A project whereby films are taken and edited in such a way that the emotionally stirring climax is subverted or stymied to allow the plot of the film to operate in an arbitrary and fruitless manner which is more akin to real life.
Take, for examples, Forever Young (1992), starring Mel Gibson and the Baggins boy. (1) In the BME version, Gibson never takes the time to teach the kid to fly the old plane and consequently in the last mad dash towards his miraculously still extant true love young Baggins takes the wheel from the progeric Gibson makes an arse of landing, causing the plane to slalom into a rock and explode, killing both. OR (2) In a less costly BME version the plane lands safely and El Gibbo and his gap-toothed buddy rock up to the old lady's porch to find six days' milk bottles by the door.
Of course, the easiest - and in the immediate term, most satisfying - versions of BMEs are the ones where, for example James Bond dives off the dam having forgotten to fasten his bungee cord or where Forrest Gump gets hacked to bits by Tonton Macoutes before he makes it anywhere near the bus stop but these lack finesse and will be judged accordingly.-- calum, Jan 30 2014 What the camera doesn't show... The_20Opposite_20Show [FlyingToaster, Jan 30 2014] mirror universe from star trek http://www.youtube....watch?v=qXw6hC7hxBAalmost what 8th of 7 describes [technobadger, Jan 31 2014] "if you’re ever teaching a rhetoric class and you need an example of “bathos” to put on a slide" https://twitter.com...1109563826213654528 [calum, Apr 24 2019] In Back to the Future, the time machine doesn't work, then as Doc and Marty stand around puzzled they suddenly get killed by Libyans.-- ytk, Jan 30 2014 One of the most bathetic things in a storyline would be if the main character becomes very listless and idle, making the rest of a fairly interesting movie end with an extended scene of hero protagonist on couch or recliner chair, whinging at the efforts of the other characters to resume action. The laze reaching such an extent the script is visible, and the main makes a half hearted effort to reach for it as the final scene closes.
For the movie Forever Young, the young hobbits discover Mel Gibson inside the time capsule but only his corpse.
Forrest Gump is revealed to be a viciously bitter racist, and the movie continues much as it did with his great successes, minus his friendship with Bubba who is in the film but not recognized as a person, and the audience is left with an empty feeling at the end that things were so fortunate for such a racist.-- rcarty, Jan 30 2014 In Star Trek: First Contact, the humans immediately attack and kill the Vulcans who come in peace, and steal their spacecraft, subsequently indulging in a prolonged and vicious bout of empire-building based on megalomania, xenophobia, greed and callous indifference, resulting in a future where most sentient life forms see the Borg as their last, best hope of fending off the ravages of marauding homo sapiens, and consider it an honour and privelige to be invited to be Assimilated into the Collective.
NB this is not a documentary. Yet.-- 8th of 7, Jan 30 2014 Every action hero ever kicked in the head by an assailant succumbs to head injury and subdural haematomae, just like in real life.-- UnaBubba, Jan 31 2014 Gunshot wounds take several months to recover, if you survive them.-- UnaBubba, Jan 31 2014 Why "Bathetic" in the title?Just a typo, or does it signify something?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 31 2014 It's a word. Look it up. :)-- ytk, Jan 31 2014 Ha! So it is.Never heard it before, I thought maybe it was a play on the word pathetic.
That'll learn me.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jan 31 2014 [21 Quest] I'd like to see a scene in a movie where Jason Bourne's chiropractor meets James Bond's chiropractor at a chiropractors' convention.-- hippo, Jan 31 2014 The Lion King (bathetic cut):- "All this will be yours, except for that dark place over there"- "OK, we'll be super sure not to go there"-- hippo, Jan 31 2014 I am not sure that making the consequences of film violence medically accurate counts as of itself a BME: what I was looking to do was to create a break, likely late in the film and brought about by some banal event or omission, whereby the narrative march from crisis apex to tidy resolution is snapped between these two stages, the inevitable happy ending is made manifestly evitable.
