Look, guys, art isn't just "I like to do whatever I like to do and that's art, my art."

Like everything else worth doing, it has purpose and structure. We have roles to play, objective human obligations to live up to, constraints to play by; chess has objective, strict rules (#1477903) and within those constraints you can display creativity and playfulness.

Thinking that anything goes is the peak of postmodern-Marxist influence on our silly, secular, stupid, wokey times... No, anything does not go, and you ought to learn your freakin' ropes.

Anyway, I watched a movie last night, A House of Dynamite, a seemingly big-budget production featuring quite the array of familiar faces and movie stars. (Spoilers ahead; not that I really give a shit and the movie’s been out for six months so whatever.)

6.4 on IMDB is above the hygiene threshold so I gave it a shot. Worth my time? In hindsight, not.

It illustrated the most important principle in fiction and the deal that consumers of art make with its producers: I suspend disbelief for the duration of your movie, book, etc., and you deliver to me a point — a conundrum, a moral dilemma solved (or failed to solve), illustrating powerful life stories, or less high-flying goals: making me smile, making me laugh, making me feel good. And wrap it all up in 1.5-3 hours so I can get on with my life.

“A House of Dynamite” does this cool thing of portraying many sides of the same half-hour of extreme geopolitical, nuclear-war terror. In three (or four? can't remember) 20-ish minute segments, it shows a handful of characters dealing with the same imminent-danger chaos.

When a single, unattributed missile is launched at the United States, a race begins to determine who is responsible and how to respond.

The “chapter” then resets, showing the same timeline from a couple of other characters’ point of view, ending in the final bit showing the president and the standard game-theoretical nuclear-war/deterrent/retaliation dilemma.

When there’s an incoming missile and you’re short on time:

• Determine if it’s real (e.g., not clouds or radar systems misfiring, like that infamous 1983 event)
• Determine who did it, if it’s a coordinated attack, if there’s more coming; how to balance protective counteractions now vs more needed later.
• Decide, in the short interim before some of your cities are obliterated and millions die, whether to inflict that same damage (or more) to the other guy — or, more to the point, destroy their capabilities of launching more.

So far, so cool.

Of course, if you mess up some portion of these decisions (it was an error, it was a rogue submarine captain, it’s the North Koreans and not the Russians), you can quickly escalate a disastrous situation to a humanity-ending nuclear world war. And someone, somewhere, has to make that assessment and choice in 20-odd minutes.

So the movie’s chapters end upon missile impact, and there’s this lingering sensation (and hope) that maybe it’ll fail to detonate etc. It’s the crescendo of the movie, and we’re building up to it from all these groups of characters (NSA, general, White House staff, president etc) and get to reach the ‘climax’ of the movie several times.

…but then nothing happens.…but then nothing happens.

We’re never shown mushroom clouds or retaliatory bombing. We’re never told whether the president opted for bombing the Russians/Iranians/DPRK etc.

They leave us a story unfinished. (And if I track down some interview with the director and writer, I’m sure they’ll say this is all on purpose and according to artistic plan, blah-blah-blah — go away.) I suspended my disbelief for a fictional story and wasn’t rewarded with the full arc promised, the story completed and didn't come full circle. You can’t just leave storylines hanging like that.

Even a silly deus ex machina like “oh, the Navy has a secret counterweapon, stationed in Lake Michigan that nobody knows about that can shoot down nuclear missiles at close range and almost nobody dies — yes, let’s do it!” would have sufficed.

I’m reminded of another breach of this artistic deal from the final Twilight movie back in 2012. The two sides of vampires vs vampire/werewolves gear up for the ultimate battle, the max crescendo of the story, and we’re shown the lengthy battle and how many of our beloved characters die — only to be pulled out of it and returned back to a previous moment in the timeline; it was aaaaall just a premonition, a character seeing the future and displaying it to the bad guy. Having seen that, the bad guy retreats and we all go home.

And the audience feels tricked. We suspended disbelief and went along with your very fictional story… only for you to trick us and roll it back. Give me my twenty minutes back.

Or in the case of A House of Dynamite, give me my hour-and-fifty back.

Freaking pathetic.

This is very basic breach of artistic license. I can’t believe Den, a known art hater, has to tell credentialed artists how to do their job.

We really are going to hell in a handbasket, aren’t we; artists first. C’mon, guys, just do your job better.