Talk about the art of storytelling here.
Storytelling: the neverending story
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Makes me wonder what he has to say now
Not much, considering he died 5 years ago…
As for B5, a lot of people in the past wondered about a show that would be a āGame of Thrones in spaceā. Dune is coming out and we will see. But maybe the GOT in space already happened in B5. There are similarities I would sayā¦.
Game of Thrones in Space gets thrown around a lot, most notably with The Expanse (which at least had the pedigree of being co-created by George RR Martin’s former assistant and rumoured ghost writer). I don’t think there’s too much SF around at the moment, especially space opera/political/military intrigue type dealios. Of course, they tend to be more expensive to produce so it keeps the numbers down.
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Butā¦ is there too many?
There are many mediocre and bad ones and a few good ones. But thatās the case with most genres nowadays. With networks, cable, and streaming services available today, there are more opportunities for different genres to be aired. And because of streaming services, older shows have a new chance to be watched by new and old audiences alike. SFX has also advanced (and continues to do so) to a point where certain genres are not only viable, but they actually look good!
Are there too many? No, especially when compared to the previous decades.
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Not much, considering he died 5 years ago
I am ashamed to say I laughed out loud at this.
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I tend to miss more of the smaller scale approaches to the genres. It was something I liked about the last two Wolverine movies, especially LOGAN, in that it wasnāt a save the whole damn world sort of story. The consequences were contained generally to the characters we were following.
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I tend to miss more of the smaller scale approaches to the genres.
Agreed. One of the great things about Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is that the villainy is at street level, and was much more relatable. In comparison, films that pit the hero(es) against an intangible global threat (see FF2, WW84) just go too far out of the realm of relatability and quickly lose my attention.
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I don’t think Westerns are really comparable to science fiction.
For one thing, all Westerns are, ostensibly, the same. They all took/take place in the same late nineteenth century American milieu. Bonanza, The Rifleman, the Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns, and everything else mostly take place within the same historical context.
Whereas Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Babylon 5, and everything else all take place in their own isolated worlds with their own sense of art design, technology, physics, and mythologies.
As such, these are a lot trickier to pull off than the simple Westerns that were churned out during the middle of the last century, where they could reuse the same sets and costumes and horses. There really wasn’t a lot of world-building going on in them. Just put some cowboys hats on actors, put them on horses, give them guns, and have them shoot Indians and the occasional black hat.
It’s kind of hard to say, but at some point, you might get a “cinematic universe” overload with Stars Trek and Wars, Doctor Who, the MCU, the DCEU, Middle Earth, Ice-n-Fire, the Wizarding World, the Witcher, Transformers, Walking Dead, and whatever else is out there. Most of these things are chasing after the same nerdy fandom (which, admittedly, has expanded greatly in the past couple of decades). These fandoms do cross over into the cultural mainstream, but that fandom tends to be fickle, and the mainstream fans tend to get bored quickly and move onto something else. (Notice how the ratings for The Walking Dead have slipped, and the bad taste the final season of Game of Thrones left so many mouths.)
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OUTLAND was a remake of the great Western HIGH NOON. FORBIDDEN PLANET was an outer space version of Shakespeare’s THE TEMPEST. As Johnny notes above, STAR WARS was an amalgam of old Westerns and Kurosawa’s HIDDEN FORTRESS, with an ample amount of DUNE sprinkled throughout the films. Science fiction authors and filmmakers have traditionally taken existing tropes and genres and retooled them to tell their story.
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Even novels like DUNE and THE FOUNDATION series are more about our past history than speculating on the future.
SF is always using the future as a window into the present though. Star Trek’s morality plays reflect the era any given episode or movie was made in, Star Wars is wall-to-wall Vietnam analogies, cyberpunk as a genre is interrogating the social and economic climate of the early 80s…
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cyberpunk as a genre is interrogating the social and economic climate of the early 80sā¦
This is a terrific point. A lot of attention goes to Gibson about what he predicted about the Internet age, but it’s just as important to notice what he did not predict and that it wasn’t the point of Neuromancer or any of the sprawl novels to predict or provide a guidebook to the future. He was much more inspired by William S. Burroughs than Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov in the writing.
It was very much the “new romance” and put the emotional journey of characters Case and Molly in the foreground compared to the simple sentimental story of some protagonists for the Tom Clancy style tech thriller bestsellers.
As far as the future of storytelling, I think we will be still stuck in the doldrums of the “era of bland” with movies that are continually monolithic and monotone and easily confused with each other while television and streaming will be where people find more eccentric, personal and distinct stories to relate to.
I also think that it will continue to get more difficult for people to make money telling stories as so much content is either free or bundled in ways where it is almost to cheap to pay for that the people actually creating the content are far from the actual money being made by it. So, I don’t think talented storytellers will really be involved in the media devoted to storytelling and will instead be in other fields from writing marketing copy to running political campaigns where they can really make money.
So, I think the basic level of competent storytelling will decline in the books, movies and shows even at the top of the game. Unless, there is some sort of opening like in the 70’s where there was a new crop of filmmakers who also had a changing generation of people that wanted to see those movies. However, like the “free love” movement of the 60’s, that really only lasted a couple of years, the period of 70’s films was actually fairly short before movies like Jaws and Star Wars brought us into the blockbuster and action movie era.
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Where does good storytelling go from here?
What is the future of storytelling?ā¦even comic book storytelling?
I’m not sure what you mean here, Alfred, or what kind of response you’re looking for. The simple answer, of course, is that good storytelling will go wherever it wants to and/or needs to. “Good storytelling” does not have a single definition that is agreed upon by all people. To some, good storytelling hit its peak with Aesop’s fables; to others, the fairy tales/moral stories of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, which have been retold time and time again and have been translated to virtually every language, are the epitome of good storytelling; while contemporary readers will tell you the Harry Potter books or the Twilight books are the best storytelling ever published.
There is no limit to where storytelling can go, just as there are no limits to music or fine art.
