Emotional Realism vs. Plot Holes in Film & TV
On Storytelling and Reductive Criticism in the Internet Age
Over the last fifteen years or so, I’ve noticed a considerable increase in the discussion of ‘plot holes’ within criticism of film and television. Their presence is becoming automatically positioned as a sign of poor storytelling and low quality, especially by proponents of a mode of viewing that I would term ‘watching for the plot holes.’
In my mind, this is not good for film and TV criticism, as it assumes that plot is the most crucial aspect of storytelling, while overlooking the importance of character development and emotional progression. To explain what I mean, I will discuss the issues of plot hole criticism and the importance of emotional realism to storytelling.
ContentsLayers of Storytelling and Emotional Realism
We can generally think of screen narratives as having two layers of storytelling.
The top layer represents the plot — the series of events that you see throughout the work — and with that, its related issues of plausibility and logic. Meanwhile, the bottom layer concerns the emotional journey or arc of the characters in connection with their psychology and motivations. The interplay between the plot layer and the character layer is crucial for immersing audiences within the story.
As long as protagonists’ actions in the plot are consistently and convincingly tied to their characterization and emotional progression, the screen narrative remains coherent and adheres to ‘emotional realism.’ By this, I mean it convinces the viewers that what they’re watching is real, rather than a textual construct by getting them to identify emotionally with the characters. The resulting illusion of reality is supported on the technical level by hiding all indicators of a work’s artificiality/making.
Plot in such cases is subordinate to character actions and emotions, rather than the other way around, allowing for its progression to feel organic as opposed to constructed. This is why the character layer comes first, even as it’s located below the plot layer. It is what happens in a story internally, what it’s really about.
Another name for the character layer of storytelling would be the “emotional throughline,” a term I’ve found used by writers, especially screenwriters, when discussing the storytelling process. Mary Kowal describes it as a kind-of connective tissue between all the emotions a character undergoes over the course of a story.
“If it were possible to chart a character’s emotions through the course of a story the emotional throughline would be the line that connected all the points.
Characters go flat when they jump from one emotion to another without any intervening thoughts or reactions. I’m not saying that you can’t go from happy to angry in a single scene, but something has to happen to cause that shift. That progression is the emotion throughline which propels a character through the story.”
Source: Mary Robinette Kowal
Edwin Caanistraci, meanwhile, considers it an “internal story” that is parallel to the plot and always informs what we see on-screen in a given moment.
“Fundamentally, a through line is an internal story that’s running parallel to the external story. Think of it as another layer that adds depth and soul to your script. From Jaws to Spider-Man: No Way Home, the protagonist’s emotional journey runs parallel to the film’s plot.”
“This is a good example of the difference between a plot and a through line: the plot was our protagonist transporting and trying to sell the Mona Lisa, and the through line was that he’d become corrupted by greed and need to reclaim himself at the end. …a protagonist without an emotional through line is a shell of a character. They’re one-note and have no place to go.”
“This is one of the most important aspects to storytelling: there has to be constant motion. This doesn’t mean constant physical motion (although that might be good for an action/adventure), but rather a nonstop tracking of the protagonist’s feelings -- their moments of frustration, of victory, etc. The word “motion” is part of the word “emotion” for a reason. Every scene the protagonist is in should pertain to their greater character arc and their through line should always be cresting to the surface in some way or another.”
Source: Edwin Cannistraci
Martha Alderson highlights the connection between the emotional journey of the character and the emotional connection of the work to the viewer:
“An emotional connection is fused between the viewer and the story through the character emotional development. Not simply how a character develops and transforms physically and intellectually, outfoxing and out-thinking and out-performing an antagonist, readers feel an emotional connection through the development of a character’s emotional maturity. In other words, how a character develops emotionally and spiritually provides connection, identification and interest.”
“ The dramatic action demands a goal. The character emotional development demands growth. Each obstacle and antagonist in the dramatic action plot provides the protagonist with opportunities to learn about herself and thus advance her character emotional development plot.”
