Opinion Time: Squandering The Premise

So I just finished watching "Hanna," and if I could describe it in one word, it would be "disappointing." I wanted to tell somebody (because this is what I do), and then I remembered, I have a blog where I can post random stuff. Thus, this post was bored, and you get to read about the problem I had with this movie.

Specifically, I want to talk about films or books or fanfics or any sort of text (oh god, English is coming back to haunt me) that squanders their premise. Or possibly more accurately, have an interesting premise that could lead to all sorts of explanations or depth that essentially wastes it on mindless action or pointless plot twists.

Warning: Ahead are spoilers for the films "Hanna" and "Knowing" and the fanfiction "Potter" (and it really sucks that this is the first fanfic I've introduced. I hope to do a post soon with better ones, like Methods of Rationality.).

I'm going to talk about "Hanna" first, since I just watched it. Allow me to give you a short description. We get introduced to Hanna and her father Erik training for something, with vague references to a woman trying to kill Hanna. Over the course of the first 90 minutes, we get several fight and chase scenes, and the revelation that Hanna is a supersoldier and Erik is not her real father, but has been training her to try and keep her safe from Marissa, the woman trying to kill them. Meanwhile, everybody Hanna has met has pretty much been killed to silence them. It's all shaping up to be an epic conclusion, and a pretty good action movie. The actors are all good: Saoirse Ronan (the girl from "The Lovely Bones"), Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, to name the big three.

Then we get the last half hour. Erik is killed by Marissa in a bit of a letdown of an action scene (spoilers: he turns around after killing one of Marissa's cronies, says one last line, then gets shot), and there is a brief action scene between Hanna and Marissa. Marissa is injured with a makeshift bow and arrow (which is pretty cool, I'll give it that), and eventually Hanna kills Marissa.

That is the movie. There is very little emotional depth to it, or depth to it and all, and I was struck by a very big sense of 'now what?' The premise was great. It was shaping up to be an awesome movie. And then nothing. No especially witty one-liners, no real depth apart from the premise, no real unique defining characteristics. In short, the movie gave what it promised, and that's it.

I'd like to save "Knowing" for last, and I don't want to have two movies in a row, so I'll go with "Potter." Its starting premise was this: Harry is raised by a crime boss. Now, I will go on the record and say I enjoy fanfiction because a) it means I don't have to give up Harry Potter (and I've already said I'm not over it) and b) it means we get to explore canon/characters/etc. That type of thing. So I hadn't read this premise before and I thought it might be interesting. And it was - for a couple chapters. Then we got to the point where Dumbledore was half-faerie and Kevin Entwhistle and Quirrell were vampires and Sprout was killed by the troll that the trio knocked out with a bloody Wingardium Leviosa and, well, long story short, my suspension of belief just shattered. I like my Harry Potter not like Lord of the Rings.

I guess what the problem with that was the story started with a simple premise of "Mafia!Harry."* And it turned into massive AU.* It squandered the premise by not only using that, when that was what the story promised. I will denote here that it did claim to be slightly AU from the get-go, but that was not how it was written, and it eventually turned into really AU.

And now we move on to "Knowing." Now this movie really got my goat. It started with another interesting premise: 50 years ago, a girl wrote down a series of numbers, and it was then stored in a time capsule. The time capsule is soon opened and Nicolas Cage discovers that the numbers are in fact predictions of worldwide disasters denoting death toll, date and time, and coordinates. Oh yeah, it's a pretty damn interesting premise. I was certainly interested. Eventually we get to the last prediction: and the death toll is EE, or Everyone Else. Wow. Then it gets to about half an hour to go.

Oh boy, the last couple scenes. Nicolas Cage's son starts writing down more numbers, which we find no significance over apart from a means to get Nicolas Cage to understand what's going on. Then we find out the reason for the numbers: Aliens did it. The aliens then kidnap Nicolas Cage's son and other children because they are "chosen." The world is destroyed. The kids are shown to go to a sort of Garden of Eden thing. Roll credits.

From what I can understand, the director needed a reason for all the predictions, so he made aliens do it, even though that explanation makes even less sense (for those in the know, we call that a Voodoo Shark). If the aliens did know about all the disasters, why didn't they rescue everybody 50 years earlier? What was the purpose of the new numbers? Why are they rescuing kids? What was the point of Nicolas Cage even doing anything if the world was going to be destroyed?

Again: the premise was great. The follow-up was nonsensical and disappointing.

So what's the lesson here, from reading about my rants about said texts? If you have a good premise, don't ruin it, please. Follow it up with something entertaining, that naturally follows on, and still makes sense.

Well, that's Opinion Time. I hope you enjoyed it, or if not enjoyed it, appreciated it. Or at the very least, agreed with some of what I said. The next post will probably have something to do with fanfiction, or possible Christmas or the New Year. We'll see. Until next time.

AB