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why are there so many rehashes, remakes, and recyclings of the same themes
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SF is always using the future as a window into the present though. Star Trekās morality plays reflect the era any given episode or movie was made in, Star Wars is wall-to-wall Vietnam analogies, cyberpunk as a genre is interrogating the social and economic climate of the early 80sā¦
George Lucas has been fairly open about how Vietnam inspired Star Wars; the idea of a small band or rebels taking on a vast Empire. (Providing we’re willing to take Lucas at his word; he’s been known to rewrite history from time to time.)
Maybe that’s one reason why Star Wars has struggled to find an identity in the Disney era; it really doesn’t know what it wants to be. Even the reviled Prequels can be seen as a 9/11-War on Terror analogy, though the trilogy was developed before the dreaded event. It’s almost eerie how Attack of the Clones paralleled current events even though the script was already written and the film was in the can when the planes flew into the World Trade Center.
Speaking of Cyberpunk, I had a great deal of interest in it when I was a kid. Back in the 1980s, when I was reading Neuromancer and other books, it really felt like the start of something big, like some kind of big paradigm shift was happening in science fiction, but the genre ultimately burned itself out quickly. At the time, I was thinking that the traditionalist science fiction community worked to kill it, but, in hindsight, it seemed destined to be little more than a fad. Outside of Gibson, whose fiction became more and more mainstream as time went on, none of the other authors of the movement really went anywhere past the 1980s. I suppose one of the problems is what’s cutting edge in 1984 seems dated by 1989. Now, the walls of pay telephones (and lack of smartphones) in Neuromancer seem just as dated as the atomic-powered cigarette lighters of Foundation were when Neuromancer came out.
While I still love Neuromancer and, really, the whole Sprawl Trilogy, and think John Shirley’s Eclipse Trilogy is pretty good, a lot of the cyberpunk novels from that time are a real chore to get through.
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This is a terrific point. A lot of attention goes to Gibson about what he predicted about the Internet age, but itās just as important to notice what he did not predict and that it wasnāt the point of Neuromancer or any of the sprawl novels to predict or provide a guidebook to the future. He was much more inspired by William S. Burroughs than Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov in the writing.
I think when it comes to predicting the future, the most accurate prediction Neuromancer – and cyberpunk as a genre – made wasn’t the internet, but the development of capitalist society. Again, that was as much an analysis of what was already going on as an extrapolation and speculation on the future, but fuck if Gibson didn’t anticipate this extremely well.
I remember reading a novel – fuck, I forget the writer’s name, but it was an indictment of corporate structure today, there was a lot of No Logo and that kind of thing in it, it was a bit of a corporate thriller I think, but at the same time there was a weird story about the protagonist’s childhood and a math problem… uh, anyway, the point is, the protagonist sometimes listened to a voice reading excerpts from Neuromancer on some weird radio station, and every time there was one of those excerpts, I found myself thinking, shit, I should just be reading Neuromancer again, it made all of these points about the corporate world we live in far better than this novel does.
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Star Wars is wall-to-wall Vietnam analogies
What?
Gooooooooooood Morning, Alderaan!
I love the smell of exploding planets in the morning.
George Lucas has been fairly open about how Vietnam inspired Star Wars; the idea of a small band or rebels taking on a vast Empire. (Providing weāre willing to take Lucas at his word; heās been known to rewrite history from time to time.)
Was he delusional? I just don’t see it.Ā If he’s said it was a War of Independence analogy I would have been slightly more believing.
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Was he delusional? I just donāt see it. If heās said it was a War of Independence analogy I would have been slightly more believing.
Return of the Jedi is the most obvious one, with the Ewoks standing in for the Vietnamese, a “primitive” society defeating a technologically superior one in jungle warfare where they attack from ambush
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Has Lucas ever actually made any meaningful work, or has his entire career been superficial?
THX-1138 is pretty good.
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Where are the new fresh ideas then if storytelling is infinite as implied?
As Anders implies with his response above, the guarantee of a pre-existing fanbase or audience has led movie producers and comic book companies and even fiction authors to expand on successful franchises rather than take a chance on something new. This is why, for example, movie audiences will flock to see the latest Fast and Furious film despite the pandemic, but HBO doesn’t even bother to release Steven Soderbergh’s NO SUDDEN MOVE to theaters. It’s why JK Rowlings final Harry Potter book, …AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS sold over 11 million copies in its first day of release (in just the US and UK alone), while her next novel (not a HP book) CASUAL VACANCY sold about 1 million copies during its first three weeks. It’s why the worst X-Men comic book sells 20X more copies than the latest book by Brubaker and Phillips.
People complain that they want fresh ideas, but we really just want more of the same familiar thing.
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He wrote Raiders Of The Lost Ark, didn’t he?
Yes, a really profound study of human nature
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Ok, I was obviously expecting too much from Lucas. In most SF, as this thread has discussed, the story would have made some kind of meaningful or cautionary or otherwise educational statement about the real-world situation it was inspired by. But Lucas has looked at Vietnam and the most meaningful part of it he could reflect was āPrimitive weapons! Jungle!ā.
Have you seen the way his SF contemporaries in TV and film did Vietnam? This was not a time of depth or subtlety.
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Have you seen the way his SF contemporaries in TV and film did Vietnam? This was not a time of depth or subtlety.
James Cameron’s ALIENS – definitely a lot of Vietnam in there.
Cracked did an interesting panel a few years ago talking about Independence Day and how when they cut to Africa, it was just a bunch of Masai with spears. However, they did mention that apparently in the sequel there is a section where they gloss over the fact that for the past 30 years, there was a war between the surviving aliens that didn’t die when their ships crashed and, in Africa, armies of machete wielding soldiers had been facing these extraterrestrials and their advanced weaponry all that time. Now, that would’ve been a great sequel.
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What novel or storyline would make for better sci fi if it was effectively made to a movie or million dollar episodes on TV?
Just about any film or TV show based on a Philip K. Dick novel/short story would be better science fiction than SW or ST. For example:
BLADE RUNNER, based on Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
A SCANNER DARKLY, based on the novel of the same name
MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, based on the book of the same name
TOTAL RECALL, based on the short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”
THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU, based on the short story “Adjustment Team”
MINORITY REPORT, based on the short story of the same nameThese stories take a core science fiction concept and extrapolate the idea into an entertaining and thought-provoking narrative. And they don’t obviously borrow from previous novels or films.