Source: Martha Alderson, Emotional Elements of Plot
Tim Long uses a slightly different term — ‘the emotional core’ — to designate what is essentially the same thing, referring to it as ‘the emotional glue that binds us to story.’
“...a thirty-eight-year-old wealthy slacker passes himself off as a single father as a way to date single mothers so he can fulfill his selfish sexual needs. That’s the plot of the movie, the external ride that the audience goes on.
But the Heart of the story, the emotional core of the film is; a selfish, immature man is taught how to act like a grown-up by a little boy.… That’s what the audience internally got out of the external ride they went on. It’s what they relate to and feel. It’s the emotional glue that binds them to the plot.” (Italics Mine)
Source: Tim Long
Building on all this, I’d describe the character layer as the underlying emotional glue or throughline that, in addition to creating identification between character and audience, literally stitches together the disparate elements composing the plot into a unified whole. Thus, if the plot layer has holes, inconsistencies or contradictions yet the character layer does not, then the storytelling overall should remain wholesome and its immersive illusion holds together.
To put it another way, as long as a screen narrative is able to maintain emotional realism, any plot holes are basically filled in or covered up by the characters’ emotional progression, preventing them from attracting attention to the construction of the text. It’s when there are holes or similar issues in that internal layer, such as when characters behave inconsistently or the work doesn’t devote enough time to convince viewers that the characters would act the way they do, or there are gaps in their emotional journey/progression that the issues of the plot layer become evident and draw attention to themselves.
The emotional glue in this case is too weak to hold the plot elements together, and so both the plot and the illusion of reality fall apart as a consequence. In turn, we might say that if the plot holes really do attract attention to themselves and thus to the work’s construction, then it’s a sign that the work fails to be consistently convincing or unified on the emotional/character level.
From this standpoint, screen narrative storytellers, such as writers, directors, producers, etc. should concern themselves less with the logical coherence of plot, but rather the emotional coherence of character. Their central questions should be: “Does the film create a consistent and coherent emotional journey for its characters? Do the characters always behave believably and convincingly in a given scene or situation? Do their actions make sense under the circumstance?”
Production vs. Reception
Now, it’s important to note that when I discuss the two layers of storytelling, I’m talking specifically about textual production, rather than reception. That is, this dual-layer format is arguably how the producers of the media text - writers, directors, actors, etc. - construct it and/or intend it to be read, not how audiences interpret it.
All readings, interpretations, and evaluations of a media text are inherently subjective. And the consistent presence of emotional realism does not necessarily mean that nobody in the audience will notice the ‘seams’ of its construction.
In fact, I find that nowadays more and more mainstream film viewers seem cognizant of the plot layer, and so point out plot holes, even in movies where the character layer is impeccable, before disparaging the text for it. Such an activity used to be limited to those trained to watch movies professionally, such as cinephiles, film critics or academics, but in the last 15 years, it has become far more widespread.
I would say there are two main reasons for this.
The first is the democratization of film knowledge as made possible by DVD, Blu-Ray, digital filmmaking and editing technologies, and the accessibility of film discourse on the web. The second is the rise of a new generation of web film critics, such as the proprietors of Red Letter Media, Honest Trailers, and Everything Wrong with…, who have helped popularize the “watching for the plot holes” mode of viewing.
Here, the very goal is to locate holes, inconsistencies, logical gaps and other issues in the plot layer with the intention of later citing them as evidence of low quality. This is wrong, as it completely neglects the emotional layer of the storytelling, reducing the evaluation of a work to nothing but that of its narrative construction.
Consequently, viewers are being increasingly conditioned to believe that a ‘good’ film or, more precisely, good storytelling is defined by a lack of plot holes, as though little else actually matters. As I’ve stated earlier, however, coherence of plot arguably matters far less than coherence of character and emotion.
