The Slow Motion Shot: A Rant

i was watching the second Chronicles of Narnia movie (i know, i'm a nerd. deal with it...) last night, and while i won't get into the details of that movie here (i don't think the movie was actually worthy of a blog post), there was one thing that really bugged me about it: the slow motion shot. it seemed like every other shot in the damn movie was either a sweeping epic landscape shot or a slow motion close shot of someone's facial expressions. i can handle the sweeping epic landscape shot because i was watching the movie on blu-ray, and any residual drugs in my system from my youth perk up whenever something looks just that badass. the slow motion thing though, that shit needs to stop...

i first noticed the problem back when the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring came out. i was so geeked to see that movie, since LOTR is one of my all-time favorite books (remember that whole "i'm a nerd" thing?). when i first saw LOTR: TFOTR, i thought it was completely badass and well done. it basically fulfilled my dream that someone could make a legitimte LOTR movie. then the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers came out. once again, i was psyched, and once again, i loved the movie. i started noticing a bit of a problem, though. it seemed like every time peter jackson wanted to show any kind of emotional situation, he would just shoot everything in slow motion. the characters feel torn apart? show that shit in slow motion. someone just died? show that shit in slow motion. someone's struggling with an inner turmoil? show that shit in slow motion. what kind of fucking laziness is that? i get that time may seem to slow down when something bad happens, but goddmanit, i don't need to see someone's eyes glistening with tears for 45 goddamn seconds.

when Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King came out, my suspicions/fears/death threats against peter jackson were solidified. every other motherfucking shot in that movie (that wasn't a battle scene) was in goddamn slow motion. what the fuck... i'm not even going to get into how big of a fucking tragedy the last 45 minute of that movie was, but let's just say that there's a reason the hobbits are a huge symbol in the gay nerd community. sam was two fucking seconds from showing frodo who the one true lord of the [cock]ring was right there on that mountain face...

"but i never got the chance to tell you how much i loved your hairy feet..."

now, those movies were written by peter jackson and fran walsh (a woman). you know who fran walsh is? she's fucking peter jackson's wife. want to know why you never let husbands and wives write movies together? because i'm guessing the screen writing sessions went a little something like this:

Fran: let's have them stare longingly into each other's eyes, showing that their friendship through all these years [even though sam was just frodo's fucking gardner] is being ripped apart. then let's slow the entire thing down for multiple excruciating minutes so that people are beaten over the head with that message...
Peter: i don't know honey, that seems a little gay. we just had this giant awesome scene with fire and explosions and orcs getting their asses kicked and-
Fran: frodo's heart is breaking, sam feels like he's about to die! they just love each other so much! GOD! you men have no heart, no soul, you're all so fucking closed off!!!
Peter: i'm just saying, maybe there's another way to do it...
Fran the firebreathing PMS dragon: IF YOU DON'T PUT THAT SCENE IN, YOU'RE NEVER FUCKING GETTING LAID AGAIN!!!
Emasculated Peter: yes ma'am...

and thus we have the third trimester abortion that was the end of The Return of the King. motherfucker. show some goddamn backbone and stand up to your harpy kiwi wife....

but i digress. back to slow motion. the biggest problem with it is that when peopel get really upset or emotional, the last fucking thing they do is talk slowly. anyone here ever gotten into a fight with a loved one or poured your heart out to someone [possibly while drunk]? did you speak every word as if your thoughts were wading through water? no, you fucking gushed all of your feelings, emotions, thoughts, and desires in an incoherent orgy of words. you probably expressed 15 pages worth of words in less than 2 minutes, and there's no goddamn way you used proper sentence structure when you did it, so why the fuck is every scene of emotion always slowed down to the point where it's like they're trying to explain their feelings to a toddler with down syndrome?

are we really trying to get a point through to this little guy? no. just give him his damn crayons already...
also, i can't believe google actually got me this picture when i typed in "toddler with down syndrome". technology = awesome

let's put that shit in real time, and let's not force the actors to slow their speech patterns down to that of a stroke victim. oh, and enough of this having-girls-turn-around-in-slow-motion-so-that-their-hair-whips-around-in-a-kind-of-cool-way. that shit's overdone, and the frozen deer in the headlights look in their eyes doesn't work either. if you can't manage to find some other way to convey emotion and surprise to your viewers, take a goddamn film class or something. finally, enough of having fight scenes in slow motion. and for that matter, enough of having fight scenes in super fast editing where we don't know what the fuck just happened (bourne movies, i'm looking at you...). a fight scene is cool not for how it's shot but in how it's choreographed. you can edit to 13 yr old girls slapfighting and make it look like a fight scene in the bourne movies, but it won't be cool. you know what fight scenes rocked the shit? the ones in the matrix. no crazy editing, every action wasn't in slow motion (with the exception of bullet-time stuff), and you got to see some badass ninja kicks. that's the way to do it...

now don't get me wrong, there are certain times when slow motion is fucking sweet. sometimes stuff happens so fast that it'd be nice if we could slow it down a bit. also, slow motion can make someone look like a badass, if used in the right moment. here are a few examples of when slow motion can be awesome:

1. any sports replay, ever. hits in football are obviously the coolest slowmo replay, but the list doesn't stop there. back in the day CBS experimented with their super slowmo replay (they still do it now, but only in certain circumstances) and they showed a punt in slowmo. fuck... ing... hell that was awesome! the guy jacked himself in the face with his own knee! i could watch any sport replay (yes Girlfriend, even baseball) in slowmo, hands down.
2. pretty much any action involving physics. for instance, all those commercials where the bullet shatters a bottle and turns into a car, or a diver hits the water and turns into a car. you know what i'm talking about. it's a simple concept, and it's fucking sweet.
3. 99% of the stuff on the discovery channel. there's literally a show on the discovery channel where all they do is slow shit down. now, i don't need to see the two fags from mythbusters in slow motion, but i sure as hell love seeing them blow shit up in slow motion. i also wouldn't mind seeing that hot redhead on the show in slow motion...
4. a group of guys walking shoulder to shoulder towards the camera. this is pretty much a mandatory shot in every much michael bay movie ever made. doesn't matter if the guys are soldiers, astronauts, or just a plucky group of cracked out hilljacks who are somehow going to save the world from a giant asteroid with only two weeks of training. this shot is so often done in any movie involving a group of people either walking to meet their fate or walking safely back from meeting their fate that the simpsons made fun of it in Deep Space Homer...
   

god i miss when the simpsons was funny...

so if you want to use slow motion, go ahead, but only in those circumstances. the rest of the time, just film it in real time. really, we can only take so much.