
Words are losing their power. Not even Jason Bourne can save them now - wolfgke
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/21/words-jason-bourne-matt-damon-film-hollywood-dialogue
======
danso
With the exception of Star Wars: The Force Awaken, I haven't seen any of the
blockbusters mentioned, though I wonder how much this article cherry-picks,
given that the 2 top grossing movies this year (Civil War, Zootopia) [0] seem
dialogue-dense based on their trailers despite being summer entertainment.
Also, I would have attributed the disappearing of dialogue to our increasingly
dumbed-down short attention spans, something that has been evident in Jerry
Bruckheimer films. Also, Avatar, which had such shit dialogue that I found it
hard to believe until I looked it up that James Cameron had written the
screenplay for his Aliens, which has timeless (if brief) dialogue.

That said, it's completely believable to me that the cost of making
universally clever dialogue is much harder than just doing it in one language,
and will be the easiest line-item to justify cutting with international
audiences being increasingly prized. I've always been OK with reading
subtitles but it wasn't until Inglourious Basterds did I realize how jarring
and unusual it is to have foreign languages hold equal screentime to your own
native language (which makes me respect IB even more for its artistic
achievement).

It'll definitely be a shame if plots themselves become increasingly dumbed
down for international reasons. One thing the OP didn't mention in terms of
the Chinese-market effect on Americans is the seemingly higher frequency of
Chinese locales making cameos...though this is something I welcome, as the
Chinese-based set pieces in movies such as Skyfall as Pacific Rim have usually
been spectacular.

~~~
Blackthorn
I wonder if there's somewhere that lists line counts in films so we can
compare? I've seen both Zootopia and Civil War and they both felt dialogue-
dense (and good!).

~~~
ACow_Adonis
An analysis of word/n-grams/length in English subtitles vs movie run times
would suffice, and I believe both are available, but probably not in a well
structured format.

Flesh-Kincaid vs year of release in those subtitles would also be
interesting...

/just planting seeds of ideas or there in hacker space because I'm too lazy to
do it right now.

------
unsignedqword
I find that with the quantity of dialogue, I tend to observe the opposite
trend in a lot of story-driven videogames: many lines will be devoted to
elaborating on needless backstory, reducing characters down to walking
encyclopedias. Many of these games have a hard time taking advantage of their
medium as far as their story goes.

Her touching on the loss of _quality_ in dialogue, not just _quantity,_ seems
like the more important problem. To me, _meaningful_ and _good_ dialogue is
important - whereas dialogue for the sake of dialogue tends to suck. I'm not
saying that everything that comes out of a character's lips needs to be
important plot points, but writers and producers should think more about what
they're trying to accomplish in their work when a character needs to say
something. I think a piece of bad dialogue hurts more than if that character
were to say nothing.

~~~
zubat
Game dialogue definitely has an weak point in defaulting to an expository
mode, and when this happens it's usually in tandem with a lot of other
kitchen-sink elements that are "immersive" or "world-building" but don't
respect the player's time or attention. Games that gun for interactive story
remain in a perpetual struggle for maximizing the agency of both players and
authors, and the compromise is frequently to distort the timeline and social
situation as needed, on command, so that instead of cutting down on quantity,
players can sample the experience à la carte and then cut short or resume any
scenario when they're bored. But it's still a problem if you're like me and
feel obligated to view all the content no matter what. There are known
patterns now, but it's still a work-in-progress field.

Movies, on the other hand, have a definite limit to how much they can cram in,
and so they're more inclined to use time efficiently. As in games, dialogue is
extremely convenient as a way to do exposition, but the medium holds many
other possibilities. Since there isn't conflict over agency, it's easier to
make more elements in a film "inevitable" by design. For a game to present
many of the set-pieces shown in movies, it has to carefully coax the player to
move in the right direction and look in the right place at the right time.

------
Animats
Dialogue in Jason Bourne movies has always been low. But in this movie, it's
approaching zero. The new Star Trek movie, "Fast and Furious in Spaaaace!", is
not exactly dialog heavy. That's new for that franchise. But there are other
movies.

There's a new Harry Potter book out today. Kids were lining up at Barnes and
Noble for it last evening. Words are doing just fine.

