As a fan of fantasy, science fiction, and superheroes I have no difficulty in suspending disbelief for seemingly impossible things like wizards, warp drives and Wonder Woman. But, when watching movies and TV shows, I find myself being critical of the very unlikely. As a philosopher, I find interesting and in need of an explanation. I will use examples from the Hobbit movies and the Flash TV show. Because they vex me even years later.
The Hobbit movies include the standard fare in fantasy: wizards, magic swords, immortal elves, dragons, enchanted rings, and other such things that are (most likely) impossible in the actual world. The Flash features a superhero who, in the opening sequence, explicitly claims to be the impossible. I, as noted above, have no problem accepting these aspects of fantasy and superhero “realities.”
Given my ready acceptance of the impossible, it seems odd that I am critical of other aspects of these movies and the TV show. In the case of the first Hobbit movie, my main complaint is about the encounter with goblins and their king. I have no issue with goblins, but with physics. I am not a physicist; but I am familiar with falling and gravity and those scenes were so implausible that they prevented me from suspending my disbelief.
In the case of the second Hobbit movie, I have issues with the barrel ride and the battle between the dwarfs and Smaug. In the case of the barrel ride, the events were so wildly implausible that I could not accept them. Ironically, the moves were too awesome and the fight too easy. It was like watching a video game being played in “god mode”: there was no feeling of risk, and the outcome was assured.
In the case of the battle with Smaug, every implausible step had to work perfectly to result in Smaug being in exactly the right place to have the gold “statue” spill on him. Paradoxically, the incredible difficulty of this made it seem too easy. Since everything so incredibly unlikely worked so perfectly it looked completely scripted. I had no feeling that any step could have failed. Obviously, every part of a movie is, by definition, scripted. But if the audience feels this, then the movie is doing a poor job.
In the case of The Flash, I have two main issues. The first is with how Flash fights his super opponents. It is established in the show that Flash can move so fast that anyone without super speed is effectively motionless relative to him. For example, in one episode he simply pulls all the keys from the Royal Flush gang’s motorcycles, and they can do nothing. However, when he fights a powerful villain, he is suddenly unable to use that ability. For example, when fighting the non-speedsters Captain Cold and Heatwave he runs around, barely able to keep ahead of their attacks. But these two villains are just normal guys with special guns. They have no super speed or ability to slow the Flash. Given the speed shown in other scenes, the Flash would be able to zip in and take their guns, just as he did with the keys. Since no reason was given as to why this would not work, the battles seem contrived, as if the writers could not think of a good reason why Flash would be unable to use an established ability, but just made it happen to fill up time with a fight.
The second issue is with the police response to the villains. In the same episode where Flash fights Captain Cold and Heatwave, the police are confronting the two villains yet are utterly helpless. Until one detective manages a lucky shot that puts the heat gun out of operation. The villains, however, easily get away. However, the fancy weapons are very short range, do not really provide any defensive powers and the users are just normal guys. As such, the police could have simply shot them, something real police are obviously willing to do. Yet, for no apparent reason, they do not. The only reason would seem to be that the writers could not come up with a plausible reason why they would not, yet needed them to not do that. This, of course, is not unique to the flash or these villains. The most obvious example is the Joker. He is just a guy, and it makes no sense, beyond his value as an IP, why he has not been shot. Now that I have set the stage, it is time to turn to philosophy.
In the Poetics Aristotle discusses the possible, the probable and the impossible. As he notes, a plot is supposed to go from the beginning, through the middle and to the end with plausible events. He does consider the role of the impossible and contends that “the impossible must be justified by artistic requirements, higher reality, or received opinion” and that that “a probable impossibility is preferable to an improbable possibility.”
In the case of the impossibilities of the Hobbit movies and the Flash TV show, these are justified by the artistic requirements of the fantasy and superhero genres: they, by their very nature, require the impossible. In the case of the fantasy genre, the impossibilities of magic and the supernatural must be accepted. Of course, it is easy to accept these things since it is not actually certain that the supernatural is impossible.
In the case of the superhero genre, the powers of heroes are usually impossible. However, they make the genre what it is. So to accept stories of superheroes is to willingly accept the impossible as plausible in that context. Divergence from reality is acceptable because of this.
Some of the events in the show I was critical of are not actually impossible, just incredibly implausible. For example, it is not impossible for the police to simply decide to just not use rifles against a criminal armed with a flamethrower. However, accepting this requires accepting that while the police in the show are otherwise like police in our world, they differ in one critical way: they are incapable of deploying snipers against people armed with exotic weapons. It is also not impossible that a person would make a life or death fight easier for the person trying to kill them by not using their abilities. However, accepting these things requires accepting things that do not improve the aesthetic experience, but rather detract by requiring the audience to accept the implausible without artistic justification.
To be fair, there is one plausible avenue of justification for these things. Aristotle writes that “to justify the irrational, we appeal to what is commonly said to be.” In the comics from which the Flash TV show is drawn, the battles between heroes and villains almost always go that way. So, the show mostly matches the comic reality. Likewise for the police. In the typical comic police are ineffective and rarely kill villains with sniper rifles, even when they easily could do so. As such, the show could be defended on the grounds that it is just following the rules of comics aimed at kids. That said, I think the show would be better if the writers were able to come up with reasonable justifications for why the Flash cannot use his full speed against the villain of the week and why the police are so inept against normal people with fancy guns.
In the case of the Hobbit movies, accepting the battle in the goblin caves would require accepting that physics is different in those scenes than it is everywhere else in the fantasy world. However, Middle Earth is not depicted elsewhere as having such wonky physics and the difference is not justified. In regard to the barrel ride battle and the battle with Smaug, the problem is the probability. The events are not individually impossible, but accepting them requires accepting the incredibly unlikely without justification or need. Those who have read the book will know that those events are not in the book and are not needed for the story. Also, there is the problem of consistency: the spectacular dwarfs of the barrels and Smaug fight are also the seemingly mundane dwarfs in so many other situations. Since these things detract from the movie, they should not have been included. Also, the Hobbit should have just been one movie.