Darren New wrote:
> No, but there are lots of books and short stories like that. It wasn't 
> original - it was just the first *movie* with that, per se.

Not even the first that year.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986263/
Surrogates.  The whole point of the movie is that people experience the 
real world through fake bodies.

...Chambers

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Darren New wrote:
> I understand much of the complexity was cut. There were scenes on earth 
> motivating the need to attack the planet, drug abuse amongst the 
> marines, marine leaders taking bribes (altho for what I don't remember), 
> etc etc.

While those things could have made the movie better, I doubt they would 
have.  Seeing how the material that's there was handled, I don't think 
adding more material (that's handled just as poorly) would have been the 
answer.

...Chambers

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> That would be "Overcoming the monster".
> 
>> I disagree that covers it.
> 
>   Movies rarely fall into one single category.

Sure, but I think the idea that all movies can be categorized into only 
seven basic plots makes those plots too general to really be of much use 
analyzing movies.

Maybe in writing a play, you are better off sticking to one of those seven 
main themes, but I think there's a lot more you can do with books and movies 
than you can with plays. I can see where in a play you wouldn't want to 
combine a comedy with an overcoming-the-monster per se, for example.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Sure, but I think the idea that all movies can be categorized into only 
> seven basic plots makes those plots too general to really be of much use 
> analyzing movies.

  I believe that the whole point of that book was to give seven extremely
broad categories under which the vast majority of stories can be categorized.
In other words, "any movie can be classified as one of these" is the main
idea.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   I believe that the whole point of that book was to give seven extremely
> broad categories under which the vast majority of stories can be categorized.

Vast majority I'll go with, sure. And "if you're a beginning playwrite, 
stick with these themes" makes sense, as in "make sure you have an 
antagonist if the protagonist just sits in the same place without changing" 
and so on. But I'm not sure what's useful about a classification system 
where Frankenstein, The Matrix, and Hamlet can all be categorized in the 
same pile. :-)

"Here's seven ways to add something interesting to your story" or "seven 
ways to turn a situation into a story" I can see, yes. Otherwise it's just 
an essay about the situation.

How about "The Cube", the one with the guy trapped in the white cube with 
all the visitors, not the one with the rooms with a door on each side?

The *innovative* movies are the ones that don't match one of those seven 
plots, methinks. The *good* innovative movies are rare, yes. :-)  But I 
think a lot of (for example) PKDick stories don't fall into those categories.

Not that I really care. It's just that the topic has come up in three 
different online places I hang out in the last couple of weeks, so I've 
thought about it more than I should. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>   Avatar has been compared to Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas, Ferngully,
> The Last Samurai and even Atlantis: The Lost Empire, but In Space. So yeah,
> it's not like it's the most original and innovative story in existence.

  Speaking of which... http://failblog.org/2010/01/10/avatar-plot-fail/

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Speaking of which... http://failblog.org/2010/01/10/avatar-plot-fail/

Yep. That was the one. :-)

I saw a fascinating lecture a couple decades ago where someone from MIT has 
written an AI program that would read scripts and summarize them into 
relationship diagrams. I forget the exact examples used, but the lecturer 
put up an overhead slides with Hamlet's characters (Hamlet kills King, King 
kills Ghost, Ophelia loves Hamlet, etc) and he lifted off the names and laid 
down some other popular story with names, just like that, and it fit 
exactly. An amusing concept.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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Jim Charter wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Captain Jack <Cap### [at] comcastnet> wrote:
>>> In acting classes that I have attended as well as taught, we talk
>>> about "two dimensional characters", "cardboard cutouts", and
>>> "characters with no depth", all referring to the same thing.
>>
>>   Btw, was the original expression "two-dimensional character" (meaning a
>> character with no depth), after which some people started using an
>> exaggerated version of the expression, "one-dimensional character" in
>> their desire to say "a really, really flat character", and after years
>> of using that, it has basically replaced the original expression and thus
>> everybody nowadays says "one-dimensional character" when they really mean
>> what "two-dimensional character" meant originally?
>>
> That is probably it, yeah.  Though extending the metaphor in that way
> does yield some useful ideas.
> 
> That the character lacks all dimensionality except as a single thrust,
> or file.  Hints at the
> possibility of a no-dimensional character, a single point, useful as a
> reference, a position, and that is all.

Would that no-dimensional character be the guy that a main character
bumps into on a street, calls the main character a jerk, and then is
never seen again? Those characters show up all the time in comedies, but
I am having trouble thinking of any in a drama that did not end up so
simply because of editing.

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Sabrina Kilian <ski### [at] vtedu> wrote:
> Would that no-dimensional character be the guy that a main character
> bumps into on a street, calls the main character a jerk, and then is
> never seen again?

  I would call that a "one-dimensional character" because that character
serves a role. One single extremely narrow role, but a role nevertheless.

  You could have different types of such characters. Someone could eg.
aplogize instead of getting angry (an extreme case would be a Japanese
tourist who apologizes very profusely).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   You could have different types of such characters. 

I read a fascinating book full of short stories called something like "tales 
from the catina."  It took all the zero-dimensional characters from Star 
Wars and wrote short stories/novelettes about each one. It also seemed like 
they were interconnected, as if each author was given the end of the 
previous story to start from.

So there's a story about the guy playing keyboard in the Catina band, and 
how he's down on his luck, so he sells a blaster to the jawa who was 
cleaning up the dead bodies at the attacked jawa transport, who takes it and 
tries to get revenge on the empire by shooting the guards who believed these 
aren't the droids they were looking for, who go rough up the pig-faced guard 
to get an audience with Jaba the Hutt, who is in the process of talking to 
the monster trainer to get a new monster of the type Luke dropped the door 
on, etc etc etc.

A very fun concept. I think they actually made two books full of such stories.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
   I get "focus follows gaze"?

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