I’d say this whole post is one big spoiler – but on the remote chance you actually read this blog, you probably already watch too many movies/tv shows as it is.
Hang a lantern on it
Meaning: a writing device used to openly address an element of the plot that requires the audience to entirely suspend their disbelief so everyone can just get on with believing
-we can go back to the future
-he has done Inception before
-a frozen donkey wheel can move the island back in time
-the hooker with a heart of gold ends up with the handsome ka-jillionaire
-he is Luke’s father
-one girl in all the world, a chosen one will have the strength and skill to hunt the vampires
-they will save Private Ryan
-that’s not an African American con woman kissing you, it’s your dead husband
-it took them that long to figure out they needed a bigger boat
-he knows kung fu
-if you build it
-they’re heeeere
-he was only mostly dead
-he’s Batman
-he sees dead people
A lantern is a writing device. It helps to shine a metaphorical light on a notion or plot point so you can stay with the story and not be taken out of it by your disbelief.
A literal lantern in the form of a freaking cell phone does exactly the opposite; when I am watching a movie a bright freaking light shining in the seat next to me at any point in time will take me out of the story. The writer can hang metaphorical lanterns all over the place but it doesn’t matter because at that point you and your phone and your text or your email or your desire to know the time has taken me out of the movie and back into the real world of people that suck.
We have our entire lives to to go out with friends and family and ignore them so we can text and check our emails and tweet and play Angry Birds. All I ask is if you line up, pay money and sit down to see a movie think about the fact that one day someone just might try to shove that phone where the sun don’t shine if you turn it on during the show.
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