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That’s the thing about PKD is that his stories are filled with “ideas” and it is the central element of science fiction his generation and just before. Zelazny, Van Vogt, Herbert, Heinlein, Haldeman, Sturgeon and even Martin and Vonnegut were writing science fiction because as a genre, it explored ideas more than mysteries or westerns or romances or straight fiction really did. Though many of them also wrote those other types of stories when they needed to buy groceries or keep the gas on.
Unfortunately, movies, for the most part, aren’t great with more than one good idea in the story, so we don’t get a lot of serious science fiction in film – still, there are plenty of good examples like Ex Machina or Arrival that manage to be good SF short stories.
however, even in fairly good science fiction movies, itās not easy to have more than one interesting idea to drive the story. One of Blade Runnerās problems as far as reaching the audience is that Rick really has no good reason to take the job. There is the vague implication of a threat if he doesnāt take it, but only because of the deadpan narration telling us that. And that isnāt really motivation to do a good job.
Go hunt down these murder robots by yourself with your hand held pistol or weāll hurt you. Okay, but so will the murder bots so Iāll just say Iāll take the job and wander around the city a bit and stay out of everybodyās way.
in the book, Deckard does it because he wants to make enough money to buy a real sheep in a world where almost all animals are extinct and a living pet is such a status symbol there is an entire industry selling people robotic goats, dogs, cats and even frogs so people can keep up appearances. Only Deckard isnāt just keeping up appearances. He has a terminally depressed wife and he thinks a real sheep will make her happy because sheās all caught up in this weird religion where she doesnāt feel like real person unless sheās caring for something living and ādoing her part.ā
Itās a great setup that actually ties together all the other ideas of the story like a āmood organā that is an electromagnetic anti-depressant that his wife uses to make herself depressed because she doesnāt think she should be happy or an animal showroom that operates just like a 60ās Cadillac dealership, but all that is barely background in the movie or just not there, and we get the standard noir-ish hero thatās motivated by āthe girlā and some vague pride he possibly takes in a job he doesnāt really want to do from the beginning.
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I think a movie is basically a short story length, there really isn’t the space to deal with the complexity of a novel in 100 minutes. So movies should be looking more at short stories to adapt (like Arrival did). A short story has the advantage of (typically) only having one single central idea, so it doesn’t fall into the Blade Runner pitfalls talked about above.
And that’s really why I like my SF in short stores rather than novels. It’s an idea-based genre. so pick one idea, explore it, resolve it, and get out, all in 6000 words. Sure it can be cool to combine multiple ideas and write a novel (and there have been someĀ great SF novels doing that) but it’s not necessary.
I, Robot is a collection of short stories that I hold up as a perfect example of SF, perfect when it was written and still not bettered today. Each story has one idea and they explore its ramifications in minute detail, all in 6000 words. Each one is perfectly formed and does everything I want science fiction to do.
Do I think any of them would make a great movie? No, they would probably be terrible.
But they would make a superb set of theatre plays.
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Comics is similarly different in that respect. A single monthly issue of a comic book takes at most 15 minutes to read. That’s basically one act’s worth of content in a regular 1 hour television episode. However, there aren’t that many writers comfortable with really writing a story for one issue – and we get really decompressed stories that are more suitable for large format graphic novels.
It’s not so different from the way novelists would release their books in serial form through the numerous periodicals and then rewrite and edit it for book publication. We still get that today with various internet sites that host writers as they release chapters of stories and then publish one full collection.
However, we do end up with a lot of even top tier comic book writers that are not comfortable with the single issue format or really know how to tell single issue stories. Obviously, most of the older writers from the 90’s and before certainly still have strong chops when it comes to single issue storytelling, but it’s not a discipline that has been widely passed on. In some cases, even with some top writers, I’m not sure they really consider even the page layout as a part of the storytelling or just leave it to the artist. Personally, I think a writer should know in every part of the script where the reader is turning the page if it is meant for a published comic. For online or scrolling style webcomics, of course, it is a different consideration since the way people read those is much different.
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The thing people miss with Westerns is the economic aspect.
When Hollywood films were actually made in Hollywood and LA was less developed they were basically really cheap locations nearby. We tend to retcon the idea that there were so many westerns because they were popular, there were so many because they were cheap and easy to make. If you go through the list of thousands of westerns made you’d find half a dozen that are considered classics now.
We’re in an era now where almost every cinema release in my region is a horror movie. It’s because they are also cheap to make.
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Also, honestly, they didn’t really make a lot of money at the box office so they had to be cheap – and the infrastructure that was kept in place helped that until the locations became more valuable for development.
The most successful westerns in history are probably Dances With Wolves and Blazing Saddles even adjusting for inflation. Which makes a 200 million dollar budget for the Lone Ranger movie just bonkers.
Hollywood never really learns or at least they learn the wrong lessons. Johnny Depp and millions of dollars is not what made a “pirate movie” successful. It was the story. So you can just do the same thing with a western. Also, another bad lesson learned was “hey, now we can make movies out of all these amusement park rides, right?”
Even after HAUNTED MANSION, MISSION TO MARS, TOMORROWLAND and the goddam THE COUNTRY BEARS, we’re still getting JUNGLE CRUISE.
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Iāve always thought Star Wars was more high fantasy than science fiction.
I mean, hell, itās wizards and swords and magic and princesses with space ships and ray guns.
Also, it takes place in the past.
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Do I think any of them would make a great movie? No, they would probably be terrible.
Uh, like, I’m sorry man, but like Will Smith and Alex Proyas are over there totally disagreeing with you!
But they would make a superb set of theatre plays.
They really would. And I am sure somebody has staged some of them.
And thatās really why I like my SF in short stores rather than novels. Itās an idea-based genre. so pick one idea, explore it, resolve it, and get out, all in 6000 words. Sure it can be cool to combine multiple ideas and write a novel (and there have been some great SF novels doing that) but itās not necessary.
