James Wan Quotes

What makes an audience watch something and care about the characters is the emotional life of the characters.

One of the things that separates a good genre movie from a bad genre movie, I always think, ironically, is when you care about the people. The dime a dozen ones are where you don't have any awareness of the character.

If you can't laugh at your own characters, or shed a tear for them, or even get angry at one of them, no one else will either.

You need the audience to become invested in the characters and in order to become invested, they need to identify with the characters... and that's why the characters need to be real.

The real trick to these movies and making the big action sequences work - and I've forgotten this sometimes and screwed it up - the characters really have to be humanized. Because you can have the greatest special effects in the world, but if you don't care about the people in those effects, there's no impact.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

People like the comedy more when they care about the characters.

I don't think people are ever going to a place where they're like, 'I'm over stories about character and love.'

I am a firm believer that a good plot makes for a fun enough read, but it's not what binds us. If we don't care about the characters, we won't care - not in a lasting way - about what's happening to them.

In the end, drama is successful if you care about the people.

The film depends on the audience's belief in this relationship.

Whatever kind of movie it is, you're going to be more into it when you care more about the drama, or you'll have a better laugh if you feel like you know the people better.

A lot of entertainment, and especially in a half-hour format, can be all jokes, all the time. And some of those jokes can be really, really funny, but what I respond to, as a viewers, is identification or caring about the characters.

If you have great characters, then your reader becomes emotionally invested in those people.

You can't make the audience fall in love with a character you don't like.

When I watch a movie, someone's beauty isn't what engages me: it's what's going on internally. And I imagine it's what the audience thinks, too.

My characters are always utterly sympathetic to me, if that makes any sense.

You can film the most exciting car chase and the most exciting stunts, but if you don't care about the person inside the car, and you don't care about their predicament, you're not really going to care about the action, either.

You have to have somebody to root for. I truly believe that's how you ground a movie. You ground them in the characters.

If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.

I like my characters to be ones I think about long after I've finished reading the script.

You can sustain visual beauty and innovative visual ideas for a certain length of time, but in a two-hour experience, which is really what movies are, usually audiences - whether they know it or not - most want an emotional connection to character.

Television lets audiences deeply connect with characters.

'Star Trek' was always a little bit closed emotionally. I never connected to the characters.

I don't like the idea the viewer can kind of sit there and go, 'Make me like this person.' People aren't inherently sympathetic.