~~~
bitJericho
The dialog in the new st movie is exceptional bad. Particularly Kirk calling
for the execution of the bad guy completely jarring and pretty much turning me
off to the movie franchise from here on out.

~~~
Gracana
They seem okay as brain-dead action flicks, but they're star trek in costume
only. I would to see a star trek movie in the style of a star trek TV episode,
with suspense and strange phenomena and whatnot...

~~~
TeMPOraL
Thank JJ Abrams for screwing things up for everyone and keeping to do it. The
last three Star Trek movies are Star Trek only in name, they're cheap action
flicks and go completely against the spirit of the whole franchise.

~~~
quantumhobbit
I'm similarly disappointed in those films, but I'm holding out hope for
Discovery,
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_Discovery)
.

Looks to be mostly online and set in the original timeline. Bryan Fuller is
involved, he wrote for Voyager and has a history of dialog heavy shows after
that (pushing daisies is so underrated by the way).

~~~
TeMPOraL
We'll see. I'll hold out hope too, both for the series and for CBS not to kill
it if it turns out to be good (like they did to Person of Interest).

> _pushing daisies_

Yeah, I've seen some of it; it's quite ok :).

------
enneff
I find it funny that she mentions Gravity as an example of a film with little
dialogue. My biggest complaint about the movie was that it had entirely _too
much_ dialogue. So much pointless, clichéd exposition about the characters, as
if Bullock's needed any kind of emotional background. It really ruined the
movie IMO.

------
joshschreuder
On the flipside, Bojack Horseman, an animation on Netflix just did an episode
in season 3 which is deliberately dialogue free for the majority of the
episode, and it comes across as a brave and interesting move. This runs
counter to the rest of the show's run which is quite dense and dialogue
driven.

I can't say I've ever seen an episode of animated television like it in recent
times.

~~~
the8472
> and it comes across as a brave and interesting move

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush_(Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hush_\(Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer\))

~~~
Ntrails
Gentlemen status: _Creepy As Fuck_.

------
Mathnerd314
[https://xkcd.com/311/](https://xkcd.com/311/)

More budget = more action scenes = less dialogue

In the far future, special effects alone might not suffice to sell films, but
for now it's enough.

The other trend to consider is films lengthening; there are multi-part series
and also the Netflix streaming model. A 6-hour film can maintain the same
(high) action-to-dialogue ratio but still have room for a plot.

~~~
WalterBright
The older I get, the more action sequences and special effects bore me. But
dialog and situation driven plots, like Primer and House of Cards, are very
interesting.

------
mikeash
I don't care about the quantity of dialog, only quality. The article doesn't
even attempt to present any evidence that quality is down, aside from a rather
silly poll about iconic film lines.

I'd like to see some historical comparisons, too. We tend to imagine movies as
containing more than they do. 43 lines doesn't strike me as particularly
small. It's one more line than I count for Darth Vader in Star
Wa^H^H^H^H^H^H^HA New Hope, for example.

~~~
Houshalter
Vader's lines were proportional to his screen time though. If Luke was mute
the movie would have sucked.

------
dahart
Some hand-picked blockbuster movies having less dialogue demonstrates the
decline of language?

What does short, fluffy blog posts with titles unsupported by their brief
content demonstrate?

Even if movies did represent trends in common language usage, which I doubt,
using fewer words could represent the opposite of the title's conclusion -- it
could be that words are becoming more efficient, and thus more powerful, over
time.

Anyway, some people actually studying common vocabulary usage patterns seem to
come to the opposite conclusion, when they use data and not their favorite
movies. [https://bostonreview.net/blog/claude-s-fischer-how-gss-
got-i...](https://bostonreview.net/blog/claude-s-fischer-how-gss-got-it-wrong)

