Editorial - Too many People, Too little Time

For my latest editorial, I want to talk about something that has really gotten on my nerves recently and that is the notion of characters in a motion picture.

And why talk about this you ask, well I feel that this has become a big problem in the last few years of characters that don’t have any real reason to be in the film at all apart from explain a plot point, perve on their female co-stars and collect their paycheck and to illustrate this point here are a few examples.

Star Trek: If you read my review of JJ Abrams’s Star Trek reboot, you will learn that I was not too impressed with the film, and one big problem was the insertion of Leonard Nimoy, to me he felt like one character too many and that all he ever did in the film was explain the plot, meet his younger self, do the hand thing and collect his paycheque, personally I would like to have seen that screen time go to Eric Bana and have him explain the plot while he’s talking to Pike and it would also give the newer actors a chance to get more screen time themselves.

The Devil Wears Prada: Anne Hathaway’s character has a boyfriend who stares at her in a very perverted way throughout the film and turns into a complete grump because she misses his birthday party and her other friends think she has become a monster, personally get over it guys and again, those characters take us away from the characters played by Emily Blunt, Simon Baker and Stanley Tucci, who could have filled those roles easily through a rewrite of the script.

Transformers 2: A big one here with at least half a dozen or so characters that could have been removed, first off was The Fallen as in the actual character referred to in the title, he should have gone and allow that to go to Megatron and Starscream, who got too little screen time again, second is the parents, they should have gone and have Shia’s character living with Megan Fox and have the two of them go off to college, third is the college roommate again cut him out and let Fox take that role and lastly, Mudflap and Skids really should have gone thereby letting Bumblebee and the other Autobots fill their roles which may have gone a long way to filling in the middle of the film.

Spider-Man 3: This one is an example where a character is dictated by a movie studio, in Sam Raimi’s original idea for the film he wasn’t to use the character of Venom as he had never liked the character and felt he was for nerds, but Columbia Pictures had gotten so much correspondence over it “When is Venom going to appear?” that they forced Raimi’s hand and had the character crow barred in at the end of the movie, a move that made the film feel overlong and overstuffed.

And I could go on, but my point is that many movies bring in too many characters in order to either justify the main character’s actions or to move the plot forward, neither of which are really necessary, but the examples above will show that not all types of films are safe from this problem so make of it what you will.