The Finest Hours - Can it Live Up to That Lofty Claim?
- Thread starter Marter
- Start date
I just watched Bridge of Spies, another "based on a true story" movie. And while I quite enjoyed it, it raised certain questions in me, just like other "based on a true story" movies- Argo and Cinderella Man both come to mind. In short: just how much "fudging" are they doing here to make this fit neatly into Screenwriting 101's demanded series of peaks and valleys? This friendship- did it actually occur? This hair's-breadth escape- was it actually easy? This villain- was he as bad as he was portrayed? This tidy series of setbacks- did it actually go down that way?
I have to wonder if something like The Finest Hours is tedious because the story, while epic sounding on paper, amounts to a five-minute anecdote when one lays out the facts. And then there's the question of whether one should laud it for not turning a five-minute anecdote into a "big fish story", even while wondering if said anecdote should never have been made into a movie at all.
I have to wonder if something like The Finest Hours is tedious because the story, while epic sounding on paper, amounts to a five-minute anecdote when one lays out the facts. And then there's the question of whether one should laud it for not turning a five-minute anecdote into a "big fish story", even while wondering if said anecdote should never have been made into a movie at all.
Given how a similar kind of storyline turned out to be pretty engaging in The Martian I wonder what went wrong here. Poor directing or script, or were the other stories in the film just bringing it down