Quantum Storytelling

25 Cinematic Cliches I Never Wanna See Again. Courtesy of The Cultural Gutter.

My favs:

21. That it’s only after the detective has been suspended (and obligatorily forced to place his badge and gun on the lieutenant’s desk) that he can properly crack the case.

19. People being chased by a car who run top speed down the middle of the street instead of simply ducking somewhere where a car can’t follow, which happens to be pretty much anywhere except the middle of the street.

15. Women that never have enough sense to keep running while being chased by an enemy unless a guy is pulling her along by her hand or wrist — despite the fact that this takes them far below the speed either one could go on their own.

I could add a few of my own, such as…

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What happens when you put a lonely guy with a love life notorious for crazy girlfriends together with a crazy SUPER girlfriend? You end up with My Super Ex-Girlfriend.

Luke Wilson plays Matt Saunders, a troubled bachelor searching for love. Things heat up when Saunders meets Uma Thurman’s Jenny Johnson, a book-wormish art gallery curator with a neurotic side. Little does Saunders know that Jenny is G-Girl, a superhero femme fatale.

Everything is fine until Saunders realizes that Jenny ‘G-Girl’ Johnson, like many of his past girlfriends, is a psycho hose beast. If you think crazy ex-girlfriends can be cruel and vengeful, just imagine one with super powers!

Supporting comedic value is added by Saunder’s amoral sleazeball friend Vaughn, played by Rainn Wilson–because what’s a comedy without your usual sleazeball sidekick? A less typical character is Saunder’s harassment-obsessed boss, Carla, played by Wanda Sykes.

Although the story explores some dark humor at times, it maintains an overall light-hearted vibe throughout.

The writing is pretty good, and the story structure seems solid. All the proper story elements are in place and the writers seem to have done a good job. No complaints there.

Where this movie really shines is on the strength of its premise, and if anything illustrates how critical that element is to a story’s success. It’s hard to go wrong with super-powered ex-girlfriend vengeance. Some might call it gimmicky, but it’s a welcomed relief from the plain vanilla romantic comedies of the last few years. When in doubt, add a twist to the premise.

Since my wife Jennifer scored the tickets to a free publicity preview screening, it would be hard for me to complain even if I found My Super Ex-Girlfriend lacking. I would have gladly forked over the ticket price to go see this one on my own dollar.

My Super Ex-Girlfriend is a pretty fun flick.

There is a fiction-writing theory called the Superior Position. Superior Position is when the audience knows something that the hero doesn’t, such as “The killer is creeping up behind her.”

One of the tricks the pros use to create twists is inverting the superior position at the end of a scene. The audience knows something the hero doesn’t, the hero is in danger and doesn’t realize it yet. At the end of the scene, it turns out that either the hero DID know (and we the audience didn’t know the hero knew) or that they were genuinely unaware, but had forseen trouble and made some kind of preemptive action.

A great example of this is in the action-suspense movie 16 Blocks. The hero is supposed to transport a prisoner-witness to testify against corrupt cops. Of course, the corrupt cops can’t let that witness testify, and so the course of the story is comprised of the heroes being pursued by corrupt cops.

At one point the heroes enter a bystander’s apartment. Anonymous within the locked doors of the apartment, the heroes have bought themselves some time while the corrupt cops search the apartment building hallways, lobby, and rooftop outside. The hero makes a call to the courthouse and requests a safe pickup for the witness and himself. But of course, there is a leak within the courthouse, that forwards the apartment number to the corrupt cops.

The audience thinks, “Oh no… they know the apartment he’s hiding in and they’re about to bust down the door and get them!”

And then comes the twist in the form of a big BUT. BUT the villains bust down the apartment door only to have the wrong room. The hero told the courthouse the wrong apartment number intentionally, because he knew there would be a leak. And so we realize the hero has outsmarted the villains once again. This is a perfect example of inverting the superior position.

A good way to think about superior position and the ending twist is to think of it as a simple narrative.

“The villain has planted a bomb in the car the hero is about to climb into, oh no! BUT it is the wrong car.” or “BUT his friend climbs into the car first and explodes in a fiery ball of death.”

This is similar to Carolyn Wheat’s Four Outcomes. The idea of “Yes, but…” or “No, and furthermore…” is a narrative trick to put the hero in danger, move the scene forward and create suspense.

The ‘BUT’ at the end of every suspensful situation is your opportunity to invert the audience’s superior position and create a dramatic twist.