What do you think about the use of flashbacks in movies and comic-book storytelling?
Does it impress you the use of flashbacks or think it’s a sign of convenient writing?
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I think they’re annoying.
It all depends on the particular work. I don’t have a problem with it as a technique.
It tends to do the opposite of impress me.
I think they got way out of hand long ago, and I find myself often annoyed by backwards and jumbled timelines in movies (and shows). I think it has become a convention and is often done poorly, and/or for no good reason, and/or because the actual story is not very interesting.
I find myself longing for well-done interesting stories that use strictly chronological timelines.
Flashbacks were designed to show the history of an event that was important to the story as an explanation. Visual is better than dialogue of which the audience would be bored with in short time.
It’s an effective technique when used properly but can be annoying and confusing if overdone.
When it’s done well, it adds so much to a movie. Think about how time sequence shifts in Pulp Fiction, or recently in Bad Times At The El Royale to great effect.
Sometimes it is annoying, I concede, but often it re-energizes the audience.
Works beautifully on “This Is Us” I think.
Depends. I absolutely adored the flashback scenes in The Incredibles and thought it added a lot of depth to the story.
However, I dislike when movies do random flashbacks in the middle of the film, it ruins the pace sometimes.
I think this is a good but frequently misunderstood and misused technique. A lot of film-noir used it. Sometimes it takes over half of the movie. Sometimes the entire movie is based around flash-back. And they fare just fine.
Many of today’s movies seem to misunderstand flashback technique though, especially action anime. In an attempt to get the viewers to relate to the characters or justify an action a character does, they overdo flashbacks. They don’t seem to understand that unnecessary details about a character’s life don’t make the viewers more or less sympathetic with that character, they just make the movie dull.
I seem to notice that flashbacks are done better in movies than in series. Characters of movies only have one chance to appear, so a bit of their part doesn’t hurt. Characters of series however are shown over and over again, so there’s more risk of overdoing flashbacks.
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