Well, it’s necessary if you want to get the experience of reading a novel. Which isn’t necessarily about combining ideas – some great SF novels do that, and I’ve mentioned before that Stross’ Accelerando is my favourite in firing off just so, so many ideas at you at such a rapid pace – but I think this one was written sort of as installments of short stories originally, which is probably telling.
Novels, in contrast to short stories, are about characters and plot. Even in an idea-based genres, these are part of a reading experience that people will look for. And one aspect more specific to sci-fi is world-building, of course. If you look, say, at Banks’ Culture novels, a huge part of what makes them great is the settings and how these different civilisations are explored. That’s not something you can do in short story form.1 user thanked author for this post.
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Uh, like, Iām sorry man, but like Will Smith and Alex Proyas are over there totally disagreeing with you!
I know you are joking, but for the benefit of anyone who didn’t get the joke:
1. I Robot was a terrible movie*
2. It really wasn’t based on the book. I mean, it made Blade Runner look like a perfectly faithful adaptation in comparison
* Disclaimer: it did have Will Smith, but that’s literally the only good thing I can say about it.
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It is interesting how original stories become simplified for film. This applies to original screenplays as well. THE TRUMAN SHOW originally was set in Manhattan – exactly like it was at the time – where a man begins to believe that he is being watched and that everyone he encounters or knows is actually an actor. The original concept was that you could think that he’s actually just going crazy similar to the Vonnegut novel BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS (which was turned into a pretty poor movie), and the big revelation is that he’s right. He’s the unknowing star of a television show. It probably would’ve been a much lower budget story in the same vein as BEING JOHN MALKOVICH.
However, they instead went with the approach that we know he’s in a show from the start and the world he inhabits is completely artificial and nothing like the real world. More like a tee vee idea of the world that he’s just grown up inside.
The movie HANCOCK had its own story problems, but originally it was much darker with the superhero of the story having an affair with a woman he rescued and then becoming increasingly possessive and stalking her to the point that he abducts her and ends up killing a whole bunch of cops that try to stop him. Basically, it’s the story of a Superman who snaps because he has no human connection or love in his life.
Well a lot of people liked TONIGHT, HE COMES (the original title) but no way were they going to keep the crazy, creepy stalker Superman… though SUPERMAN RETURNS decided they would use it instead. ;)
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There is a misunderstanding of the savage, primal and primitive in that non-industrialized societies are not savage or primitive or even that static in reality. There is an idea that we’re just a natural disaster, economic collapse or war away from reverting into barbarians. That we’d all turn into murderous savages once the power goes out and the grocery store shelves are empty.
However, there is no link from “the stone age” to the “modern age” as if there is a series of conceptual steps leading from one to the other. Industrialized societies do collapse into chaos and terrible behavior, but that isn’t a reversion into some previous form of “primitive” society. Instead, it is a progression that results from the form of modern society. All that terrible behavior results from the structure of modern life destructing and is a consequence of it rather than a reversion to some “primitive” form of civilization.
We might certainly turn into a bunch of roving, murderous bandits if our civilization collapsed, but actual non-industrialized societies don’t actually behave that way and never really did. They had and still have strong social bonds, ethics and morals and were generally a lot more stable and less murderous than your average American city.
If we lost all the artificial support necessary for our way of life, we wouldn’t revert to the “stone age.” None of us were ever in the stone age so how could we even go “back” there? We’re modern people so you can’t turn us into ancient tribespeople just by taking away all the stuff that makes up our modern life.
However, that is often what has been projected onto Africans and Indigenous people from the colonial days to today that they are somehow a picture into the prehistoric, pre-civilized past when they are a completely different civilization contemporary to our own. They aren’t behind us, they are just beside us.
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Weāre modern people
Speak for yourself, iMan! I’m off to unga my bunga!
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What did these storytellers have in mind? That any non European land is that mysterious, practically saying āExploit me?ā
I think it’s more just the natural appeal of the unfamiliar. At a time when the world was less interconnected, far-flung locations still had a certain mystique about them and were sufficiently far removed from what the western reader would be familiar with that writers could play on their exotic qualities.
Today I think it’s harder to do that as our experiences and knowledge are a lot broader in general. The far east or India or Australia aren’t mysterious unknown locations, I speak to people in all of those places every day.
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Speak for yourself, iMan! Iām off to unga my bunga!
Just make sure you close the door so that we don’t have to listen to your bunga being unga’d.
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I think itās more just the natural appeal of the unfamiliar.
I agree; throughout human history there has always been an urge to explore new frontiers, whether in search of something better or just to “see what’s on the other side”. According to many theories, North and South America were settled by nomadic tribes from Eurasia who crossed what is now the Bering Strait in search of larger herds of mastodons or woolly mammoths. Marco Polo (or someone before him) found a path from Europe to India and China along the Silk Road in search of spices and textiles that were then unknown in the West. And Canada and the United States began with settlements along the Atlantic Ocean but quickly spread further and further west as settlers and adventurers looked for that new frontier where they could stake a claim.
Today I think itās harder to do that
Again, I agree; but there are still unexplored (and unexploited) areas on Earth that can provide fodder for fiction writers, including parts of the Congo and the Amazon Basin, as well as underground and the ocean floor. And let’s see what NASA finds on Mars….
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I think itās more just the natural appeal of the unfamiliar. At a time when the world was less interconnected, far-flung locations still had a certain mystique about them and were sufficiently far removed from what the western reader would be familiar with that writers could play on their exotic qualities.
That is an interesting point. Ironically, though, what fiction did was what it always does – lie about stuff!
The novelty of unfamiliar places was used to basically sell absolute fabrications about “Darkest Africa” or the “American Frontier.” Even calling it the “frontier” is a bit idiotic because it was just home for the people who’d been there living their lives forever. Like saying that Captain Cook discovered Australia. He bumped into it – – the people living there had never been lost.
In this sense, Robert E. Howard is at least a little more honest than James Fenimore Cooper in that Conan was never really intended to be taken seriously while people for years would look at the Deerslayer as some sort of honest depiction of the “New World.”
