Screenwriter Max Landis, who is not only an avid pro wrestling fan that has provided such takes as Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling and acted as a Creative Consultant for WWE several years ago, isn’t as fond of the recent Cody Rhodes and Roman Reigns segment in Georgia Tech as those who are touting it as a great segment in this “cinematic era” of WWE.
In a YouTube video, he explained his thoughts on why that isn’t the right term to use for this, expressing his frustrations about the presentation and how it doesn’t work for him as a fan and a filmmaker.
Here is a transcription of the video, with the video itself down below after:
“I can’t be the only one who feels this way, but I’m seeing everybody gas up the Cody Rhodes/Roman Reigns segment in the football field on SmackDown, and I just wanted to say it was not cinematic. I keep seeing the word “cinematic” being used. It was just well-lit and well-shot. And it wasn’t even well-lit and well-shot! It was a shot-reverse shot—six minutes of ‘This guy talks, that guy talks, this guy talks, that guy talks.’
Now the reason these long dialogue scenes work cinematically—the verisimilitude of them, the dramaturgy of them on the shows of wrestling—is because you’re in an arena and you’re in front of a shitload of people. Fans aren’t just a noise; they’re not just the soundtrack of wrestling, they’re the set. The fact that you’re in an arena—a gladiator arena where fights take place—is like an important part of not only telling a story effectively, but also making sure that the acting, which is not often good—it’s often even the best wrestling actors are often wooden, or sound a little rehearsed, you know—the guys who rise to the top are often the guys who are able to be natural and off the cuff. And you can’t do that in an edited promo anyway!
So, the likability and the interest in any given storyline, once you remove it from the arena—especially once you add music to it—when you engage with wrestling production-wise like it’s a normal TV show, you hurt it. You damage it. You expose the parts of it that are weak, and you remove the parts of it that are special. Do not put music during promos unless they are pre-edited, obviously edited promos within the world of WWE. Do not do the old TNA stuff where they tried to make it like a movie. Because you don’t have enough time to really make it like a movie. At the end of the day, it hurts production-wise—it looks amateurish—story-wise, it removes you from the world of wrestling and makes you question the nature of what you’re watching.
I thought I was watching a TV show about wrestling, about a wrestling company. And yeah, there’s monsters and magic and stuff, but they’re people who work for the wrestling company, and it’s about the things that happen in the wrestling company. Because if it’s not that, then the question becomes: If these guys hate each other so much, why don’t they just murder each other during the week? You know, there are moments, like the Spike Dudley or was it Crash Holly in the Chuck E. Cheese with the Hardcore Title, moments where you go well outside the realm of the arena that really work, and this wasn’t one of them.
I don’t want to be the only one saying this, but I really hope as the Netflix deal approaches, that WWE doesn’t lean in this direction at all. Because to me, I know people are like, “cinema is cinema,” and what they mean is it had competent color correction, and it was in focus, and it had depth of field. That was it. That’s it. A student film couldn’t do a 6-and-a-half-minute shot-reverse shot dialogue scene.
And it works when they’re addressing each other in front of the crowd, because the characters are addressing each other in front of the crowd. This is a private conversation. You’re breaking the rules of your own world. You’re shattering the meta-narrative of wrestling. You’re doing the things that Jim Cornette and a million other people always yell about that end up diluting your f*cking product.
It’s a show about a wrestling show. And there can be monsters and magic, and the production value can be high, and the shots can be great. There’s been a lot of innovative production on Raw since the Levesque takeover, with the tracking shots and stuff, keeping you in the world of the arena. All this stuff where you go out of the world of the arena—and it’s like an indulgent short film. Count me out, dude. I’m sorry if I’m alone.”
If you use quotes from this transcription, please credit back to this original eWrestlingNews.com post.
Do you agree with Max Landis, or do you think his criticism is unfair? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!