Father and Son: A Lesson in Storytelling

I’d like to start out by saying that this is not a movie review. In this post, I will wind up reviewing this movie, but my primary concern is talk about storytelling for all of the storytellers out there (**potential for spoilers**). I watched A Good Day to Die Hard last night, and as I took in the explosions and the gun fire and the story, I wound up with a question that kept popping into my head…

“Why don’t I like this?”

What’s not to like, right? It’s John McClane doing what he does best… killing bad guys. The Die Hard franchise is among my favorites. It’s up there with all of the Terminator movies and all four Alien films. I have a lot of grace for franchises that I love. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, anyone? Alien 3? But there was something about this one—this sequel to a movie franchise that last saw John McClane driving a car into a helicopter—that I couldn’t seem to get into. But, I think I’ve figured it out.

I’m going to let you in on something. In the movie A Good Day to Die Hard, these two guys are father and son…

Chances are you saw a trailer for this movie. And if you saw the trailer, then you already know that these two are father and son. You also learn this fact in the first 15 minutes of the movie. It’s in those first few minutes that we learn basically everything we needed to know about the father and son relationship… it’s been troubled for a long time, and old John needs to help his son.

Boom. You now know everything you need to know, really. His son is in a Russian prison… and well, I’m not sure what he was planning to do, exactly, but John travels to Russia to help… somehow. It doesn’t really matter as a prison break happens and John is reunited with his son… Did I mention that they’re father and son and haven’t seen each other in a while? Because at this point, the screenwriters do not let you forget those facts. I’m not really one for watching action movies and expecting the most amazing dialogue. For the most part, all I expect from John McClane in a Die Hard movie is smart-alec remarks, killing and a “Yippee ki-yay, mother f***er.” That’s it.

But this time the screenwriters decided that the dialogue was the only way to tell a story. It’s like they were trying TOO HARD…

“DID YOU HEAR? THIS GUY IS HIS SON. HE DIDN’T USED TO CARE, BUT NOW HE TOTALLY DOES.”

“OMG. LOOK HOW MUCH HE CARES NOW. HE DIDN’T USED TO. DID WE MENTION THAT? NOW HE DOES. HE ALWAYS DID, BUT YOU KNOW. WORK AND STUFF.”

“LOOK AT HOW THEY’RE BONDING. DID YOU SEE THAT? IT’S COOL BECAUSE THEY DIDN’T USED TO LIKE EACH OTHER ALL THAT MUCH.”

“OH HEY DID WE MENTION THAT HE THOUGHT HIS SON WAS A SCREW UP? NOW HE DOESN’T.”

“HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS. DO YOU GET IT? THEY’RE SO SIMILAR. LOL.”

Maybe that’s not what the dialogue literally said, but it’s all I heard through the whole movie.

Most writers have heard the cliche, “Show, don’t tell.” Which is definitely true, but sometimes, telling is okay. Telling can be used to great effectiveness if it’s not the important part of the story. What’s more important? For instance, more recently, Pacific Rim uses a voice-over narration to quickly jump into the action. “See look, there’s monsters now… and now we punch them with giant robots.” Boom. Movie time.

The audience learned everything about John and his son’s relationship that they needed to know for the rest of the movie within the first 15 minutes. But they couldn’t help themselves.

After the movie, I tweeted this:

A Good Day to Die Hard would’ve been better had they cut every bit of dialogue between John McClane and his son. All. Of. It.

— Brian Russell (@Brian_Russell) July 19, 2013

They could have just had a ton of action, a handshake and a knowing nod between the two of them. Everyone would have thought, Oh, they worked it out. Very nice. But instead, we wound up with very trite dialogue that makes John McClane sound like a worrying, doting, helicopter-dad instead of the awesome super-cop we’ve grown to love over the past nearly 30 years (Wow, that stung…1988).

For example, when John first catches up to his son, there is a highway car-chase. His son is clearly being chased by armed baddies. Nonetheless, John continues to chase him saying things like, “Could you just pull over?” “Where are you going?” etc.

Or when his son has been calling him “John” for about 45 minutes of the movie and he asks, “What’s with this ‘John’ stuff? What happened to ‘Dad’?” and his son replies, “Yeah. What happened to him?” Ugghh. WE GET IT.

The storytelling lesson here is two-fold.

• If you have to tell rather than show, then only tell me once.  People are generally pretty smart when it comes to movies, books and stories. They pick up on more than you’d expect. Don’t treat them like idiots.
• People have expectations. It’s okay to meet them sometimes. This isn’t to say that it’s not good to throw a curve ball every now and then, but for the most part, you want people to feel complete at the end of your story. This is especially true of established characters. Be mindful of your audience.

Class adjourned.

What was the last movie you saw that felt satisfying at the end? 

(Mine was Pacific Rim.)