We all have our favorite moments in movies, books, and games, moments that stay with us long after the story is over. This column is my attempt to examine my favorite moments and see why they stick with me.

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The Movie

‘Armageddon’

The Scene

Ben Affleck points out some errors in logic.

Why it’s great

With most science fiction and fantasy films, it’s expected that we’ll have to suspend logic to some degree so the plot can move along. Oil drillers going into outer space to drill holes in a meteor so bombs can blow it up from the inside? Sure, I can go with that. But as Mr. Affleck observes, that may not have been the best solution.

The brilliance of Mr. Affleck’s observation is that sometimes going for the simplest solution in a story is often the best. I don’t know how complicated drilling is, but it probably would be easier to train astronauts to operate drilling equipment instead of training drillers to become astronauts. Of course, that would remove much of the movie’s charm of blue-collar underdogs heading out to save the Earth, and make for a less-exciting second half where we see trained astronauts calmly and professionally drilling to the designated depth, depositing the bomb, and blowing up the meteor with plenty of time to spare.

As stated before, suspending logic happens in every story to some degree, and is expected by audiences. After all, if a mundane solution were applied to every problem in fiction, our stories would be really short and much less exciting, AKA, the Doylist solution; if the Fellowship of the Ring did fly the One Ring to Mt. Doom with the help of the eagles, for example, ‘The Lord of the Rings’ would be a much shorter story. But every now and then, why not try doing the simplest solution in your own fiction? You just might throw the audience off guard and thus get their attention and make them wonder what else you’ll do.