My beef is his movies usually have the "rogue" going against the grain/system, and then his witty little sidekick who is a numbers person who says "You can't do this!" while he says "watch me". Most notably for the characters played by Cruise/Moore, Pitt/Hill, Fassbender/Rogan, etc.
Sorkin writes intelligent characters, usually behind the scenes in high places (Harvard tech startup, the White House, Apple conference, etc.). And his writing is all about dialogue. No explosions, no blood. Just psychological warfare. It's the right setting and the right "style" of story.
All of his characters always have some made up story for every conflict as well. Somebody will be in a dilemma and another character goes "you know, there's a village in Guatemala where every year on the same day, the farmers choose one girl to" etc etc etc and it's such a cliched, horribly overused trope. Every time a Sorkin character starts to tell an apocryphal story i check right the hell out.
I don't agree that it sacrifices the emotions of his films, and I do appreciate the wit as opposed to a pedestrian script, but I do think he overdoes it by 10% or so.
Osama Bin Laden, like the former guy never knew when or how his trained followers would carry out attacks but he engineered them. Bin Laden was allegedly unaware that the 9/11 attack was underway and later took the credit.
I watch the show because I like the way it turns my brain into pudding so that I don't have to think about the real world and my life. I enjoy watching his victims struggle in a mostly innocent whirlwind of insanity because it shows what people are really like.
The argument for it is that noone wants to watch a lot of realistic dialogue filled with ums and ers and likes! We see movies partly for escapism. Just as I know Iron Man or James Bond aren't real, but I like watching them, I know their one-liners are thought up by script writers but I prefer a movie with them in, rather than a more realistic but dull dialogue.
I find your opposite example, Manchester by the Sea, is not the best example. I never found those characters to be that engaging, nor the dialogue to be that witty or relatable. Sorkin's writing has even entered our lexicon. Now we have Sorkinisms. I do find that witty dialogue with a quick pace works in most cases, IF it is done correctly. Gilmore Girls, Dawson's Creek, anything by Sorkin, are all fabulous examples of great writing and true wit. I see a lot of people complaining and saying that no one really speaks like that, and I beg to differ. Just because you do not know anyone that speaks like that does not mean they don't exist. Our speech patterns and vocabulary tend to mimic those that we associate with. If you want proof, here are some real world examples, go to a bar and you will find the patronage tend to be in the same business, relatively same IQ, and similar income brackets. Police tend to congregate at one bar, and lawyers at another. One is drinking domestic beer and shots, and the other is ordering Old Fashions and Manhattans; and even though they may work together, they speak different languages. And if you really want to speak like someone from a Sorkin drama, just search for the West Wing and Toby's diatribe on the science of speech.
This is excellent. Introduced me to a new concept I will definitely use moving forward. I always enjoyed this kind of thing but never really noticed it enough to give it a name.
I totally agree with you on where the show started. At that moment when Bojack asked Diane if she thought he was a good person deep down I was f u c k e d
In the political realm, with shows like West Wing, he helped give rise to the obsession with bi-partisanship that has pulled the Democrats further into the Neo-liberal hellscape.
Sorkin is nothing more than a Christian hating, Leftist Socialist who creates conservative and Christian straw men saying stupid things they don’t even believe so that his "hero" Leftist characters can continually knock them down. It’s Leftist fantasy garbage PRETENDING to be about actual real life over REAL issues. Every Sorkin show episode is just watching a rigged "debate" between a Leftist and a "Republican, Christian or Conservative" where the Leftist is ALWAYS RIGHT, is ALWAYS MORALLY SUPERIOR and where anyone who disagrees with them is a "racist, sexist, bigot homophobe" oh and RACIST…ALWAYS racist. Did I mention RACIST???
this is less a problem of wittiness and more a problem of one type of wittiness. Even clever people are clever in different ways. Its why i respect the coen brothers dialogue. In millers crossing there are many savvy characters but they rarely sound the same
I feel like this is a hub for people confused by his dialogue and why he's so acclaimed to all agree on these criticisms, but real life people don't have random quirks that make them stand out. Real people seem very similar to each other, but if you notice the subtle differences in Sorkin's characters, you realize how unique and layered they actually are. It's fair enough for this guy to have his opinions, but it's also fair for me to consider them awful arguments. The number of times he uses circular reasoning to justify his points is ridiculous. Do yourself a favour and try to get into Sorkin's work with an open mind. Don't just dismiss it because you found some video essay on RU-vid that's your echo chamber.