However, that is what fiction is supposed to do. It isn’t supposed to be honest or accurate. Instead, it reflects the desires and perspectives of its writers and readers. Otherwise, it won’t reach an audience. Even though someone takes cultures they know nothing about and produces a work of fiction with a skewwed perspective on them, as long as that approach reaches the intended audience looking for it, it works.
Like look at all the Russian mobsters and criminals in movies that are nothing like actual Russians or organized criminals at all. It doesn’t really matter for the vast majority of the audience out there. People might claim it is all part of a CIA led propaganda push to present Russia as an essentially corrupt and dangerous nation of criminals – but even if that is true, that is not why people are going to see movies like John Wick or Eastern Promises.
As times change and people’s vicarious experience of the world broadens, the depictions will also reflect that, but even then nothing in a fictional work has anything directly to do with reality. Heck, most of of non-fictional works really have nothing to do with reality.
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Those places arenāt mysterious and so you canāt get away with inventing details of them quite so easily.
True – but honestly, though, it’s still pretty easy. I mean, just look at Marvel movies and the way they depict Eastern Europe or magical schools in Tibet. I’ve heard some criticism of Black Widow in that when the family is in its American cover they speak English with American accents, but when they are alone they speak English with Russian accents instead of just speaking Russian. However, no one seems to bring up the fact that every alien in the Marvel universe speaks English.
Seriously, it is not like they are speaking their own language and the movie translates it for us as English. When Thor crash lands on Earth in his first movie, he’s immediately speaking English even before any Earthpeople say anything. When Tony, Strange and Peter run into the Guardians in Infinity War, they are all speaking English from the get -go.
That’s a side note though. Do you think Shang-Chi or Snake Eyes will provide any more realistic perspective on the culture of the “Far East” (it’s not that far, dammit!) than Dr. Strange with its woo-woo magic version of Tibetan shamanism or Batman Begins with its “Ninja” army in the Himalayas. Even with the increased influence of China, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and Asian nations in general on the international stage, stereotypical presentations are going to dominate because they are better for the stories. Even Chinese movies and television promote this.
Or the Dark Knight Rises with its weird, improbable underground desert prison or even Tenet with its bonkers abandoned city in Russia. These areas (Naukograds or Science Cities) are not really abandoned. Like Chernobyl, there are crews there and military guards constantly monitoring them. And how you gonna get a friggin’ assault squad into kilometers and kilometers of a heavily armed foreign nation to pull off that battle at the end? Well, obviously, it’s Eastern Europe; there is no law there or any concern over international customs. Didn’t you see Avengers 2?(Ironically, a lot of Tenet is taken up with all those port warehouses people use to get around paying customs fees, too)
It doesn’t matter – all that matters is that you keep the attention of the viewers. If the prison in Dark Knight Rises was in America or even Sweden, it wouldn’t fly. But since it is in some exotic locale (possibly anywhere from Morocco to Uzbekistan), we figure “heck, who knows those weird people over there get up to?” If the final battle in Tenet took place up in Port Chatham, Alaska, it would be just as (un)realistic, but would you buy it? Set it in Eastern Europe – sure, now it makes sense.
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āheck, who knows those weird people over there get up to?ā
Ha! This is the crux of it I think.
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Another interesting challenge for me are demons in fiction. Like The Exorcist and the literally innumerable exorcist rip-offs (including the entire Conjuring series of movies and spin-offs and their ilk like Sinister and Insidious). Now, it may be that I just don’t buy the generally Catholic theology at the heart of the stories — and it is a good 95% Catholic worldview in the movies even in the fairly large crop of Korean horror movies — but the big problem I have with demons is that generally they aren’t fleshed out very well. The demons are not characters and there is little attention given to why they are doing it. They are just evil for the sake of it.
However, it is a fascinating question for me — and more importantly, dramatically rich. Let’s take the basic set up here and examine it. Generally, in the Catholic point of view, if you’re a demon then you know there is a God and heaven and hell and all that business. So, in the end, you know you’re somehow still working for God even if you’re doing evil. You absolutely know that everything is predetermined by a divine will and you might even know how everything turns out.
So, does that mean that the real antagonist is God in all these stories? The demon or devil literally cannot defy God’s will. So, logically, whatever is happening is what God wants.
One of these movies that I actually like quite a bit in this regard is CONSTANTINE in that the devil and the demons seemed to think they were winning. The motivation was clear in that the antagonists wanted to bring about a kind of artificial apocalypse – basically making a cold war into a very hot one – and the demons in the plot thought they would win it.
It’s interesting because even Lucifer at the end, though he does not approve of the accelerated plot of his son, he also believes that he will win the war for the Earth and Humanity. To be honest, there is good reason for him to believe that, too. Humanity is far more demonic than angelic in the story, though the last minute redemption is the point there for the story.
However, Lucifer is the one being in the entire universe that has known God for longer and better than any other creature ever — maybe with the exception of Jesus — and he thinks he’s winning. Now, that’s how you use a demon in your story. Lucifer in the tee vee series is similar except he just doesn’t think the whole thing is worth fighting over.
there was one thing I liked about the most recent Conjuring movie (#8 I think) and itās that in most demon possessions in film the hero gets the demon to possess them and then they commit suicide. Now, obviously, that is literally the oldest trick in the book, but the demons keep falling for it. Alsoā¦ just seems like a bad idea. āHey, all this God and Church stuff doesnāt seem to be working, so instead Iāll let the demon possess me and the immediately commit a mortal sin. They wonāt see that coming.ā
Itās like scoring points for the other team as a last ditch strategy.
well, someone tries that early in The Conjuring 18 (or whatever) and immediately it turns out to be a very bad idea that really kicks the story and all the tragedy that follows. So I gotta give it respect for that one bit.
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That is an interesting point. Ironically, though, what fiction did was what it always does ā lie about stuff!
The novelty of unfamiliar places was used to basically sell absolute fabrications about āDarkest Africaā or the āAmerican Frontier.ā Even calling it the āfrontierā is a bit idiotic because it was just home for the people whoād been there living their lives forever. Like saying that Captain Cook discovered Australia. He bumped into it ā ā the people living there had never been lost.
