The Disgusting Irresponsibility of Car Chase Scenes

[Reichu]

Got the idea for this thread here and couldn't resist.

I have a confession to make today: I not only find car chase scenes boring as fuck, I also find them extremely bothersome. These things are a staple of action films, and, pretty much invariably, they involve incredible amounts of reckless driving, automobile collisions, property damage, and so on. It's like directors think the only way to make them more "exciting" is to pile on the collateral damage. Ostensibly, these car chases are happening for a heroic purpose. The bad car contains the bad guy and/or some McGuffin, so the good car needs to catch up to it at any cost and make it stop driving somehow. Or maybe the good guy needs to get away from the bad guy for some reason, like he has some VIP or the McGuffin, and driving into crowded streets is inexplicably viewed as the only course of action. In any case, it seems that very seldom do the ends justify the means. Like, how many civilians' lives is this stupid car chase worth? They endanger countless drivers and passengers, not to mention pedestrians. Depending on the insanity of the chase, even people who are at home or the store can be at risk! The property damage is preposterous; anything that's in the way gets run over or plowed through if protagonist guy thinks it will expedite the chase rather than stop it. Cars, storefronts, landscaped property, fences, priceless works of art, everything is game. Completing the chase is the most important thing.

Most movies just leave the necessity of the car chase and all its resultant destruction as this unspoken sort of thing. It will happen because, well duh!, it's an action movie and it needs to have the stupid car chase scene, no matter how little sense it makes or thematically inappropriate it is. On top of that, it's really rare that you see the people in the line of fire. When you do, oftentimes they're shown as being miraculously okay. Most of the really explosive, collisiony, car-flippy set pieces seem to avoid depicting drivers and passengers, though, almost like all these cars and trucks really are nothing more than props awaiting destruction, rather than being on the road because somebody needed to go somewhere. And most car chase scenes don't have the nads to depict all the pedestrians who would inevitably be getting hit, although even those that do will probably treat it as something that just sort of happened and never mention it again.

Sometimes, yeah, the people in these scenes are the sorts who honestly don't give a shit about other lives. But quite often, the hero we're supposed to be rooting for is partaking. And more often than not, whatever the car chase is about is not worth risking even a single traffic accident, let alone a hundred. I'm not sure what it means, exactly, that these kinds of scenes are eaten up by audiences. What is it about consequence-free destruction? And here, we're not even talking about fantastic consequence-free destruction. Automobile accidents are something we risk every time we hop into a car. There's always a new accident on the side of the road, ready to remind us of what could go wrong. Most people are not far removed from someone who has been in an accident or been adversely affected by one. Why don't these chase scenes create the sorts of controversy that you see with, say, heroic shootouts? Shootouts affect way fewer people than reckless driving!

Anyway, I think the reliance of action films upon the car chase scene is not only mindless, over-indulgent, and passe -- "look how good MY crew is at blowing up expensive, fully functional cars and making them flip twenty feet into the air!"), but irresponsible to the point of being sociopathic. BUT MUH ESCAPISM! Screw that. It should be possible to tell a story and make it exciting without requiring casual, completely unaddressed death and destruction. If your hero is going to ram into fifty cars, fucking own up to it. Either make it clear they don't give a shit, or show that they do. Have there be real consequences or else make it REALLY clear that what the hero is doing is important enough to warrant the collateral damage.

Note that while I'm using my loathing for the car chase scene as a launch point, since thinking about it prompted me to make the thread in the first place, pretty much any cinematic set pieces that involve huge, unthinking, and/or unjustifiable amounts of collateral damage are perfectly relevant and worth delving into as well.

[robersora]

Man, you must have had a blast with Bad Boys II.

[Mr. Tines]

Modern cinema is terrible in its "needs moar explosions". You have to do these things in a genteel fashion.

[Ray]

I take it you've never seen The Blues Brothers?

[jcmoorehead]

I take it you've never seen The Blues Brothers?

This was exactly my thought when I saw this thread.

[NemZ]

Crazy stunts, giant explosions, reckless driving and all that sort of things is ultimately what the action genre is for, Reichu. Pure ID-tastic spectacles for the reptile brain. If you're not down for turning off your rational self and just enjoying the mayhem then it's just not for you.

Also, Ronin. and this other one from the same movie, because lol.

[Reichu]

I take it you've never seen The Blues Brothers?

