Negotiations Akwardslide (5/25)
Concerning the Law of Conservation of Morality, which does not exist, despite the insistence of bad writers everywhere:
If 100 units of Morality exist, and Bard has 70, then Thorin can only have a maximum of 30 Moralities as long as he shares a scene with Bard.
Except the movie insists that Thorin has 60 Moralities. In the Laketown debate in The Desolation of Smaug, this conundrum was resolved by the presence of the Master and Alfrid, who both have negative Morality, thus creating room for Bard’s 70 and Thorin’s 60.
This scene in The Battle of the Five Armies, however, has no such saving grace. However, Thorin is only allowed to lose Moralities when he shares a scene with Gandalf or Bilbo. Otherwise, his Morality value stays the same, causing problems when Bard shows up because Bard has Constant Morality (coincidentally, Thranduil does most of the talking in scenes he and Bard have with Gandalf).
Therefore, the scene can’t go anywhere: it seizes up, atrophies: instead of honoring the situation and characters, all time is spent juggling equations statements to the audience to ensure that Morality is conserved.
I’ve seen some critics reference this idea when discussing other TV shows/ movies/ books, but they tend to use the term “Zero-Sum” to describe such characterization.
Either way, the storyteller spends all their energy telling the audience which character is “right”---which character the audience should agree with---and never bother letting the characters just express themselves.