------
skywhopper
The international marketing considerations are interesting. But the assertions
about The Kids These Days are baseless. Instagram and Snapchat are mostly
visual forms of communication, sure, but meanwhile, texting is as popular as
ever, the fan fiction community provides a huge dynamic workshop where
aspiring writers hone their craft and avid readers learn all about tropes and
are encouraged to critically analyze what they're reading, and when teenagers
get together in real life, they talk just as much as they ever did. Recent
trends in language change are being driven by this new generation, and it's
exciting to watch it happen. The Kids These Days are alright.

~~~
FeepingCreature
XKCD did it also. [https://xkcd.com/1414/](https://xkcd.com/1414/)

The generation that grew up with the internet is not gonna be bad at writing.
Videos are great, but text still rules.

------
summerdown2
I think this might just come down to a difference in directors. A few years
ago, when Aaron Sorkin and Joss Whedon were making blockbusters, no-one would
have complained about the lack of dialogue.

Certainly I can remember lines from Whedon's Avengers film, such as:

"Puny God"

and

"That's my secret, Cap. I'm always angry."

and of course:

"It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is
unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an
enormous green rage monster."

More here:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Avengers_(2012_film)](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Avengers_\(2012_film\))

------
rangibaby
Mad Max is a bad example. Max never spoke much after his family died in the
first film.

~~~
viraptor
It's not the same Max in the Fury Road, so I'm not sure that applies.

~~~
tvon
Fury Road is supposed to be the same Max as the other movies, unless I
misunderstand you.

~~~
viraptor
The same, but not necessarily from the same timeline. It may not even be the
same guy, but the same story. Or maybe not the same at all. Here's the best
summary of ideas I've found:

> Tom Hardy also spoke on this issue by saying, "We have to take it
> differently as George is taking it. It's a relaunch and revisit to the
> world. An entire restructuring. That's not to say that it's not picking up
> or leaving off from the Mad Max you know already, but it's a nice re-take on
> the entire world using the same character, depositing him in the same world
> but bringing him up to date by 30 years." On the other hand, Charlize Theron
> also said that Hardy wasn't playing Mel Gibson's character. They just happen
> to be both named Max Rockatanski. In fact, Miller stated with the 30 year
> gap since the last film and a new actor playing the lead, it was just easier
> to do a new version of the film without maintaining any continuity. The
> easiest way Miller puts it is to think of each film as a "legend of the Road
> Warrior" meaning that each film is a story about Mad Max that happened, but
> perhaps told by different people and so some things are altered from each
> story.

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/faq](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1392190/faq)

~~~
Vaskivo
> each film is a story about Mad Max that happened

That is what i think of it.

I think it is also important to notice that Max is barely aprotagonist of the
movie. He is more like a walking plot device. He help the drama start and move
along while not being the real focus of it. Max is more of an entity than a
character.

------
protomyth
No one likes someone talking over the fireworks on the 4th of July or
narrating a rollercoaster ride, so why would people need much dialog in event
films?

We go for the bigger than TV spectacle. We don't need the theater to get
adult, dialog driven movies since we have great adult, dialog driven
television which have the long length to give the dialog some effect. Movies
are not the place to think anymore. If they can slide in great dialog than
cool, but it doesn't seem to be a requirement.

Heck, I'm more mad that Honest Trailers[1], CinemaSins[2] (Everything wrong
with X in Y minutes), and HISHE[3] have so much damn material because of
spectacle over plot. Plots that make us wince[4] is the greater tragedy.

or... its hard for a screaming kid to screw up an action scene, but the little
whippersnapper can certainly screw up a drama

1)
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL86F4D497FD3CACCE](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL86F4D497FD3CACCE)

2)
[https://www.youtube.com/user/CinemaSins](https://www.youtube.com/user/CinemaSins)

3)
[https://www.youtube.com/user/HISHEdotcom](https://www.youtube.com/user/HISHEdotcom)

4) [https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16/](https://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16/)

~~~
Houshalter
Movies are about telling stories. It's hard to do that without dialogue or
"thinking". There was a time when people were wowed solely by special effects.
But CGI is so routine now long sequences of eye candy are just boring.

~~~
protomyth
I don't think its hard to tell a story without much dialogue. I don't think
"thinking" and "dialogue" are linked as I've seen some really un-thinking
dialogue and some visual thinking without dialogue. Given the box office, I
don't think CGI is boring, just poorly done CGI without a point. I think a
good plot and structure is more important for movies today than just the
dialogue.

------
tonmoy
Cherry picking BvS and Mad Max to prove a point seems like something I'd have
done when I was in the 5th grade.