Dunno if you were asking me or Tines, but, for the record, I have. (One of my dad's favorites. He would regularly put on his favorite scenes when I was little.) It's actually what I was referencing when I mentioned storefronts. Given the irreverent tone of the film -- it's not taking anything seriously, so why should we? -- I would say this is one of the chase scenes that works. It's not really comparable to the countless chase scenes populating all these "gritty" and "serious" action flicks that expect us to care about the central conflict and its stakes but blissfully refuse to acknowledge the manslaughter happening just outside and between the frames.

Crazy stunts, giant explosions, reckless driving and all that sort of things is ultimately what the action genre is for, Reichu. Pure ID-tastic spectacles for the reptile brain. If you're not down for turning off your rational self and just enjoying the mayhem then it's just not for you.

That this is all action films are good for and we should just shut up and eat our popcorn is a pitiful flanderization of the genre that's occurred over time. Smart and conscientious action films are a thing that exist. There is no particular reason why they can't continue to be made, aside from, I suppose, movie studios assuming we're all drooling idiots and peeps like you proving it to them with the unabashed apologetics. In the hands of a skilled storyteller, rather than another Hollywood hack, these audience pleasing scenes can exist while actually being grounded in the story and themes of the film. Mayhem does not have to be reduced to little more than a mindless show of stunts, pyrotechnics, and CGI. That this happens on a nearly universal scale these days is nothing short of laziness.

You suggesting in apparent earnest that I'm "not down for turning off [my] rational self" is just plain bizarre considering you've been present for years of my antics and clearly know better.

[NemZ]

Maybe we're using different terminology, because to me an action film is focused on delivering exactly that. Crazy spectacles endlessly ramping up until the budget runs out where the plot is just an excuse for the next set piece to happen. It's essentially a cinematic rollercoaster. If a film delivers more than that then it's some sort of hybrid, not just action.

My point is that you're thinking about it too much. It's the same sort of thing as, I don't know... the scene with the dog jumping for the tunnel in Independence Day. Through the magic of cinema we're supposed to worry about that dog for a second and not about the many thousands of people who were still out there.

I mentioned Ronin not just because it has great car chase scenes but also because the other cars are clearly occupied and moving. At one point the two cars are exchaning gunfire mid-chase and it gives us a quick cut of another unrelated driver getting shot by a stray round. That's the sort of thing you asked for, right? And there's no musical score (well, for most of it anyway), just engines, tire squeels, crashes, etc.

[A.T. Fish]

Note that while I'm using my loathing for the car chase scene as a launch point, since thinking about it prompted me to make the thread in the first place, pretty much any cinematic set pieces that involve huge, unthinking, and/or unjustifiable amounts of collateral damage are perfectly relevant and worth delving into as well.

When I was younger I thought a lot about the random people in movies that were somehow affected by the main plot, from the random unnamed henchman that gets killed by the hero to the guy that gets his car stolen because the hero needs it. I would sit there contemplating how the story of those random extras would unfold after they crossed the path of the main plot, because the movie would never go there. Who were they? What were their hopes and dreams? What happened to them? I'll never know.

[Reichu]

A.T. Fish: Aww, that's adorable... What happened that you stopped having these sorts of thoughts?

Maybe we're using different terminology, because to me an action film is focused on delivering exactly that. (snip) If a film delivers more than that then it's some sort of hybrid, not just action.

"Action film" is a broad genre with multiple subcategories. They're action movies because they utilize certain genre fixtures, but this does not make the exhibition of those fixtures the only reason that the movies exist. What you're describing is essentially porn, only with car crashes, bullets, and explosions in place of the fucking as what an excuse plot is tying together. While, sure, I guess there is plenty of room in the action genre for stunt and special effects porn, it would just be plain said if the genre is reduced to only that, considering what it's capable of.

My point is that you're thinking about it too much.

I'm struggling to see what's in any way bad about someone putting actual thought into a subject where most people willfully turn their brains off... Incidentally, accusations of "thinking too much" generally tends to be code for "you've deviated from the status quo and this is dangerous for some ill-defined reason; time to fall in line". Else it's just a cheap tactic for dismissing opinions one doesn't want to put effort into addressing seriously. I'm only saying this because I think too much, of course.

It's the same sort of thing as, I don't know... the scene with the dog jumping for the tunnel in Independence Day. Through the magic of cinema we're supposed to worry about that dog for a second and not about the many thousands of people who were still out there.

While the emphasis on a single dog's life is silly in the context of city-razing calamity... My issue is with cinematic conventions that more or less rely upon massive amounts of consequence-free collateral damage that the ostensible good guy(s) is/are responsible for in part or whole. The thing with the dog isn't really germane. At all.

