So I saw the trailer for the new DC picture Black Adam the other day. I don’t know much about the character, he’s played by Dwayne Johnson, he looks bad-assed, a bunch of things blow up. But one thing about the trailer really stuck in my mind as a potent symbol of contemporary cinematic story telling.
Towards the end of the trailer, Black Adam is standing next to a Jeep, or a kind of SUV type car, you know the sort of thing, and some third party launches a rocket at it. So, here we go, Jeep, rocket, something’s going to blow up. But no! Black Adam catches the rocket. We see him catch it. He’s clearly holding it in his hand. He caught it. Well, that’s bad assed. Guy caught a rocket.
Then the guy who’s in the Jeep says, ‘Did he just catch that rocket?’ Slowly and clearly. Just in case any of us watching the trailer weren’t able to understand what the action of seeing a rocket launched through the air and then ending up in the hands of bad-ass-guy meant. Underlining it, you know. Or just pointing out the bleeding obvious, as we sometimes like to say. Pretty annoying.
THEN the woman sitting in the Jeep, the same Jeep, sitting next to the ‘I like to say things out loud’ guy, SHE says, ‘He just caught that rocket.’
Nnnnghghgh.
I think Black Adam is going to struggle at the box office if the final cut comes in at six hours long, but I don’t see how they can avoid it with this new screenwriting strategy of having two different people vocally describe every action as it happens.
Page 705.
INT DAY DESERT BASE
Black Adam opens the door.
MAN
Did he just open that door?
WOMAN
He just opened that door.
Black Adam looks around the room.
MAN
He’s looking around the room.
WOMAN
Yeah, he seems to be looking around the room.