Benjamin Button: It doesn't matter if it's just like Forrest Gump

I had a very interesting conversation thread about Benjamin Button with some friends of mine. I think it's interesting, so here it is pretty much verbatim. It started with forwarding a link from http://www.pajiba.com. The author of the post agrees with me.

Me:

Check it out. http://www.pajiba.com/the-curious-case-of-forrest-gump.htm

I said this exact thing when I came out of Benjamin Button. It's basically Forrest Gump with Brad Pitt. Still good, it just feels a little wrong.

Brad:

The only similarity that I saw in that movie to Forrest Gump is that he does a lot of things in his life. That is pretty much where it ends in similarity. There are two reasons it seemed similar. First, and most obviously, is that it came from Hollywood. Enough said there. Second, it is because both of those movies deal with situations that happen to pretty much everybody. Who knows someone who has been to a war? Had a crush on girl in school? Had a parent pass away? Jumped from job to job? Sure, you might not have worked on a tug boat or walked funny as a kid, but the underlying message is the same. In fact, the fact that is seemed so familiar is one of points of the movie and/or short story in my opinion.

Also, some of the images in that video are comparing apples to oranges. Forrest Gump was in the war, and the scene from Benjamin Button wasn't even him...it was the clock maker's son. And they compared Bubba Gump (a friend) to the guy who was essentially Benjamin Button's adopted father.

I personally think this movie was one of the best movies I have seen in a very long time. If you look past the surface and think about what it is saying overall, there are some really good things in there.

Aniyia:

I agree with brad. I already had this debate with marco :) (sent from my iphone)

Me:

I think you're both nuts. I'm not talking about the theme of the movie. I know it's supposed to paint a broad picture, and that you're supposed to identify with a lot of the situations. But I'm saying this dude used the exact same devices in two movies to do that. You guys might not be aware but the same dude wrote both screenplays. And anyway you look at it, there is no excuse as a writer for using the exact same plot devices in the exact same way.

In fact, I think this video didn't do a good enough job of pointing out the similarities. The Bubba character in Ben Button wasn't the step father dude, it was the pygmy dude. They got that wrong. And a few other things struck me. Why is it that you have to introduce a deus ex machina that makes the protagonist independently wealthy before he can have his major catharsis? Either your drunken father figure buys stock in Apple for you or your real, absentee father has a change of heart and leaves you his million dollar business. And obviously you don't care about the money. You've got better things to do like run around and be a bum (either running cross country or traveling the world like a vagabond). Seriously?

Like I said, I enjoyed both movies. But that is to be expected, because they are the same. That dude needs to get some new material. Or in about 8-10 years we will see Shia LaBeouf in the exact same story. And nobody wants that.

Brad:

I still don't buy it. The fact that the same guy wrote similar screenplays doesn't mean that he needs to get new ideas. It just means that the same stuff still plays 14 years later and people still eat it up. I don't hear people complaining when every zombie movie out there ends up like every other zombie movie. Same reason....it came from Hollywood.

But I will compromise....there are similar scenes in both movies. But that is because they changed too much stuff from the 1921 version, and that is the screenwriter's fault. So if you are going to say the movies are the same based on visual similarities, then maybe. Other than that, they are pretty dissimilar....at least to me. Then again, I might be getting stuff from the movie and stuff from the short story mixed up.

Kelly:

What's weird to me is the Benjamin Button movie was adapted from the short story by Fitzgerald but after reading the story, the movie does seem quite a bit more like Forrest Gump than it seems like the actual story it is based upon.

You can read the entire short story here: http://www.readbookonline.net/read/690/10628/

Aniyia:

It strays quite a bit from the short story. But hey, they had to find a way to make it three hours long!

Brad:

So then maybe I am biased because I already knew the short story beforehand and went in looking for similarities between it and the movie.

Of course, now I if I watch it again, I will see more similarities between the two movies because they have been pointed out to me. So I am damned either way. I will just stick with the book.

Kelly:

Really though, couldn't they have stuck closer to the short story and just had the movie be 2 hours?

Not that I didn't love the movie. But I didn't realize how much it strayed from the original story and towards a Forrest Gump-esque tale.

What I think is interesting is that everyone involved in this conversation liked the movie. I admit to liking it less after further rumination. But that doesn't matter. I came out satisfied and recommended it to people. I'll probably buy the DVD. What this means to me is that we're doomed to get served the same things that have worked in the past, instead of what's fresh and new. Because we don't really mind that much.