Jurassic World

[potentiality_26]

Interestingly, nothing about this movie was on my flist until just now, and I saw the trailer for it about ten minutes ago, having previously had no idea there was even going to be another Jurassic Park movie.  I get why they've made one- they can make better dinosaurs now, so they have to.  It's like a law of computer animation, the same way they have to make another Godzilla everytime there's an advance in technology.

That said... this baffles me.  On a Doylist level it all makes perfect sense.  On a Watsonian level, seriously?  After everything that happened in the last three movies, somebody still said, "We're opening this park, people!  What's more, we're going to make a NEW dinosaur.  What could go wrong?"
   

Comments

[verdande-mi.livejournal.com]

Why indeed! But I reckon if we could make dinasaurs come to life again and it all went down hill, there would be people around willing to do another round... I don't think I've seen anything but the first movie, but I have great memories of that one :)

And could you perhaps explain what you mean by Doylist and Watsonian level?

[potentiality-26.livejournal.com]

Sure. I'm not sure who exactly coined them, but the words "Doylist" and "Watsonian" are used as two ways of explaining why things happen in a story. So character A does X. The Watsonian explanation takes into account who A is, what his/her motivations are, and uses them to make sense of why A just did X. The Doylist explanation takes into account why the author had A do X. Character A did X because the writer needed Y to happen. Make sense?

Watsonian: they keep trying to make dinosaurs even though it all went to hell last time because if we could make dinosaurs at least one person would always be willing to try to make it work again.

Doylist: they keep trying to make dinosaurs because we can animate better dinosaurs, and it will be a cool movie.

The terms were coined basically to explain a flaw that sometimes appears in storytelling. Say you watch a movie or TV show or read a book, and something a character does makes no earthly sense to you. It just doesn't seem like something that character would do. But when you think about it, you understand why it happened. In terms of how the movie or show or book functions, in terms of how you get from point A to point B within the story, you get why it had to happen that way, but as far as the characters are concerned it just doesn't seem right. That's where Watsonian vs. Doylist comes in. Within the context of the story, in the part of your brain where you're imagining it's all real and that it all really happened just that way, you don't get it- but outside the context of the story you do, and that's a problem. The terms are used to criticize a tendency writers sometimes have to show their hand too much, which in turn kind of jars audiences out of the story.

Wow, that was long winded. I just really love this idea; it's very useful.

[verdande-mi.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this - just leared something new :D And it is indeed useful and just fun to have in the back of your mind when misgiving something a character does. Thanks again; I appreciate it.

[potentiality-26.livejournal.com]

:)