The puppetmaster in Bruce Almighty is God, sort of, or at least it’s the divine powers of the supreme being that is Morgan Freeman. Bruce is granted these godly powers to teach him a lesson of some sort, doesn’t really matter. What matters is the resulting goofy sequences involving Steve Carell being controlled by Jim Carrey. And other hilarious hijinks of course.
You can see why it might be fun for filmmakers to play around with this kind of material. In the case of Bruce, it’s almost like the way Judd Apatow and other comedy directors will throw lines at their actors while shooting, and they’re expected to just repeat them back for the camera to capture. Christof is doing the exact same thing to the people in Truman’s life when it calls for it. There are varying levels of control at play, but the theme that runs throughout the differing expressions has to do with some aspect of the seduction of power and how difficult it is to let go of having control over another human being. Then of course this has all sorts of philosophical and religious implications about to what degree we’re all puppets, whether by our surrounding circumstances or by some divine power.
And it doesn’t stop there. To what extent are we all the puppets of the people whose movies we’re watching? Our emotions and thoughts are in the palms of their hands, being shaped and molded with every image and sound and piece of background music. It’s a power relationship all of its own, audience and artist, and as much as we try to take back some of the power by asserting our own thoughts online, ultimately we’re the ones submitting, with our beloved filmmakers pulling on our little strings.