Well, not just fiction. I just listened to a podcast about famed explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley, and all he ever wrote about his journeys were lies. Those fictions were created by white people stumnbling around Africa and not understanding a single thing they saw and just shooting people and fabricating fantasies of what they were doing, and then in turn the fictions stoked the fires of imperialism.
So, does that mean that the real antagonist is God in all these stories? The demon or devil literally cannot defy Godās will. So, logically, whatever is happening is what God wants.
This is basically how Mephistopheles introduces himself in Goethe’s “Faust”.
FAUST: So, therefore, who are you?
MEPHISTOPHELES: A party to that power that always wills the Evil, and always creates the Good.FAUST: What do you mean by this enigma?
MEPHISTOPHELES: I am the spirit that always denies. I have the right to do so, since everything that comes into being deserves to be annihilated. Of course, it would have been much better, had nothing started in the first place. So therefore, everything that you call Sin, Destruction, Evil, is my proper element.
FAUST: You call yourself a part, and yet you stand before me whole?
MEPHISTOPHELES: I speak to you the humble truth. If humanity, this insignificant world of fools takes itself to be the whole well, I am a part of that part that in the beginning was the Whole. A part of the Darkness, Darkness that gave birth to Light. The proud Light that now competes with Mother Night, concerning her more ancient rank and place.
FAUST: Now I know your worthy duties. You cannot wreak destruction on any grand scale, so you focus on the insignificant.
MEPHISTOPHELES: Freely, I admit it, I have hardly done a thing. If you compare this idiotic world of “Somethingness” with that other world of “Nothingness!” I had not realized how nearly futile were my efforts! I sent tidal waves and storms and earthquakes, holocausts when all was done, the sea and land remained as quiet as before. And as for that accursed trash, that progeny of animals and men, there is absolutely nothing I can do with them! How many of them have I so far buried in the earth! Yet fresh new blood is always circulating! On and on it goes! I should be driven mad!
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Even Chinese movies and television promote this.
They do and we have to admit that if the stereotype isn’t negative many people quite like going with it.
Coming from a Celtic country we revel in the mystical past. You enter a gift shop and there’ll be some Clannad style moody music being played and myths and legends from a misty mystical land – played up to the max. Similarly far eastern mysticism is pretty cool and fun for stories.
In my pretty extensive experience of 18 years living in east Asia I’ve never really met anyone who gives a shit about any of this stuff. The response if any is pretty universally being quite pleased they are being featured rather than ignored.
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Well, not just fiction. I just listened to a podcast about famed explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley, and all he ever wrote about his journeys were lies. Those fictions were created by white people stumnbling around Africa and not understanding a single thing they saw and just shooting people and fabricating fantasies of what they were doing, and then in turn the fictions stoked the fires of imperialism.
Well, that’s disappointing. I read Stanley’s Through the Dark Continent a couple of years ago and took it all at face value.
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Ninjutsu is the best example. It really just means espionage with the term shinobi corresponding to operative. It’s too broad to be a specialized martial art like Juijutsu or Karate, and, honestly, I think the term and the modern viewpoint of it is really mostly a westernized invention rather than actually a Japanese tradition.
It’s similar to the way the term assassin originally referred to a specific group in the Medieval Muslim world where political murders disrupted the culture. Now, it’s universally used to mean political murders and killers with no relation to the original history. Ninja is about as Japanese as the California roll.
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Do you agree?
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Itās been said that the movie āEntourageā bombed because the audience changed and sort of outgrew the story of a film star, his buddies, and his agent in lavish Hollywood, the parties, the hooking up, Southern California lifestyle, etc. The timing was wrong.
Also, it never really felt like ENTOURAGE was big screen material. It’s the weird thing about moving television series to movies in that they still have to look like the series if it is a direct transfer. If it is the same cast, then everything has to look like it did on television.
However, if it is a complete adaptation of a series to film – like THE FUGITIVE – then it’s a different thing. Though, it was interesting that that movie obviously didn’t depend on a fanbase since most of the people who saw the movie weren’t even born when the original series ended.
It would be interesting to think how they might update M*A*S*H to Afghanistan or Iraq and it is fun to look at absolute train wrecks in adaptations of television series like THE AVENGERS and DRAGNET (which probably deserves a cult following just for the music video).
Again, though, there are no rules to making a successful movie, and I’m pretty sure the most successful filmmakers, writers, artists are often a little stunned when they are successful. You gotta feel like some kind of con man. Also, I wonder how Coppola and DePalma felt when people stopped going to see their movies. It’s not like they forgot how to make them.
However, there are a lot of rules about getting movies made. Everyone has some theory about what a movie needs and the people who want to get their movies made have to know what the people who pay the bills think they want even more than they have to care about what the audience wants. To do that, you at least have to be a salesman if not an outright con artist.
Some people get lucky, like Woody Allen or Werner Herzog in that they find people willing to pay them to make the movies they want.
Another interesting exception are the Marvel movies. You can almost guarantee that no matter how much they cost to make or how kinda low quality some of them can be, they will still be wildly profitable.
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Maybe I’m unusual in thinking Superman better than Superman 2?
I think when I was 15 or whatever, I liked 2 because there was a big fight, which is what Marvel comics had taught me to expect. But as I got older and read more classic Superman/boy comics, I realised that it’s not the fights that are important. The first movie says everything you need to say about Superman.
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It’s a common problem for successful comedians that use the material from their lives for their acts. When one of them gets insanely rich, the material starts to suffer except for a few who can still make it work like Kevin Hart.
The easy solution, of course, is to hire poor people to write your material – just don’t pay them too much.
Honestly, it isn’t necessarily the material that gives the comedian the advantage, but it’s their presentation. So most professionals can make anything funny whether they originate it or get it from someone else.
With Ellen though, it is weird because obviously she’s used and using (and abusing, apparently) writers – I imagine most successful comedians who aren’t Louis CK or Dave Chappelle are using some help if not an entire staff. It’s the smart thing to do. However, she still goes for comedy that doesn’t relate to the viewers.
