STUDY SESSION (This will definitely be on the test!)

When making a movie, especially a movie involving war scenes led by main characters who are supposed to deliver inspiring speeches right before a pivotal battle, make sure the speech is actually inspiring.

Since I’m a teacher, I’ll use teacher technique to reinforce this concept by offering both good and bad examples.

A. “They may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom!”
William Wallace, played by Mel Gibson in Braveheart, makes this memorable speech as a way of inspiring his men to push beyond their fear. If we die, he tells them, we will have died fighting for something that’s more important than our lives and that will have lasting effects on others after we are gone. Points for the universally inspiring concept, bonus points for delivering a line that others have quoted and parodied countless times since the movie release.

B. “Today is the day that the world declares with one voice that we will not go quietly into the night. Today is the day we celebrate our independence!”
Bill Pullman, playing the President of the United States in Independence Day (one of my all-time favorites), delivers this fabulous speech at Area 51, moments before alien invaders finish off their extermination of the entire human race. Broadcast on the radio to people all over the world after a catastrophic attack on the entire planet, this speech earns points not only for its all-inclusive message to people of every race, but also for its part in a movie that preceded the more well-known blockbusters of recent years, making it a vanguard of both the alien-attack movie genre and the underdogs-in-an-epic-battle-for-their-lives movie genre.

C. “They think they can take whatever they want, but we’ll show them that they can’t just take whatever they want!”
Sam Worthington, playing dual roles as an ex-marine and as a genetically engineered native of Pandora, makes this uninspiring line in Avatar, on which I recently wasted about 3 hours of my life. This line receives only partial credit for emotional delivery, but fails in both inspiration and quotability.

I hope you took notes on that.