Clichés I Abhor: This Just In!

May 9, 2010 ∞ Clichés I Abhor, Reviews, Writing ∞ Fiona Canteberry

I recently saw a Wizard of Oz fan movie called Heartless: The Story of the Tin Man. I mostly recommend it; the acting, effects, and story all get high marks, and the ending credits are somewhat heartwrenching. But be warned: The movie, which is otherwise masterful, is ruined by the narration.

The TVTropes Wiki has a great page on Show, Don’t Tell. Once Heartless was over, I went straight to it and quickly found the exact trope I’m looking for: This Just In. It comes into play when something is obvious and yet the characters or narrator feel the need to point it out to each other or the audience. In this case, the narrator serves as Captain Obvious.

About two minutes into this short film, I realized that the narrator is not only annoyingly redundant, he’s unnecessary.

Want me to demonstrate? Awesome! Let’s go, starting from the beginning of the movie and continuing until I’ve proven my point. I won’t skip a single line of narration; this is a perfect transcript.

Here is a story you think you know, but do not.

Actually, other than from Wicked, I don’t know the story of the Tin Man at all. If I remember correctly, The Wizard of Oz doesn’t give him any back-story at all. So the narrator is, at best, being superfluous, and, at worst, dead wrong.

A story about a young woodsman, a beautiful maiden, and a desperate love.

That’s a fragment. Also, we’ll be introduced to the woodsman and maiden in seconds. As for their romance, love is definitely something you want to show, not tell. Not following this rule is part of what made Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones so pointless.

As an aside, this opening shot of the movie is of two men loading gold bricks onto a cart. It took me a while to realize that they’re building the yellow brick road, which is shown again near the end of the movie. I’m surprised the narrator didn’t explain this, but it’s just the sort of shot that this movie is constructed out of: It only takes a few seconds to get it but doesn’t interrupt the flow of the story.

This woodsman’s story is not known to many, for he is known by another name.

[Title displays: Heartless, The Story of the Tin Man]

As I pointed out above, ignoring fan/unofficial stories, no one knows the story of the Tin Man. As for ‘he is known by another name’, he’s also called the Tin Woodsman, so that’s no mystery. No one at any point in this short film call him ‘Heartless’, so the narrator can’t mean that.

This is a superfluous and confusing line. We’re thirty seconds in and have seen the yellow brick road and the title. Why this purple prose about characters whom we’re about to meet anyway?

[Shot of young man and young woman running through a field together, grinning at each other]

Our story begins as most good stories do: With love.

Wow. It’s hard to come up with a more clichéd line. I’m flabbergasted. Not since the end of The Princess Bride have I gagged so hard, and at least that was comedic.

We don’t need to be told that the two are in love; the ‘running all smiles through a sunny field’ image is universally an indicator of love. You could have Big Bird and Bruce Lee happily tip-toeing through the tulips and we’d wonder how this disturbing romance came about.

There was a young man who, like his father before him, was a woodcutter. One day while delivering wood for fire, he met the most beautiful maiden, the daughter of a wealthy merchant.

We can see that he’s a young man, and (beyond the presumption that he must be the main character and therefore a woodcutter), in the next shot we see him with an axe. If you don’t care to show us how he met his girlfriend, we don’t need to know what chore he was carrying out at the time. Her parents’ status is indicated by her lavish clothing.

Upon first sight, he fell desperately in love. The woodsman then stole her heart, and separately they made plans to marry.

Once again, telling us that they’re in love only diminishes the effect of the romance. They’re setting up a picnic in a secluded, private, intimate setting and flirting happily. We find out in their coming dialog that they’re planning to get married.

The couple talk about the house they’re going to build, and how her parents don’t approve of the pairing because he’s not rich. When he looks frustrated, she sings a quiet song that reassures him. There’s your desperate love. Next scene.

Now we see a spooky forest, and an ornately-dressed old woman enters the shot. This is actually terrifying, and I instantly get the impression that this is the girl’s disapproving mother. She must be planning to separate them!

That evening, the maiden’s mother devised plans of her own. She wanted her only daughter to marry a man of distinction and wealth. Someone befitting the family name.

We already guessed that this is her mother. We already heard (in the previous scene’s conversation) that her parents don’t approve of her marrying a lowly woodcutter.

It was right here, at around the four-minute mark, that I caught on to the uselessness of this narrator.

So she made her way deep into the forest to find the one person who could end her daughter’s love affair. For a price, the wickedest witch in all the east agreed to do her bidding and placed a curse upon the woodsman’s axe.

We can see that she’s in a forest. The woman she meets is wearing a black hood, acts creepy, and lives in the world of Oz; I wonder if she’s a witch? As for the curse, we see it in action within seconds. In the meantime, we cut straight from the witch laughing silently to the axe leaning ominously against a tree.

So the woodsman began building a house for his beloved, unaware that his axe had been cursed.

We already know he’s building a house because he and his girlfriend talked about it earlier. We’ll see the foundation in a few minutes. And you’d better believe he wouldn’t be working on it if he knew his axe was cursed.

After many swings, the enchanted axe would miss its intended spot and strike the woodsman instead.

Sure enough, in a gut-wrenching shot, we see the axe head break off and fly at the camera, then the woodsman clutching his limp, bleeding arm. Wow, I wonder if this is connected to the evil deal the mother struck with a creepy figure in black! If only I had a narrator to explain it to me!

The axe first found its mark in the woodsman’s arm, [the woodsman starts hobbling away through the woods] and he hurriedly went to seek help.

I wonder if the actors were insulted when they saw the final cut of this movie and realized that the director didn’t think they were good enough at portraying basic actions, and that he needed a narrator to explain what these dopes were doing.

Actually, the woodsman’s actor is great in the following scenes, and the narration is painfully redundant.

The nearest town did not have a doctor or healer. However, on the edge of that town lived a master tinner of great skill.

I admit that the unavailable doctor isn’t portrayed here, but it wouldn’t have been that hard. We see an elaborate furnace and then a steampunk blacksmith type; this guy could lament, “I wish we had a proper doctor to treat this wound . . .” His ‘great skill’ will be demonstrated in the coming scenes.

Have I mentioned yet that the settings, cinematography, music, and effects are awesome?

The craftsman could not mend the young man’s wound, but he was able to fashion a new arm for him, one made of steel and tin.

We see this new arm in a few seconds. Hilariously, when he sees his girlfriend in the next scene, she frowns down at his arm and then calmly asks, “What happened?” Yeah, this is what people say when they see fantastic steampunk prosthetics. Not, I don’t know, “WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR ARM? ARE YOU A ROBOT?”

So this is the way things went. For the woodsman had no way of knowing the axe was cursed. After many strokes, the axe would stray and injure his other arm. Then his legs. And even his head.

Guess what we see happening while he’s narrating. You would almost think the producer added the narration in later because he figured people are too stupid to figure out what they’re looking at.

Anyone sane would either figure out the axe is cursed or go look for a different job, but then, this is what the tinner’s socialist Obamacare wreaks on hard-working Ozians.

We’re just past the one-third mark and I think I’ve proven my point. I’d pay to see a cut of this movie without the narrator. The story would be much more powerful and feel a lot less clichéd, allowing the actors and scenery to really shine.