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Chekhov's Gun

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Re: Chekhov's Gun

#51
I never really liked Chekhov's Gun, as it tends to make the world feel artificial and barren. Details unrelated to the story at hand make the world feel much more vibrant and interesting. It gets worse as a story's length increases - for instance TV shows that go on for years where the main characters only seem to have relationships with 5-6 other people in the entire world.

Of course there's a separate issue where a fictional work will artificially emphasize the importance of something and then ignore it. For example, people say something's impossible, then there's a close up shot of someone's face, he slowly says "It's not...I know a guy" and loud dramatic music starts playing. There, the creators are telling the audience that this is something important, and it will be odd if it's not followed through (though even then, I've seen some creators not follow through in interesting ways).

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#52
post #50

In the movie Fargo, there is a substory where Marge Gunderson, the female police officer, meets with a highschool class mate Mike Yanagita. They eat dinner and he makes a romantic advance, and she leaves. This substory never made sense to me within the general plot of the movie. Should Chekhov's gun have been used, or did this episode play a part that I have not realized?

When Marge finds out from her friend that nice guy Mike is actually an unstable liar, she starts to question whether the “nice” Jerry might have similar secrets

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#54
In a movie this doesn't work. If only the gun is important a living room would have no furniture, carpet, curtains, etc.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#56
post #49

Quite dull. That's why I love The Big Lewobski. It's full of irrelevant details. There is a story too but the movie it's about the little things.

Right but all those things play a role.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#57
post #52
post #50

In the movie Fargo, there is a substory where Marge Gunderson, the female police officer, meets with a highschool class mate Mike Yanagita. They eat dinner and he makes a romantic advance, and she leaves. This substory never made sense to me within the general plot of the movie. Should Chekhov's gun have been used, or did this episode play a part that I have not realized?

When Marge finds out from her friend that nice guy Mike is actually an unstable liar, she starts to question whether the “nice” Jerry might have similar secrets

Ok, I never realized that. I think I need to see it again ...

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#58
post #27

"The Room", by Tommy Wiseau, is a movie where Chekhov's gun isn't applied. It contains lots of small happenings with no further relevance. It has lots of other issues, technically speaken. But together they make this film not only amateurish, but it also gives it a certain kind of realism. In real life stuff happens and still may have no further relevance to the "story" after all. In real life there is nobody enforci…

But some of those things that are dropped don't make any sense to have no impact on the characters, like someone having cancer. It's just mentioned and never brought up again.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#59
post #27

"The Room", by Tommy Wiseau, is a movie where Chekhov's gun isn't applied. It contains lots of small happenings with no further relevance. It has lots of other issues, technically speaken. But together they make this film not only amateurish, but it also gives it a certain kind of realism. In real life stuff happens and still may have no further relevance to the "story" after all. In real life there is nobody enforci…

> charming mistakes

One character being played by three different actors (either that, or three characters being so similar I confused them as the same character despite being three different actors) is hardly charming IMO.

Longer form stories, such as Game of Thrones (where Azor Ahai, and other such plotlines are literally killed off) are probably more entertaining. It sucks to see a fan theory turn out to not matter at all, but not everything ends up being relevant to the conclusion.

I don't think a 2 or 3 hour movie has any room to dwell on unimportant details. Anime and miniseries do have that time. We can watch Goku mess around with Princess Snake or Krillen get his Namekian power up (which doesn't matter for any fight, but is good development for the character in isolation).

That's probably the charm of Cowboy Bebop. There's so much detail and none of it really matters. The interesting story happened like 10 years ago (in universe time). That's be my pick for a show / story with very little Chekhov gun going on.

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Chekhov gun is probably contrasted with Red Herring, which is explicitly a detail that not only doesn't matter, but purely exists to mislead the audience. Any Chekhov gun heavy plot needs red herrings to balance things out, otherwise it's too predictable.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#60
post #27

"The Room", by Tommy Wiseau, is a movie where Chekhov's gun isn't applied. It contains lots of small happenings with no further relevance. It has lots of other issues, technically speaken. But together they make this film not only amateurish, but it also gives it a certain kind of realism. In real life stuff happens and still may have no further relevance to the "story" after all. In real life there is nobody enforci…

Speaking of that movie, I can recommend anyone who is familiar with The Room, but who hasn’t seen The Room, to watch the movie The Disaster Artist (2017) instead. I’ve only watched the latter and not The Room itself but watching the latter instead was a nice experience.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3521126/

The Disaster Artist is based on the book "The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made" by Greg Sestero, and it’s got James Franco portraying Tommy.

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