Does a film have to have "compelling characters" in order to be great?

What say ye, Sup Forums?

Other urls found in this thread:

youtu.be/DbIbchSteCI
twitter.com/AnonBabble

2001 and Koyaanisqatsi say no.

no just have a movie about a dog who plays basketball.

If you don't care about the characters then why should you care about the story?

Have they done Air Bud: MMA yet? If not they should get on it

The character was the English nation as a whole

Because the story is not about any individual character?

Does a film even have to tell a story? Richard Linklater's Slacker is a great movie, almost nothing happens in that film.

No, but that's a loaded question. Most films rely on characters, and do therefore need compelling characters.

It does have compelling characters, though, which make you care about the film

If its character driven then of course. If its a movie like mad max then compelling characters arent needed. Trying to make us feel for furiosa was an eye rolling at the moment. Did anyone actually care where she was fro?

It really.
If you are the kind of person who can’t invest themselves in a story because of “muh relatability” the problem is you.

I think a movie has to have good characters for people to want to rewatch it. Unless the spectacle is so great that it doesn't matter. Characters are what stick with people most. They're why viewers will continue watch TV series long past the point where the show is no longer good.

No it doesn't. Characters are in one scene and gone the next. Things happen that have no bearing on anything else going on. The movie was just snapshots of the 1990s

>Trying to make us feel for furiosa was an eye rolling at the moment. Did anyone actually care where she was fro?

I thought the character arcs for Max, Furiosa and Nux were handled really well in Fury Road. Most of it is done visually rather than with dialogue.

characters =/= development of said characters

>They're why viewers will continue watch TV series long past the point where the show is no longer good.
No, that's just the fact that 99% of TV shows focus on characters and nothing else, literally every single filmmaking element is completely secondary in TV shows, that's why it's such an inferior form of a visual medium

Dunkirk is a film that requires concentration and diligence to watch. Not anyone can merely watch said movie and come out having an opinion on it. That said, this movie is trash.

Is there character development in movies like Dunkirk, Slacker, 2001, etc.? If not, does that take away from the enjoyment and/or quality of the movie?

>2001
>no compelling characters

Hard to say, Dunkirk had history as its whole backstory.

So if Hal is the only compelling character I guess the first hour and a half of 2001 is completely worthless then?

not really (kind of in dunkirk) and no.

honestly, I don't really understand why you're asking the question. I don't see how you could even put character development into slacker or 2001 and have it be a remotely similar movie. maybe with slacker you'd get something like night on earth? but that's not what he was going for in the first place

Who said Hal is the only compelling character? All of humanity is the other compelling character.

Is the movie about the characters?

You autists have this pathological need to categorize everything, like you need a framework to rely on because you can't trust your own taste.

Then in Dunkirk all of the british people as a whole are a compelling character?

I agree with you that a movie doesn't need compelling characters to be good. I'm just disagreeing with the example of 2001.

I only mentioned the two movies because neither are very character-focused. Also, I agree that intent is important when we consider these things.

But could it be seen as a cop out when filmmakers say character/story isn't important, and an excuse when critics/audiences don't think their film is coherent and pointless?

No. Film is, first and foremost, a visual medium. Characters and story serve only to placate the masses.

A visual medium to portray a visual narrative.
The biggest plebs are people like you who think the visuals and the story are separate elements.

Dunkirk was probably the best film of the year. I like it so much for 2 fundamental reasons but they are both related to the same thing, risk.

Despite what people say about Nolan, he took a huge risk with the deliberate lack of dialogue and characterisation. I know I criticised his films in the past for exposition overload where characters would sit around explaining the plot, so it was so refreshing to see him drop it completely. That way, we as the audience have to pick up the facial cues and body language of the characters to understand how they are feeling. This is a big departure from a director who is known as a filmmaking master to normies.

I also liked the idea of setting a film around a historical event instead of a character within a historical event. I don't think something like this has been attempted on the same scale before so I am pleased that it worked. I hope the commercial and critical success of this film inspires other filmmakers to take this route because I dream of the day to have a film like Dunkirk be about the Battle of Alesia.

Man, you must have loved the new Blade Runner.

No, but it has to make up for it other ways.

Dunkirk was a poorly edited mess.

any film worth watching is made because the director wanted to show people something. if that thing didn't require characters, more power to them. they only need a "cop out" if they're making a film for the sake of making a film. critics don't have to like it, as long as they understand that intention and acknowledge it. I dunno, I guess it just doesn't matter to me that much - the thoughts of the audience etc. is periphery

>That way, we as the audience have to pick up the facial cues and body language of the characters to understand how they are feeling
This.
Here's a youtube edit of Dunkirk that proves exactly that youtu.be/DbIbchSteCI

This is the fucking pic that birthed the disgusting kino meme.

Nolan definitely listened to his critics, otherwise there would have been an entire sequence of one of the soldiers giving a long monologue about the "meaning of war" or something. He deliberately avoided a lot of the usual tropes.

Thank you for this, Dunkirk is unironically pleb filter when it comes to Nolan

This.
Also would have been better if they showed more tension on the ground with holding the lines

It was especially refreshing to see it come immediately after Interstellar, which is arguably Nolan's most self-indulgent and Nolanesque movie (overlong at 2hr 45min, "heartfelt" monologue every 20 minutes, time fuckery, zero ambiguity and explanations for every fucking plot point, a B-plot that doesn't really exist until the last 45 minutes of the movie). He seemed to have taken criticism of Interstellar in stride and was determined to show them he could do something else.

If I remember correctly he's been holding this film in his pocket for a long time. Glad he did, it definitely let him get the practice he needed and the criticism he needed to hear