Poorly Constructed Suspension

So, I saw The Fourth Kind last night. (And I am a complete idiot, apparently, since it took me until almost all the way through the movie to figure out the title was a play on Close Encounters of the Third Kind.) It's an alien abduction movie set in Nome, Alaska. And it wants you to believe it's a true story.

I'm not really going to talk about the movie. It was more ridiculous than scary, but my friend and I enjoyed it with the delight of those who mock such films. I'm not sure why they decided to set this "real" film in Nome. Maybe so it would be harder to refute? I don't know.

What I want to talk about is the suspension of disbelief. My disbelief wasn't suspended for a moment, so instead of watching the film and thinking, "Hey, that's a cool idea! Why are the aliens speaking ancient Sumerian?" I was snorting to myself at how ridiculous the idea of aliens speaking ancient Sumerian and tromping through our heiroglyphic art in spacesuits was.

If a movie is fiction, I will buy into the premise and enjoy all the "what ifs". I may even spend a lot of time consdering afterward, "What if that what if is true?" But if you insist a movie is true, then the game becomes not about the what ifs, but about picking apart your "facts". I don't buy in for a second. So if you are creating a movie, and you have this really cool idea, why would you want to try to pass it off as true? You are setting yourself up to have to defend it, right up until the moment you admit you lied about the truth. What a pain. When instead you could be talking about the cool what ifs.

Dan Brown, I think, does a really good job of dealing right on the edge of the what ifs and the suspension of disbelief. In The Da Vinci Code, in particular, he sets up a "this could have happened" atmosphere and lets the reader do the work of deciding if his theories are true (and blasphemous and banworthy!) or just an interesting what-if. His book is fiction, but the conspiracy behind it was originally published as a thesis in a non-fiction book. However, the nonfic version by that poor other author Danny Boy got all his ideas from, that one never sold very well. Because he couldn't suspend the disbelief high enough. Dan Brown didn't try. He just set up a what if atmosphere and let the story tell itself. And he had a bestseller. Fiction can be more believable and intriguing than it's real life counterpart and Dan has the mansion to prove it.

I'm really hoping the "No, it's True!" movies go extinct soon... or go back to being produced as one hour conspiracy theories for the History channel. Give me a what if, any day.