E.G.

From Ebert’s Glossary of Movie Terms:

We’re Alive! Let’s Kiss!

Inevitable conclusion to any scene in which hero and heroine take cover from gunfire by diving side-by-side into a ditch, and find themselves in each other’s arms, usually for the first time. Cf. HIGH ROAD TO CHINA.

There is usually something bad about concluding a scene in this way.  But what is bad about it, exactly?

It might be bad because it’s implausible.  That is to say: It wouldn’t happen in reality; people who have just escaped death are usually too preoccupied to kiss.  But I don’t think the events in movies need to be the sorts of things which would or could happen in reality.

Movies occur in the present tense; they require you to imagine that what’s happening on screen is, in some sense, "really occurring."  But unless you’re seriously disturbed, you’re not imagining they’re occurring in the real world.  You’re imagining they’re occurring in the self-contained world of the movie.  So movies do not require you to imagine that what’s happening on screen is anything like what has happened, or ever will happen, in the "real world."  In other words: We attribute a kind of reality to a movie’s events, or at least we do when the movie "works" — but we make this attribution without blurring the distinction between the real reality and the movie reality.  By maintaining that distinction, we are able to allow events to transpire in movies which "would never really happen."  So we do not, or should not, require the events in movies to be "plausible," at least not in the usual sense of "plausibility."

However, when people try to say what it is that they dislike about a "We’re Alive!  Let’s Kiss!" scene, they do often say that such a scene is "implausible."  If, when they say this, they aren’t using "plausibility" in its usual sense, then in what sense are they using it?

Here’s my first guess: When we say that a "We’re Alive!  Let’s Kiss!" scene is "implausible," what we mean is that we don’t believe that such an event would or could occur in the world of the movie.  We’re not complaining that people in the real world wouldn’t kiss immediately after being nearly killed; we acknowledge that that’s irrelevant, since the people in the movie aren’t in the real world.  What we’re saying is that, even in the world of the movie, nobody would kiss in such a moment.  After all, when such scenes occur, we’ve sometimes been given no reason to think that the characters wouldn’t be just as preoccupied by their near-death experiences as us real people would be in the same situation.  So when we say such scenes are implausible, what we mean is that such scenes are "implausible even in the world of the movie." 

Perhaps this kind of implausibility sometimes explains part of what we dislike about this sort of scene.  But I’m not sure it always does.  After all, sometimes we have been given reason to think that the characters in these types of movies aren’t much bothered by near-death experiences; sometimes the characters are supposed to be really tough and fearless, for instance.  In that case, the scene may not be "implausible even in the world of the movie."  So, if in such cases we’re still saying that what we dislike about the scene is that it is "implausible," we probably don’t mean that it is implausible in the sense just described.

So, here’s my second guess: We say "We’re Alive! Let’s Kiss!" scenes are "implausible" because we suspect the characters kiss in such a moment solely because the movie wants a kiss to occur right then.  We may not know whether the characters themselves have any reason to want to kiss, but when such scenes occur, we often do know that the writers have a reason to want the characters to kiss. 

But what’s wrong with characters doing something just because the writers want them to do it?  Isn’t that the case for everything which occurs in a movie?  Maybe.  But in "We’re Alive!  Let’s Kiss!" scenes, we somehow have reason to suspect the characters aren’t kissing freely; we suspect the movie itself is making them kiss.  I think this is the real problem with "We’re Alive! Let’s Kiss!" scenes.  I think it is also the problem with many similar types of scenes.  (Follow the link above to Ebert’s Glossary; you’ll find lots of other examples there.)  We want the people in our movie-worlds to have free will.  If the events in movies too obviously or deliberately follow a dramatic "arc," then by knowing something about the kind of movie we’re watching, we can know what the characters will do before they do it.  This kind of knowledge makes us feel that the characters aren’t acting freely.

Some people think the possibility of a genuinely omniscient God would threaten the free will of human beings.  Their idea is that if God knows what you will do before you decide to do it, then you could not have done otherwise, and would therefore not have acted freely.  There are good reasons to think that these people are wrong, and that there could be free wills even if there were an omniscient God.  I find those reasons compelling; I have been convinced that an omniscient God would not threaten freedom.  But I am still nagged by a persistent feeling that an omniscient God would threaten freedom.  That is: Something just feels unfree about an action which God knows I will perform before it even occurs to me to perform it.  I think a similar thing might be said about "We’re Alive! Let’s Kiss!" scenes.  There’s nothing inconsistent in saying that the characters kiss freely even though we can infer from the type of movie we’re watching that they will kiss immediately after having been nearly killed.  But our ability to make this kind of inference gives us the feeling that the kiss is unfree, and that feeling is enough to make us dislike such scenes.