MovieChat Forums > Nim's Island (2008) Discussion > Figments of the imagination should be tr...

Figments of the imagination should be translucent...

posted 16 years ago by silentmovie
3 replies | jump to latest

...and should not affect the environment around them.

When the Gerry Butler character walked in the sand, he should not have left footprints. When he went into the water, the water should not have splashed, nor should his clothes have gotten wet.

The best figments or ghosts are translucent, like Cary Grant in "Topper." Having the "imaginary" friend interact with Jody Foster in a real life setting made it look fake, and the effect of an "imaginary" friend was lost.

Of course, "A Beautiful Life" and "The Sixth Sense" didn't go with translucent apparitions, but those movies had excellent surprise endings....

[–] acc211 16 years ago

However within her mind he would leave footprints and his clothes would get wet. What would be the point of a imaginary friend if they couldn't seem real and part of our world.

It would only really be strange if Nim walked up and said "hey where'd these footprints come from" because then he would have affected the real world not just Alexandra's perception of it.

[–] silentmovie 16 years ago

It just wasn't cinematic.

[–] hppg 16 years ago

No, I think the point was that he was so real to her, she saw him as just a real person hence the footprints, the clothes getting wet etc. it would have looked weird otherwise.

And we did see it from the taxi driver's perspective and he wasn't there at all. So he was completely real to her, but not at all real to anybody else. I think it depends on the type of imaginary person they're aiming for and in this case I think they did it the rig.ht way