Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Keep It Back-to-the-Future Simple

For ideas to work, they need to make sense. And a key element of making sense is simplicity

By André van Heerden, Communications Director

Director Christopher Nolan is famous for exploring mind-bending concepts in movies like Interstellar, Inception, and Memento. But for his latest film, Tenet, it seems that despite all the screen-time dedicated to trying to explain the concept of inverted time, it doesn’t work.

I recently read a couple of reviews of Tenet. Movie critic Christina Newland wrote in Vulture that “time travel paradoxes, quantum physics, and ‘temporal pincer movements’ are explained in increasingly dull expository scenes (some even involving literal visual aids), causing audience confusion to bleed into indifference and finally into boredom.”

Alex Hess, another film critic, notes in the Guardian that other movies that involve time travel explain it simply and move on. They don’t dwell on things that most people won’t understand or that don’t really make sense. They use it as a way to make the story more interesting and concentrate on the characters and their journey.

Audiences loved the 1985 movie Back to the Future—and they didn’t need a course in time travel theory to understand it. Most times, simpler is better.

I’ve often found that if I’m struggling to explain something that I want to do, it means that I need to keep things simpler. Whether it’s a new project pitch, communication plan, or even a drill in a soccer practice, the more effort I have to expend at explaining something, the less likely it’s going to be accepted by others.

Years ago, I remember running through a number of different ways of approaching meetings and the agendas associated with those meetings. The more we looked at the meetings themselves, and the more I had to explain why the meetings were being done in a certain way, the less engaged those involved became. Keeping it simpler kept the meetings focussed, purposeful, and efficient.

The simple explanations—the ones that are easily understood and direct—are more accepted and gain more support. Sometimes, they even have a way of making people overlook or not care about small deficiencies because others find it easy to get behind the idea as well.

Clearly, for ideas to work they need to make sense. And a key element of making sense is simplicity. Complicated ideas, whether for our jobs, daily life, or for movies, can still work, but they need to be explained simply.

The idea of travelling back in time and struggling to get your future parents back together may sound ludicrous. But if it’s kept simple, and I’m kept caring about what’s important, I’ll go along for the ride.

Keep It Back-to-the-Future Simple

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