haven’t read the books, that’s going to be apparent. In the first Matrix movie, on the other hand, it wasn’t evident that any character was or wasn’t safe, and it gave the film’s dangers an added sense of urgency. As with Inception, a world with different rules is still made one with very real and dangerous consequences.
In film, then, as in many story telling media, stakes are the foundation of, and grow out of, solid storytelling technique. Characters must stand at risk of losing something, as concrete as the screenwriters’ clichéd “glass of water” or as intangible as their lover’s affection. There’s a special sort of intensity, however, that comes from the danger of death, either for oneself or someone else. The climax of The Dark Knight has to do, at first blush, with the lives of a great many strangers. In the end, it boils down to the life of Gordon’s son. By tracking who stands to lose what, you can see where the weight of the film’s emotion falls.
That said, film as a visual medium also has to consider artistic perspectives when making these choices, consistent with the film’s style and tone. The lighting, in the example of Toy Story 3, is a large and memorable part of the scene. Music can be helpful too, though it can risk veering into narm territory if it’s too over-the-top or directly manipulative. There’s a line between drama and melodrama, after all.
Watching a bunch of toys, however, bravely take each other’s hands as they stare death in the face is moving because we’ve invested in the characters, because the threat is real, and because the world of the film allows for the possibility that they might be right in believing they won’t make it. The film takes the threat seriously, so the audience can too. It develops characters (it’s meaningful that Buzz starts it, and Woody finishes) and it also serves as an emotional punch that the plot has developed toward, not simply a twist for shock’s sake.
Pixar is so successful because it gets these sort of fundamentals right. A lot of Hollywood offerings could stand to take notes.
The Exploding Macguffin 