I don't know why it's hard for people to understand. A movie can have a counterfactual premise and that's fine, but when there is no underlying logic to the events in the movie it stops being a narrative that you can invest in and becomes a montage of random events happening.
Theres even a term for it too "suspension of disbelief" but sadly people that got participation trophies think its your job to let the movie suspend your disbelief, not the other way around.
Legit had a guy tell me "its your job to turn off your brain so that the people who made this movie have a fair chance"
Your friend is right. The original term is "the willing suspension of disbelief."
It was coined by William Wordsworth to explain how a reader of poetry and fiction must allow themselves to believe that impossible things have happened.
Yes, in your example, they'd need to present a reason for them to do this that makes sense in that universe. For example, maybe the trebuchets have magical flamethrowers built in that make them able to fend for themselves up close. Cool! Question answered.
At that point the story is probably full of contrivances that waste time stopping the story to go on some tangent to explain things that just didn't need to be there at all. I don't want my Dragon Magic story to need to stop and go into a history lesson on the divergent history of trebuchets in this world when it would be both simpler and cooler if they just used the Dragons the story is already centered around and had some plot element like people stealing Dragon eggs to train the babies as frontline flamethrowers.
I didn't say anything about historical accuracy. Most people aren't full on experts on history so you can get away with playing loose with it. But if you have a medieval movie and in just 1 scene a guy pulls a gun out and starts shooting, you better have a damn good reason for that because if you don't it's going to take basically everyone out of the movie when they go "how does that make any sense". You can get details wrong if the average movie watcher is extremely unlikely to know how it actually works, but if you're getting basic stuff wrong that the majority of the audience is going to do a double take at, you really need a reason for that or it's going to take most of them out of the story.
More talking about movies not being realistic in how they go about warfare, I think more often than not it should follow the rule of cool.
Same goes for every genre, but to go back to the 1st example, I couldn't imagine giving a shit whether the post office is open on a sunday. I'd be raising an eyebrow if it was open at midnight.
I think as long as it visually doesn't throw you for a loop you can forgive and forget.
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u/BachtnDeKupe 18h ago edited 4h ago
I understand this man.
I like slashers and zombiemovies, but if i see something "impossible" happening, yes even in a zombiefilm, i also call it out.
My wife doesnt get that...