Film and TV narratives of the ‘time travel’ subgenre, such as Back to the Future and Lost, in particular tend to have plots that don't really stand up to logical scrutiny. Yet, many of them work because moment-to-moment, as you are watching them, the emotional progression of the characters holds everything together.
Now, none of this is to say that a movie that has a wholesome character layer is necessarily good or should be perceived as such by the audience. After all, there can be endless factors that impact how a viewer might perceive a screen narrative, such as its tone, production value, ideology, or genre.*
*For instance, audiences of comedic films might not necessarily care for plot coherence or internal unity as long as the picture is funny. And ‘unrealistic’ character behavior in horror movies is often part of their appeal.
Yet I do believe that the storytelling schema outlined earlier is still applicable to the majority of mainstream narrative films and TV shows. Writers, directors, actors, etc. all attempt to primarily sell the story emotionally to the viewer through the character layer. Because of this, plot holes, inconsistencies and other such issues in and of themselves do not necessarily make for a poor film or episode of television.
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Take, for instance, M. Night Shyamalan’s sci-fi drama Signs (2004), a wonderful movie that some people love to ridicule as a ‘terrible’ picture just for the fact that it ultimately turns out that the aliens who have invaded Earth – a planet consisting in large part of water – are allergic to water.
This plot-hole-centic argument makes it seem that there is nothing else about the movie worthy of discussion, despite the fact that it has, among other things, great acting, beautiful cinematography, and a very, very well modulated tone.
But more than that, it completely misses the point of the story. Because Signs really isn’t about the aliens, nor why they came to Earth. It’s not about surviving an alien invasion. At its core, it’s a story about a former reverend (Mel Gibson) rediscovering his faith. From start to finish, Signs creates a consistent emotional progression that sees the skeptical Graham Hess transform into a believer, with the final shot revealing that after the events he’s experienced with the aliens, he has resumed his duties.
Virtually every plot point in the movie serves this progression. Why did the aliens come to Earth? What did they actually want? None of that is really made clear. And maybe one could argue that they are taken out far too easily in the end (much like the Martians in War of the Worlds). But in the larger context of the illusion of reality generated by the character layer of the storytelling, none of that really matters.
That water proves their weakness plays perfectly into Graham’s realization that ‘everything happens for a reason,’ which also pays off the setup of his daughter leaving behind glasses filled with water all over the house.
I suspect that folks that love to bring up the ‘water plot hole’ really have some other issue with the movie that they aren’t able, for one reason or another, to articulate. Maybe it’s the paradoxical tone of the film, which combines utter sincerity with irony. Maybe it’s the fact that the movie occasionally goes to near-melodramatic levels of emotion. (I’m pretty sure that’s what turned me off when I first saw it).
In any case, something about it just does not work for the detractors, who then decide to point to the plot hole they noticed to justify their dislike of it. Because in their minds, the presence of plot holes equals weak storytelling or poor writing.
Television Example: Hannibal
During my undergraduate years, I once had a classmate who brought up how she disliked Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal, a TV series focusing on the relationship between FBI Profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) and the serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen). I thought this was interesting, as for her, the show didn’t work as it didn’t make any narrative sense. I could be misremembering things, but I do believe I tried to argue that Hannibal was actually a great series, and that it wasn’t right to try to judge it based on its relation to real-world plausibility.
Because Hannibal, despite its ostensible status as a police procedural, had very little interest in verisimilitude or logical plotting. Instead, it actively embraced dream logic, with its episodes regularly presenting utterly fantastic, irrational and over-the-top events as mundane occurrences.
This was a show, where among other things:
the FBI largely eschews actual forensic procedures, instead relying exclusively on a ‘profiler,’ whose abilities are tantamount to clairvoyance;
a serial killer has a sense of smell so powerful he can use it to track down another serial killer to his secret lair out in the countryside;
it’s somehow possible to sneak into a house surrounded by police and numerous other people unnoticed, commit a murder and hide the body off-screen;
a 70-year-old man (played by Lance Henriksen) somehow builds and erects a gigantic totem pole out of dead bodies — and nobody bats an eye
Trying to make rational, logical sense of all such instances is a fool’s errand. As television critic Emily St. James points out a review of the pilot episode:
“Those who are so inclined will find plot holes by the dozen in every single episode and mercilessly tear it apart on those grounds, ignoring the project’s dream logic ethos.”
