Character Without Conviction

Issue 269

Bucharest, 2019

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In the original Naked Gun franchise, Leslie Nielsen plays Detective Sergeant Frank Drebin, a bumbling, idiotic, clumsy, unqualified, ill-equipped, feckless, buffoon. He drops his gun, asks nonsensical questions, makes outlandish allegations, misunderstands situations, and causes disasters—although what’s key to the films is that Frank Drebin is absolutely serious in his own mind. It might be a slapstick comedy, but he’s earnest, determined, and genuine, even if he’s also completely incompetent.

The basic storytelling lesson—which is so fundamental that it’s easy to overlook—is that a character must fully believe in the world they inhabit. Characters in a comedy, especially, shouldn’t know that they live inside a comedy, but this applies to every genre. At first glance, this is a banal point, one that’s obviously true. The alternative is artifice, it is a character that’s too cool for the role, that’s winking at the audience, a bit outside the storyline, so it’s surprising that this mistake is so common in major films today.

Because the never-ending Mission Impossible franchise stretches from characters that are earnest to characters that are farcical, it offers a useful comparison, showing how basically the exact same story has transformed in one generation. The 1996 film, which is perhaps worth seeing, and the 2025 film, which is definitely not worth seeing, presents a striking contrast in how characters behave. In the first film, they don’t act like they’re in a film: while trying to solve the convoluted plot, they’re diligent, grave, they fully inhabit their roles, however ridiculous the storyline. The viewer might be munching on popcorn and watching a Hollywood blockbuster that’s meant to entertain, but everybody on the screen is invested, it is, for them, real and dangerous and important. Yet this sensibility has vanished in recent versions of the franchise. Now the characters—often the same actors, in basically the same storyline—are jocular, playful, they’re ready with quips and insults during what are supposedly the most dangerous moments. They seem to know that they’re inside a film, so they’re performing, looking good, trying to make you laugh, always ready with a contrived line, in a way that seems oddly fitting for our century, where everybody always knows they’re being watched and must perform.

When the actors in an action movie are caricatures, frivolous, affected, the storyline loses its tension. And if an action movie is intended to keep you in suspense, these affectations separate the character from the plot, putting them closer to the viewer. It’s odd to watch a movie where the characters act like teenagers at a dinner table, too cool for the room, too cool to care about what’s happening around them. And if they’re indifferent to the storyline, to the emotional salience of their situation, to the danger, then of course viewers will adopt that same posture about the film. There’s less intensity, less at stake, so that all that’s left are the soporific action sequences and the awkward, stunningly unfunny jokes.

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Which isn’t to imply that suspenseful movies shouldn’t contain any jokes. There’s plenty of examples of drama or suspense or farcical movies that prompt genuine laughter: Pulp Fiction; No Country for Old Men; O Brother, Where Art Thou? In those movies, however, the jokes aren’t separate from the storyline, and the characters that deliver the most humorous lines don’t intend their lines as humorous. But I do want to be charitable to Mission Impossible and claim that its flaws are intentional: the purpose of the movie is right on the surface, in the chases, the crashes, the explosions, so that the storyline—if you can recall it—is almost incidental. Everyone on the screen understands the conceit, they wink at the audience, knowing that they exist purely to perform acrobatics. And since they don’t really believe in the storyline—they’re indifferent to the stakes, unworried about the danger, mostly concerned with appearing fashionable—there’s no reason for the audience to believe in the film.

And this same dynamic occurs in television too. Look at three emblematic sitcoms: Cheers from the 1980s, Seinfeld in the 1990s, and The Office in the 2000s. There’s a loose trajectory where the characters in each successive show believe just a little bit less in the reality that they inhabit. In Cheers, the audience watches a conversation in a Boston bar, apparently overhearing the drama, with the camera a necessary tool to bring the plot to its living room; by the time The Office comes around, the actors talk directly to the camera, operating outside the reality of the plot, partly bringing the audience closer to the joke on the screen and partly removing themselves from those very jokes. Seinfeld might be the hinge between these two periods, as everyone is immersed in the world of the show, impassioned by the constraints they face. The opening and closing monologues, often a commentary about the show, are what create that hinge, because Jerry’s character—not incidentally with the same name as the person—just happens to have enough awareness to talk directly to the audience about the tribulations of the storyline. It simply goes one step further with The Office, as every character exists both inside the world of the office and in the fake meta-commentary of a documentary, talking directly to the audience about the show. Michael Scott in The Office is at his funniest when he’s deadpan, completely sincere, and oblivious to his surroundings, with the humor coming from the distinction between what he believes and what the audience knows. Some of the other characters, more insouciant, less humorous, have the peculiar attribute of seeming like actors when they’re in the world of The Office and more like actual characters when they’re speaking to the audience directly—with the gimmick being that we’re watching a show that’s watching a show.

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But it doesn’t really matter what the story is about: the people in the story mustn’t know that they’re in a story. Have you ever seen such determined painters as The Three Stooges? They’re insistent, almost fundamentalist in their zeal to paint a wall, not knowing that catastrophe is what the audience wants. The Stooges are perhaps the paramount example of slapstick, yet it’s easy to forget that, as characters, they’re utterly earnest.

And once you start looking for it, you’ll notice that this investment, this inhabiting of the actual fictional world, is absent in so many Hollywood movies today, regardless of the genre. I don’t think it’s poor acting. I don’t even think it’s really a mistake, as these changes are in the scripts, they’re the way the performances are conceived, a little forced, affected, where the character is closer to the audience than the storyline. I’m not exactly sure what this says about our time, that our fictional stories on the screen contain characters that refuse to inhabit their worlds, but I do wonder whether it’s related to the loose sense that many people have of needing to perform in today’s world. There’s always a camera on, there’s always a recording being made, so the smiles are a bit more strained, a bit more staged, in everyday life. Perhaps ironic detachment is one solution to this sense of being watched: a way to avoid inhabiting the world too fully. When you meet people, it often feels like they’re delivering lines rather than speaking—stylized, safe, detached—so perhaps it makes sense for actors to portray that same sensibility.