Maybe her writers just aren’t poor enough.
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You know these action hero movies are getting sofa king repetitious with their tropes…
The quick reflexes
The quick thinking
The fight techniques
The slow moments of the film where there are these touching sentimental scenes, disclosing a touching moment in the past
The getting to the huge complex, finding out the master plan, fighting to get out, blowing up the complex, and escaping
The small scene at the ending that is a reminder of something seen at the beginning to show the movie went full circle
The post credit sceneWhat else?
I saw this recent movie and as I was watching the scenes, I said “This was done before in xxxx, Saw this in xxxx where it was done better etc…
The storytelling comes from one playbook (or film school). If we can get there we can…
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The quick reflexes
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But maybe the GOT in space already happened in B5.
There’s so many you could look to – Batttlestar, Farscape, Stargate, Expanse, Killjoys – the bigger question is what does mean to say anything is GOT-like?
SF is always using the future as a window into the present though.
Oh yeah.Ā I’m currently catching up on around 15 years worth of development in SF, but reading something really recent like the Embers of War trilogy really shows this up.Ā It’s really noticeable when you reads something that is clearly written either pre-Internet or mobiles taking off.
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what does mean to say anything is GOT-like?
Well GoT was a huge epic and very dramatic. B5 attempted in it’s ambition to be epic and dramatic with its stories on different planets, advanced energy beings, intrigue, politics.
Very much underrated, imho.
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I’d see it more specific to be GOT-like. Lord of the Rings is epic and very dramatic and so is Star Wars.
GOT’s essential elements are in its direct and intentional contrast to Lord of the Rings. First, the top contrast is the introduction of open and complex sexuality in the motivations of the characters. Second, complex motivations in the characters including very selfish desires and no apparent or dependable moral code even for characters that try to follow one. If any character adheres to a moral code, they will suffer for it and often suffer in vain. Third, a political reality that mirrors the same contradictory and complex motivations of the characters. Even if there is a single, apocalyptic threat like a Sauron level villain and a demon army, it will not be the primary antagonist in the story. Fourth, serious depictions of violence and their consequences with few characters escaping either being maimed or killed or being the ones who maim, kill and torture others with questionable justification.
Babylon 5 is a good example, but more like GOT-lite as, naturally, it could not really depict the levels of sexuality, amorality and violence. The Expanse is a bit more like GOT in Space in that sense. It takes the mainstream idea of science fiction and applies mature experience to it.
However, that’s not new for science fiction and though Babylon 5 might be the GOT to a Star Trek sort of story, Deep Space 9 sorta was exactly that. I don’t think we’ve gotten the sort of GOT approach to something like Star Wars in film or television, though I think a few novels – especially THE CULTURE series or HYPERION & ENDYMION – come close.
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Back when IFC and the Sundance Channel actually played indie movies, I watched a bunch. A lot of those would have truly benefited from some āstudio interferenceā. There would been tightening up editing, dialogue, etc. that would have made a lot of mediocre movies far more watchable and enjoyable.
This is where the practical realities of the business come in as well. When people talk about studio interference, that really only applies to films they greenlight and produce. And television shows they pick up and send to series. The television landscape is interesting as well with shows cancelled on a network moving to streaming platforms or popular series getting cancelled from one streaming platform because the studio doesn’t want them competing with their own new platform.
Film festivals are good for promotion, but there are only a few actual film markets where you can really sell your independent film and increasingly that is not at Sundance. AFM in Santa Monica is the big one that no one really pays attention to except people active in the industry. For indy films, naturally they are outside the studio production system (and calling it a system really implies more solidity than it deserves), so the filmmakers are actually there selling their mostly completed projects. There is not a lot the buyers can do to change that product except – like Weinstein was famous for – completely reediting it. If there is interference during production, it will be from the backers or a studio surrogate like Miramax, but the entire point of the independent movie is that it takes very little resources and used to have a very lucrative market.
That’s just not true anymore. Independent filmmakers likely will sell their films at a loss and the people distributing those films (more on television than in the theaters) will make money from buying a lot of cheap movies for much less than they cost (or are really worth) to fill the demand for content in streaming and wouldn’t even think of spending more money to make them better.
It is really hard to make any money from movies anymore, and you can see it in the generally poor quality of storytelling as just reaching the editing room with a movie that can be cut together is an accomplishment. We can criticize movie stories, but a part of that should also be considering how much would it have cost to change it.
However, more filmmakers are getting used to the new reality. Jim Cummings (The Wolf of Snow Hollow) talks about this a lot in interviews and podcasts. The way Tarantino and P. T. Anderson made indies in the 90’s is absolutely not the way they’re made today, but everyone even in film school still has that model in mind.
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EYES WIDE SHUT may be a good example, but hard to say really. That wasnāt studio interference as much as Kubrick leaving the planet. So who can say what would have been improved.
Eyes Wide Shut is a weird one for me. The main problem with it is it’s a crap story.
The performances, the direction, the music etc are as good as anything else from Kubrick but the glaring problem is it ends and you go ‘is that it?’.
So even though Kubrick went off into his own world and took 8 years to make it or whatever it was the real problem isn’t really over-indulgence but a bad story to adapt.
Maybe the studio could have stepped in and said – let’s skip this and make AI.
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So even though Kubrick went off into his own world and took 8 years to make it or whatever it was the real problem isnāt really over-indulgence but a bad story to adapt.
It really is. Not because the story is bad – the novelette is pretty great. But the point of the novel is that it all happens inside the character’s head; Schnitzler is quite similar to Joyce in the ways he examined how you could depict how consciousness and perception work in writing. That’s a difficult thing to adapt into a movie. But Kubrick also didn’t even try to adapt that aspect of it; in the movie we’re just outside watching Tom Cruise walk around. Which is just fucking boring.
I don’t know what Kubrick was looking for in his adaptation of the Traumnovelle, but he didn’t find it.1 user thanked author for this post.
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the bigger question is what does mean to say anything is GOT-like?
It means nudity, sex, and graphic violence.
Honestly, apart from that, what actually sets GoT apart from any other generic post-LOTR fantasy saga?