And yet, Hannibal works.
Despite the fact that its plots are absolutely nonsensical, its stories hold together. Because the show puts in considerable effort to be real in terms of character, emphasizing how much exposure to great violence can impact people psychologically. Because it continuously adheres to emotional realism, with characters behaving (for the most part) consistently and believably no matter how unbelievable and unreal the narrative events surrounding them are.
Hannibal can be thus seen as a testament to the notion that coherence on the character layer can effectively nullify incoherence on the plot layer.
*Though the series never became a smash hit with audiences, it was critically acclaimed and is now widely considered to be one of the best TV shows of the last decade.
Against Watching for the Plot Holes
I brought up the aforementioned examples to ultimately illustrate one very basic principle: the presence of plot holes is not, by default, evidence of low quality in the storytelling of a screen narrative. Now, I’m not saying that plot holes can’t be criticized or considered to be ‘flaws’ when it comes to textual evaluation, or that pointing them out is inherently bad. Plot holes can be a sign of weak writing, such as when they indicate holes in character development and progression.
But I find that their significance today tends to be greatly exaggerated, and that the tendency to use them to prove that a movie or show is ‘bad,’ while largely ignoring the character storytelling, not to mention other aspects of the screen narrative, is a highly reductive practice that should be retired.
Because it’s on some level about pointing out how smarter you are than those who didn’t realize it. It’s about approaching a screen narrative as something to be picked apart, rather than experienced as a whole. It’s making mockery into a dominant form of textual engagement. And it has started to adversely impact the way stories are told.*
*For instance, the Russo Brothers openly discussed the fact that they wanted to “Honest Trailer-proof” Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), to make the movie logically airtight. I really like the movie but I find that allowing plot hole critics to influence how one approaches the craft of storytelling is just not right.
Movies and TV shows alike tend to be emotional experiences.* This is inherent to their identity. And good, constructive criticism should take this into account. So, don’t watch and judge screen narratives solely for the plot holes. Watch and judge them for everything they have to offer as a whole.
*Not all of them, of course. Some are abstract arthouse works that are not interested in emotional coherence and so should be engaged with differently. But that’s another story.
But what are your thoughts?Does plot matter more than or just as much as the characters' emotional progression?
Is plot hole critique a valid approach in and of itself?
Do the complaints against the plotting of Signs actually hold water?
Please leave a comment! Or perhaps a note.
I think you nail it here, especially in discussing the emotional throughline of a piece.
I think a lot of this "watching for the plot holes" has also sort of de-matured audiences. You can almost feel movies that are afraid of allowing the audience to infer motivation because of the eventual Honest Trailer video, and so each and every action needs to be spelled out as clearly as possible, the director holding our hand for the entire movie or TV show.
And because this handholding has become so common, now audiences expect it and even think of that as the *right* way to tell a story.
But the audience needs space. I was thinking about this when I watched A Silent Voice the other day. The movie gives a lot of space to the audience and its characters, which is what helps build the emotional core of the movie.
It's difficult to get emotionally attached to something when someone is telling you exactly how to feel every step of the way.
I generally agree with you. People will forgive logical plot errors if you give them the emotional focus they want. Though I would come about it slightly differently. My focus is on if they get the philosophy right. If you get the lesson at the end because all the story elements make sense for the emotional end of the story, that is what makes the best story.
Just to use an example, Maleficent had trouble because it tried to make the main character both a hero and a villain at the same time. Yet people generally don't like that as a final message. Plus the main character was clearly a villain. They cursed a small child for what their parents did and went about torturing an innocent child. That's not the actions of a hero, even an anti-hero wouldn't necessarily do that.