So, taking Taken (2008): 1. It would probably not be a BME, not a play on standard film narrative, if at any point in the film Liam Neeson was shot and suffered a medically plausible reaction to being shot and failed to complete his mission. 2. It would be a BME if, just before rescuing his daughter by shooting the last brown person, he is himself shot and suffered a medically plausible reaction to being shot, this shot having been fired by maybe one of the brown people who he failed to ruthlessly execute earlier on. 3. It would not be a BME is, just before rescuing his daughter by shooting the last brown person, he is himself shot, suffering a medically plausble reaction to being shot, this shot having been fired by dun dun duuunnnn his own daughter who is acksherly a terrist. This would be a shitty twist ending, which is the other sort of resolution that Hollywood likes. 4. It would be a super BME if Liam Neeson doesn't even make it onto the boat because as he is driving pell mell round Paris trying to get to the boat he crashes the car into a lamp-post and is rushed to hospital.
Or the Lion King: Simba decided he likes to hang out with the pig and the Broadway mouse thing more than he'd like to be a king, so he never goes back to Pride Rock. Or Up: the helium balloons don't do anything and the auld fella spends the remaining 60 mins of the film schlepping his piss-stained slippers up and down the nursing home corridors.
[hippo], I had another idea for a series of films following minor characters - like the guys with the briefcase in Pulp Fiction - until the main characters of the original movie come in and end their involvement in the narrative, either, as is the case in relation to the Pulp Fiction guys, by making them dead, or, maybe, for example, just following the general manager of the overlook from the initial scenes with Jack Nicholson to coming back up into the remains of the bloodbath and having to deal with cleaning it up. And then I remembered both Rosencrantz and Guildensten are Dead and zen_tom's R&DAD referencing comment on your "Your Life: Deleted Scenes and Extras" idea and realised that I was barking up an old hat.-- calum, Jan 31 2014 Nice idea though.So many bathetic edits could be made from Blade Runner: In close up, we see Deckard picking his nose. He inspects the end of his finger and is surprised to see his fingernail has a serial number etched into it.-- hippo, Jan 31 2014 ...or about a third of the way through The Usual Suspects, someone calls to Kevin Spacey's character from across the street "Hey Keyser! How are you doing? I haven't seen you since college!"-- hippo, Jan 31 2014 It seems to me that films work by progressing to a point where things are going well for the protagonist(s), then stop. The audience is then free to assume a happy-ever- after. It should then be pretty straightforward to extend a film by a few minutes. This is in most cases trivial when there is a sequel.
For example, we could add the first five minutes or so of the Bourne Supremacy on to the Bourne Identity.
// I had another idea for a series of films following minor characters - like the guys with the briefcase in Pulp Fiction - until the main characters of the original movie come in and end their involvement in the narrative, either, as is the case in relation to the Pulp Fiction guys, by making them dead, or, maybe, for example, just following the general manager of the overlook from the initial scenes with Jack Nicholson to coming back up into the remains of the bloodbath and having to deal with cleaning it up. //
I might have mentioned it on here before, but war films (etc) typically follow a lead character who survives until at least the very end of the film. I think a war film which followed the same group but serially focuses on a character who might die at any encounter would be a quite different experience.-- Loris, Feb 02 2014 I have learned of the existence of a word; I have not yet fully learned its meaning.-- notexactly, Apr 24 2019 I have learnt a new word, I have yet to experience the situation this word defines.-- wjt, Apr 26 2019 <James McNeill Whistler>
"You will, Oscar, you will ..."
<James McNeill Whistler/>-- 8th of 7, Apr 26 2019 Hmm, pretty much all Russian/Scandinavian films are like dat.-- not_morrison_rm, Apr 26 2019 Child #1, now 15, recently watched Avengers: Endgame and just as the the golden light reflects off the pond onto Old Man Captain America, silhouetted on his bench, she blurted "haha imagine if that was just a random auld fella, that would be so funny" and she was *right*
I have never discussed the BME concept with her. Genius must be inherited.-- calum, Oct 29 2024 DiCaprio trips and falls off the bow of the Titanic.-- minoradjustments, Oct 29 2024 random, halfbakery