Who doesn't love a good movie? But what makes a good movie? Is it the action, the special effects, the great explosions, the heart wrenching story, the scares, the laughter, the awe inspiring locations, the great characters, or all of the above? Of course all those things matter but there is one key factor that I have to have for it to be a great movie.
Continuity, A great movie has to flow perfectly from one scene to the next in way that makes perfect sense in the world that it portrays, It has to be of logical design and in a way the watcher can understand and relate to.
If you have a serious movie, or a movie that takes itself seriously, The Terminator, for example, that movie is set in a fictional possible future and has to continue in that way throughout the movie, the terminator would suddenly be a terrible movie if the assassin robot suddenly decided to have sex with a motorbike, that would be stupid and would not make any sense, it would lose its continuity and lose it's serious nature, it would disconnect from the watcher.
It would be the same way for a comedy like Meet the Fockers, that movie is set in a humorous environment and continues that way through out the show. If the main character got upset, and decided to shoot everyone in a department store with blood and gore, that would also disconnect the watcher from the movie, and it would lose its continuity.
It doesn't matter what movie it is, it has to make sense as well, you can't have a couple who are fighting and break up and then in the next scene have them kissing without knowing how they got back together. You can't have people hiding out in a city and in the next scene have them eating breakfast in the desert. There has to be a reason or way as to how they transitioned from one scene to the next, it has to make sense and have a logical reason behind it, even in a science fiction world where the technology is unknown.
Too many movies these days focus on the special effects to wow their views, they rely on the explosions, the huge monster, the blood and guts, or the scary demon that lives in the basement, half of these movies are terrible and make no sense, and I find myself wondering how did this scene happen? In Aquaman the hero can swim like a bullet underwater, as fast as Superman can fly in the sky, yet later on in the movie, he is riding a shark with a saddle, my only guess is that the director thought it looked cool, because other than that it makes no sense whatsoever.
It amazes me that these movies cost millions of dollars to make but lack the fundamentals to make them fantastic. A pretty look is only on the surface, what lies beneath it is what will determine if it's ugly or beautiful.
Scott Goerz
