An event in the script or an uneven portrayal that wrecks the intended emotional tenor of a scene or an entire piece.
In portrayals, when actors take it too big (start chewing the sets, rending the wardrobe, inserting pratfalls, etc.), they are level-breaking by going "
over the top." If they play it
too flat, they are breaking by way of "phoning it in."
It is much easier to level-break by going over the level than it is by going under the level.
You can, given the proper medications and directorial blandishments, eventually get an actor to either calm down or wake up. (Well, most of 'em, anyway.) In scripts, the problem is a little harder to pin down.
The most common level-breaker in a script is a
jump from way-sad to way-ridiculous. The breaker is in the "way-" part, in the degree of emotion. Having a détente scene, something to break the tension a little after a sad bit is not a bad play, but it has to be done with some care.
The inverse of the usual
Level Breaker is
We Havent Learned Anything Yet, which drops an inappropriately
serious moment into a comedy with all the subtlety of a
falling anvil.
See also:
Wall Banger,
Narm,
Sophisticated As Hell,
Melodrama. Not to be confused with
Game Breaker.
Examples:
Anime
Theatre
- In the otherwise fantastic comedic thriller Deathtrap, the character of Helga ten Dorp goes from elderly, wacky foreign psychic to a "strong and unafraid" dagger-wielding potential murderer in the space of two lines. Very difficult for an actor to pull off convincingly, and without careful attention can easily be a Level Breaker.
Film
- Han Solo's famous "I know" in The Empire Strikes Back was a level breaker for the test audience, but they loved it too much to change it.
- Depending on who you talk to, the "Anakin vs. Obi-Wan" fight in the prequels wound up being so ham-handedly over-the-top that it broke any sense of dramatic tension the rest of the scene had worked up.
- Not that there was ever really a moment when audiences were taking the movie seriously, but at the dramatic climax of Van Helsing — after the title character has inadvertantly killed his love interest during his time as a werewolf — he HOWLS LIKE A WOLF, which drew unintended, raucous laughter from audiences.
- Peter Parker's crying spell at the end of Spider Man 3, after Harry dies, probably drew more laughs than sympathy.
- WALL-E: Adding Also Sprach Zarathustra to the scene of the Captain standing up, making what should have been an awesome sequence too over-the-top compared to everything else going on.
Fan Fiction
- Picard's Illumination, an entertainingly dreadful Star Trek fanfic, produces a particularly Narmful example by having an anguished declaration of love for someone who has just committed suicide interrupted by hiccups.
- Bring to Order
, a Harry Potter fanfic already quite bad enough to turn Ron into one of the worst examples of his namesake trope, does this with the usage of gravy. Any amount of seriousness (if there was any to begin with, due to the massive Character Derailment all around) is thrown out the window in the first chapter with the following two lines:
Ron had regained consciousness, his face covered with blood and gravy.
- And further on in the same chapter:
Ron drooled spit and blood, he spit out a tooth. his nose was bent. A repeat of the mornings action, without gravy.
- Dark Secrets, another Ron The Death Eater fic, has Ron break into his abused Mary Sue girlfriend's room. Any hope the author had of evoking the horror of this situation evaporates when Ron does a Gollum impersonation.
"My preciousss," He told her in a sickening whisper.
Music
Real Life
- President Obama's inauguration was aiming for, and mostly pulling off, a somber and portentous tone. Then somebody started rhyming.
- Don't forget about "Sasha."
- Even before that; as soon as the poet came out to speak, within her first stanza she was driving the record-breaking crowd away.
