Lessons From Push

Just re-watched Push (twice) to see what lessons I can learn from this extremely complicated movie. Another one that people either love or hate. Go figure. As I was thinking about taking lessons from this movie I realized that the last three movies have all had opening narrations. Hmmm. What is that telling me? Should I open all my stories with a narrator? LOL

One lesson from Push is how to do an extremely complicated back story and world building. A reviewer mentioned that this is one of the few movies of this genre released recently that isn't based on a comic book series. So, the makers couldn't assume that people would understand the basics of the world and how everything works. Therefor it all had to be explained. The basics are told via Dakota Fanning's narration during the opening credits. We now know the basics of the psychic warriors and how the Division was created and why our heroes are running from them. The rest is interspersed through the actual plot. Our characters are also knee-deep into their world so they aren't going to be explaining a lot to each other as no one is a newbie. Some minor details are revealed this way as one character knows something a different character doesn't. And yes, it is one of those movies that you need to watch twice to really understand everything that has happened.

I like this. A lot of movie watchers didn't; a strong reason for some of the bad reviews. It is also one of those movies you gotta watch - no multi-tasking allowed.

What I enjoyed best was the relationship between Cassie (Dakota Fanning) and Nick (Chris Evans). So many movies focus on the romantic love interest when you have the male and female co-stars. Yet, there is an element of the hero's journey that is strictly on the "courtly love" end of things. Also, known as friendship love, family love, or brother/sister type love. This type of relationship was also shown very well in X-Men with Logan and Rogue. As a romance writer, I get stuck on the romantic type of relationships and sometimes forget the power of friendship relationships between male-female characters.

If you're looking to see a successful example of this type of relationship/characters I highly recommend you check out Push and X-Men and focus your attentions to the interactions between Cassie/Nick and Logan/Rogue.