Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chekhov's Gun

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 181 posts

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#81

Post by co2benzoate »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #73
croes wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You see a man putting a bag under a table. Two man arrive, sitting at the table, you wait for the bomb to explode because the bag must have a meaning. The meeting ends, the men stand up, one is killed by headshot. And your scene depends on the characters. Is one the main character? Highly unlikely he get killed. It's even worse if it's a TV series. Main character is strapped to a bomb? No problem. Guest star is strap…

>I think that was part of GoT's success. At the beginning of the show. A few seasons in, lots of people developed plot armor.

By that point the show was popular enough for them not to need a compelling story or nudity; fans would watch either way.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#82

Post by umvi »

mlang23 wrote: post #29

As a rough guide for new woke hollywoold this might be useful. For as a general principle applied to everything? Nah. I can imagine pretty dull movies where everything that happens can already been projected into the future. Remember these movies where you can say after 10 minutes: "She is going to get in trouble, and he is going to rescue her and get her at the end." Those are fucking dull.

Huh? Chekhov's Gun has been around for decades, not sure what "new woke Hollywood" has anything to do with it.

Camera zooms in on a pistol that someone pockets. Therefore, that pistol will be used later.

It happens in nearly every movie made since the 60s.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#83

Post by umvi »

ape4 wrote: post #54

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

I think it's more like "if the camera zooms in on it or otherwise draws attention to it".

If everyone leaves the room and the camera zooms in on a piece of furniture then you would expect that piece of furniture to have some sort of importance or role to play later. If, as a character is leaving a room, a piece of trash falls out of their pocket and the camera focuses on that piece of trash then you expect that detail to be important to the plot later.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#84

Post by oceliker »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #7

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovSGun There are articles about the other linked concepts as well: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Foreshadowing https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffin https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RedHerring https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShaggyDogStory

The image in the first link points out that there is a literal rifle on the wall in Shaun of the Dead. That's a pretty cool reference to the origin of Chekhov's gun.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#85

Post by thinkingemote »

tmountain wrote: post #62

Twin Peaks, season 3 is the antithesis of Chekhov’s Gun. So many false starts and seemingly meaningless dead ends. That said, it feels like art, and if your willing to take it as such, it’s a fun ride. Tightly focused narrative is a reasonable default but certainly not a hard and fast rule.

They seem like points to a season 4 to me

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#87

Post by dudul »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #61
dudul wrote: post #42

I remember watching James Bond movies as a kid. There was always this scene where Q gave 007 a handful of cool gadgets, and would you know it, by the end of the movie he had used them all! I always thought "WTF man, he literally gave him exactly what he needed for the movie, not a single one that went unused! What were the odds!?"

Yea, but if Bond didn't use a cool gadget we might have left the theater a bit dissapointed?

For sure. It's just this weird balance between "real life realism" and not disappointing the public. I absolutely would have been pissed if he had not used the tiny air tank or the gas bomb in his suit case and all :-)

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#88

Post by ackbar03 »

codetrotter wrote: post #60
xaedes wrote: 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…

I had high expectations for that movie but it didn't turn out as good as I expected.

Re: Chekhov's Gun

#89

Post by mikewarot »

In a bit of foreshadowing we saw Chekhov's Gun on the Mantel was missing.

We did a hard target search, finding a neologism, but nothing else.

It eventually turned out the MacGuffin was just a Red Herring, and the whole thing was a Shaggy Dog Story.

Post reply on HN