Several people have sent me links to the latest batch of Giant Puppets. These are impressive feats of engineering and teamwork, but I have to admit that they don’t do anything for me. I do recognize that the effect of being there and watching them move would be different from videos, but that’s true of most theater. No, what I fail to get is the point. Big. But besides the bigness…
I mean, what are they doing with the Giantness of the puppets besides being Giant? I’ve always felt like the form of the creation should reflect the story being told and that the story is the kernel of the design. Here it seems backwards. It feels as though someone decided to make Big Puppets but then has them do ordinary things which become exceptional only because of their scale.
IMAX also doesn’t do anything for me, generally, with the one exception being a documentary about the Grand Canyon. There the scale of the screen absolutely gave more to the story of the Grand Canyon than a smaller screen would have. Star Trek? Yawn.
Big puppets? If they were telling a story that reflected their size, I’d be excited. Of course, I think the same is true of writing. Is it so much to want people to think about the story first and then figure out the best way to tell it?
There can certainly be a point to Spectacle, which need not have anything to do with Story.
(Combining the two would indeed be awesome, but the attempts I’ve witnessed [e.g., Cirque du Soleil] generally fail on the Story part.)
Yes. I agree. Spectacle can be enough in its own right. So the first Giant puppet was quite amazing and impressed me. Now, though? Now they just seem to be “Ooo! People like big puppets!”
Cirque succeeds to varying degrees with some having a more solid story than others. At the same time, and perhaps hypocritically, I don’t hold circus to the same standards as I do puppetry. I’m not expecting story and character to the same degree with circus or dance as I do with theater. Now, there are abstract mood pieces with puppetry and those also are often not my thing, but I can adjust my lens usually to watch them as such.
The big puppets don’t seem to be doing anything new except being large and even that’s not new. It’s the hydraulic nature and the team of people that makes them an engineering spectacle. I imagine that being in the audience is very likely a different experience.
I think they’re quite incredible – they look amazing! As feats of engineering and, as David comments, as spectacle they’re beautiful. I can’t comment on the story, having not been there.
Being one that sent you a link, I was impressed by their sheer size and that they could actually be mobile in some way. But, I wonder how hard it would be to give them personality, so to speak. I imagine they would not have a lot of mobility so they would tend to be more of a lumbering giant than a typical marionette. I could be wrong though, I’ve never seen them in person.
Well, they are spectacles, and that’s what they are. It’s hard to really tell a story when everything is in super…. slow….. motion…
I think the Walking with Dinosaurs puppets are big for (obvious) reasons. These, on the other hand, are just big for the sake of being big. Would still be interesting to look at though!