[NemZ]

"Action film" is a broad genre with multiple subcategories.

So yeah, thinking in different modes here. I'm not a fan of the concept of genre really... I'd rather discuss a thing in terms of what common traits it has rather than sorting out chunks that have similarities and THEN seeing how a given example compares. Forcing it all into some sort of hierarchy might be interesting for evolutionary studies for example, but not when I just want to watch a damn movie.

So yeah, I'm weird and this misunderstanding is on me. Mea Culpa.

"thinking too much"

No, all those connotations are not what I meant at all. My point was that you're thinking too much to enjoy the film. As soon as you start thinking about the collateral damage rather than how awesome whatever just happened looked you're snapped right out of the film.

Happened to me watching Taken 3, for example, and totally ruined the experience. The problem is the premise... you get more psychological 'slack' I guess when you're saving someone else then you do when you're trying to save yourself from being framed for something that already happened.

For another example, Shoot 'Em Up is essentially live-action loony-toon about how cool guns are. It is extremely stupid, but if you're in the mood to buckle in and put your brain on pause for an hour and change I highly recommend it. That's a pure action film done right. ...Well, okay, it's actually brilliant parody of an action film done so well it succeeds at being a great example of the the thing it mocks in addition to the comedy.

[pwhodges]

You can get out of this bind the way I do: by reading books instead of watching films; that way you can picture your own account of the implications of what's going on instead of being annoyed by the film maker's version. Too many films are just too literal, and suppress the imagination.

And if you want the car crashes to be an important element of the experience, read Crash by J.G.Ballard.

[A.T. Fish]

A.T. Fish: Aww, that's adorable... What happened that you stopped having these sorts of thoughts?

I don't know, I used to have a very active imagination not too long ago, now I'm just boring. I think real life caught up to me and I started focusing more on what is real than what is in my head, sadly.

[Trajan]

I think everyone has certain tropesthey just can't stand. Car chases for one person may be constant witty banter for someone else.

Most car chase scenes are rather dull personally; but when done well, they're quite enthraling. If one party is an anti-hero or otherwise flawed protagonist it also makes the disregard for life, property and general welfare more understandable.

[Reichu]

My point was that you're thinking too much to enjoy the film. As soon as you start thinking about the collateral damage rather than how awesome whatever just happened looked you're snapped right out of the film.

There is an unspoken contract that exists between the storyteller and their audience, for sure, but either party is capable of breaking it. For example, I provide suspension of disbelief as the default, but reserve the right to revoke it if a story doesn't hold up its end of the bargain. I'll allow that exciting high-speed chase scenes can work, but the film must MAKE it work. All the pieces must come together to convince me of the movie's alter-reality.

Now, I singled out serious and gritty action movies for a reason, because they are especially good at failing to convince me that the car chase should happen, at least the way in which it is depicted. Given the tone previously set by many such films, I feel fully justified in my brain automatically wondering, "why is this happening?" Sometimes it is super ridiculous, with Mr. Hero-Pants needing to get away from Mr. Villain Dude with Ms. McGuffin in tow and deciding that the best way to do this is to drive really fast into traffic-filled streets. If this were a hero worth rooting for, I'm not so sure that he would default to risking both his charge's life and the lives of countless others by resorting to reckless driving in highly populated areas as the only means of escape. (Assuming there is a real need for escape at all. Sometimes one has to wonder why the protagonist doesn't settle it with the villain right then and there!) Maybe this is because all generic action heroes are also fully trained stunt drivers -- always, without exception -- and we should just take it as given that they know how to drive their way out of city center rush hour traffic. Fine, whatever. Would it really hurt for a movie with pretensions of weightiness to at least acknowledge the calculated risk involved? Or for it to internally justify why the collateral damage is less important than the central conflict? I'm really not asking for a lot here...

Wish I could provide some specific examples, but most of the movies I'm thinking about here are also ones that started to fade from memory the moment the credits rolled and it would take a fair amount of effort to identify them from the vague mishmash of images that remain. As you might guess, I find the majority of action flicks vapid, boring, and wholly forgettable. But, naturally, they are quite popular and so they've been a typical choice for family movie night and the like... Guess one thing to be thankful for in no longer living at home is not having to suffer through yet another bland action/espionage movie. GODDAMIT MOM WHAT DO YOU SEE IN THEM?

[soul.assassin]

If there was an action movie that was done better, go grab Heat by Michael Mann. No such thing as a good getaway from a heist.