~~~
jksmith
Agree. This article is reaching. Jeremiah Johnson, Hell in the Pacific,
LeMans, etc were certainly short of dialog, but were artsy and tasteful in
presentation. OTOH, "Hateful 8" includes usual Tarantino mainstay heavy
dialogs that work. Wasted read, move on.

~~~
Freak_NL
I wonder if Tarantino's films aren't just the (welcome) exception to a trend
of less dialogue though.

Some quantitative analysis to back that up would be interesting; you are right
that this article does seem anecdotal in evidence.

------
bogomipz
The Guardian's take is interesting but I don't think the app economy is
driving such a trend. There's been a fundamental shift in movie making in
Hollywood. This was precipitated by the loss of the Blue Ray and DVD market on
which they could always depend for additional revenue stream. Often times a
very lucrative one for a popular movie and $40 price point. With the loss of
this revenue stream Hollywood seems to be intent on movies that are as
universally appealing as possible. And lack of dialogue furthers that end.
It's easy to dispense with dialogue if you are filling that void with
shooting, explosions, car crashing and gratuitous violence.

For a different take on lack of dialogue, a highly recommend Robert Redford in
"All is Lost." A a beautiful and completely compelling movie with no dialogue,
and a single actor and a single setting. Of course Hollywood didn't finance
this film and it takes an extraordinary actor to pull this off.

~~~
icebraining
There's also Essential Killing, another movie with barely any dialogue (maybe
four sentences, and none by the protagonist, played by Vicent Gallo).

------
golergka
This article describes the phenomena as if something existing - blockbuster
movies - is changing. However, this is not the case. Blockbuster movies of
yesterday were US/Europe blockbusters; truly worldwide blockbusters are simply
a new thing, not an existing one. I bet there's still a lot of big movies
targeting US/Europe being shot; but movies that truly (commercially) target
the entire world is a completely new thing. And I wouldn't get sad that for
the time being, that thing is simplistic and bland: a new level of truly
worldwide culture has to start at some common ground for everyone. It doesn't
mean it will stay there.

------
smikhanov
Dialogue is now a playing field of TV series. In Mad Men, for example, all
they do is talk all the time. Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Girls and other
similar shows are very dialogue-heavy. Add to that what most established
mainstream film directors (Fincher, Soderbergh etc) say about TV series:
"Feature-length films are not relevant and TV is where most of the development
happens in this sector of art" (something I personally don't think is true)
and you get the drift.

------
arca_vorago
I think the best way to understand the decline of meaning and subtlety is to
see something that has it rather than try to talk about what doesn't.

I have recently realized that this is one of the things I pay attention to the
most when it comes to deciding.

Two great such examples of shows with meaningful, but often terse, yet still
subtle and even duplicitous would be Peaky Blinders and Marco Polo.

Here is a great example scene from Peaky Blinders:

[https://youtu.be/MzYrtG7dCg0](https://youtu.be/MzYrtG7dCg0)

------
pluma
I wonder what those stats would look like for 1980s and 1990s action movies
(e.g. anything with Schwarzenegger in it).

I severely doubt the phenomenon is new and I think it's more the author trying
to make a point by cherry-picking from already rather "silent" genres than
analysing a general trend.

~~~
Freak_NL
> (e.g. anything with Schwarzenegger in it).

I can vividly imagine Hollywood directors ordering their script writers to
aggressively trim _any_ dialogue spoken by a Schwarzenegger or a Stallone to
one-liners and grunts after actually viewing the first couple of test shots.

~~~
Grue3
And yet everyone remembers "I'll be back", or "Hasta la vista, baby!". Any
memorable lines from recent movies? I can only come up with ironic memes like
Bane crashing the plane with no survivors from The Dark Knight Rises.

~~~
icebraining
"Why so serious?"

~~~
Grue3
"It's simple, we kill the Batman".

------
Apocryphon
I've always considered that Christopher Nolan movies to have some fairly
quotable lines.

------
alixaxel
Interesting. Resembles MinSpeak in a lot of ways.

------
nl
"Winter is Coming"

