CM: No Encounter of the Third Kind...

In Hollywood there are more pitches made in a day than the entire Premiere League sees in a year.

Some of those meetings can revolve around a singular idea that is shorter than the line you’ve just read: what amounts to a single sentence that may simply suggest a plot that is being described as no more or less than two previously successful movie ideas combined. (There’s a scene in the film The Player that lampoons the notion, but probably not enough). A pitch is little more than the attempt to sell the idea – the script doesn’t come until later and sometimes isn’t even there when the cameras start to roll. After all, A-Lister X only has a certain gap in his schedule and rewrites take time. You can colour-code your page rewrites later.

Perhaps, then, it’s no real surprise that the thing missing from some, arguably most, Hollywood movies is not heart or soul but that elusive third act. You've introduced the idea, you've got to the drama and then... what? You have the concept, you have the potential star, but how on Earth does it all end?  How does the hero save the day? How does the conspiracy come undone?  How does that pesky timey-whimey crisis work itself out with a presentable paradox? 

What’s become all too clear in recent years is that the third act isn’t so much 'elusive' as not deemed that important. There's much derison of the idea of something being 'designed by committee' and if you add the tendency for studios to demand that a first cut of a movie is screened to a small test audience (before its eventually tweaked for major release) then it's easy to see why some strong ideas are diluted or an ending is thrown out there to please the biggest demographic, whether it makes a lot of sense or not.  I remember being approached (as a mere member of the public) to see a now long-forgotten hesit movie called 'What About the Benjamins?' while in LA in 2001. I saw the early cut of the film, answered some questions about what I hought of specific characters and the ending. By the time I actually reviewed the finished film a year later, there had been some minor tweaks, though it largely stayed the same.  In other cases - I can think of the Highlander films - there are more versions out there than there are swords. 

But I’ve lost count of the finished films I’ve seen where it’s still been painfully obvious that no real due care and attention has been paid to how the film will end. The point where you realise that far from keeping you on the edge of your seat, the film has, itself, fallen off the edge and shows no signs of returning. Whether it be a small-scale vanity project or a Hollywood blockbuster, it's the kind of film where you start to actively wish  "it WAS really all a dream after all..."

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