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However, it also is necessary for space travel and the mental powers that allow the galaxy to remove the reliance on computers. It’s only a source of tyranny after Paul takes over. Before then, it was managed by political alliances, so it was the source for peace and stability because since everyone needed it, and only a madman would go to war over it – like Paul.
The emperor’s power is balanced by the Spacing Guild – in fact, the Emperor is pushed all over the place in Dune. He’s hardly a supreme leader and is constantly driven to take action rather than leading anything. Paul’s actions in relation to the spice are set up by its existence and importance, but it is primarily a neutral resource.
Also, addictive substances aren’t necessarily bad in themselves. Spice isn’t out there killing people like the opioid epidemic – instead it gives them superpowers and extends their lives by decades.
Again, it might be better off if there was no spice, but the way spice is used ends up determining fortunate or disastrous outcomes. Not the use of spice in itself. It isn’t a malevolent force, but it does set the stage for the dramatic conflict. Especially the problem with precognition that Leto II contends with.
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It really is. Not because the story is bad ā the novelette is pretty great. But the point of the novel is that it all happens inside the characterās head; Schnitzler is quite similar to Joyce in the ways he examined how you could depict how consciousness and perception work in writing. Thatās a difficult thing to adapt into a movie. But Kubrick also didnāt even try to adapt that aspect of it; in the movie weāre just outside watching Tom Cruise walk around. Which is just fucking boring. I donāt know what Kubrick was looking for in his adaptation of the Traumnovelle, but he didnāt find it.
The screenwriter Fred Raphael wrote a book about it EYES WIDE OPEN that reveals a lot of how it came about. Since he’s Kubrick’s age and has already been a big success in film and literature, his portrayal of Kubrick is more realistic and pretty funny. His essential problem was that Kubrick didn’t think the relationships in modern day New York were significantly different than those in Vienna almost a 100 years before. So, the movie felt a little weird – like when they do a Shakespeare play and set it in a modern setting but keep all the dialogue exactly the same. Only everyone knows Shakespeare, but Raphael had to guess that Schnitlzer was the author. Kubrick didn’t want to tell him.
Also, Raphael quickly debunks the idea that the orgies were based on real things Kubrick had experienced with the elite of film and politics. He asked Raphael to come up with some background for it, so the writer spent about an hour putting together a fictional FBI dossier on this group of Kennedy fans among the wealthy and famous who started a kind of sex club based on the Kennedy’s supposed sexual exploits. When Kubrick read it, he thought it was real and Raphael had to tell him he just made it all up. Kubrick didn’t seem to understand that writers can make things up. They don’t need some actual real events to base anything on.
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Honestly, apart from that, what actually sets GoT apart from any other generic post-LOTR fantasy saga?
A really big budget.
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It means nudity, sex, and graphic violence.
Wait, are you talking about Game of Thrones, or Eyes Wide Shut? Because, y’know…
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Honestly, apart from that, what actually sets GoT apart from any other generic post-LOTR fantasy saga?
Like Anders said, a huge budget… but also: a MASSIVE cast, and therefore a very intricate plot focused on personal relations.
However, it also is necessary for space travel and the mental powers that allow the galaxy to remove the reliance on computers. Itās only a source of tyranny after Paul takes over. Before then, it was managed by political alliances, so it was the source for peace and stability because since everyone needed it, and only a madman would go to war over it ā like Paul.
Not quite… Mentats don’t use spice (they use sapho juice, sometimes, another highly addictive drug, but not spice based). The Bene Gesserit do. And yes the Navigators use it but only to fold space (and to continue living obviously), and they only need it in a “mentat” capacity, which is to say they only calculate the travel plan… the “space travel” itself is done by machines… the spacing guild ceases to exist after Emperor becuase humans start using navigational computers once more.
That said, like you pointed out, the Tyranny rule comes from the spacing guild, pre-Paul… and there might’ve been a false sense of peace and stability, but that’s not really true, hence the plot of the book.
Spice isnāt out there killing people like the opioid epidemic ā instead it gives them superpowers and extends their lives by decades.
Uhm… not exactly, yes it extends life, but not everyone gains super powers from of it, that’s just for a very few people who’ve been genetically engineered… and secondly, and most importantly for this discussion: people who stop consuming it die, no buts no ifs. That’s what makes it the most valuable commodity in the universe, and that’s why the spacing guild and the bene gesserit are the puppet masters in the pre-Paul era… they both (specially the navigators) need large quantities to survive and in turn everyone needs them too, specially the navigators… but not because they’re really necessary, becasue they made themselves necessary.
Interesting about the Sapho juice. That is complicated to have two addictive substances that give people special abilities.
However, at the same time, how is any of that different from electricity or petroleum or even the lithium and silicon that make computers in our world? It’s a natural resource that supports technology. The resources are not in themselves evil or bad nor would anyone seriously make the argument that we shouldn’t have used them even though a lot of people might die or be hurt because of the systems people put in place and what they do to ensure their supply.
You point out that in the far future of Dune, people are again using computers to travel in space, but we also know what happened with computers in the distant past of Dune as well. Whether it is a reliance on spice or on technology, humanity will always be contending with some form of dependency to sustain its civilization. Good and evil comes in when people start using it. Frank Herbert’s solution to the dependency on spice though is not convincing. You wouldn’t really apply his destructive “cold turkey” approach to anything, and it only works dramatically because he controls the narrative.
To compare it to the Force, you could say the same thing, in that the Force itself is at the heart of all the problems the galaxy faces and its use generally leads to the greatest wars we see in the story. However, the solution isn’t to kill the Force or stop using it, but Luke learns at the end of Jedi to stop fighting it. The Jedi council thought they could fight the Dark Side and it just made it stronger. As soon as Luke stops fighting it, the users of the Dark side, the Emperor and Vader end up destroying themselves. The same forces that bring the sunshine and rain that sustains life also bring storms and drought.
That doesn’t mean that the resource is in itself the source of evil or misfortune. Ironically, the ecology of the spice seems to almost intentionally NOT want humans to use it.
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