Talk about the art of storytelling here.
Storytelling: the neverending story
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In this case, though, the narratives of the detectives involved with Blake murder and then Nite Owl case, the right wing newsrag team, the lesbian couple, the psychiatrist and the newsstand duo actually have a lot of character development, strong dialogue and the climax to all their stories is paid off when they all come together in the end. It turns out that their relationship to the heroes is not what makes them important to the story, but their relationship to a final event where they all go to help. And then are eradicated as part of a supervillain’s plot that is completely indifferent to their lives.
You can understand Veidt from his point of view, but we have a much larger perspective since we see the story from every point of view.
Veidt is obviously evil and we don’t really know if his plot even works. It is so bonkers, that it seems doomed to fall apart.
The more difficult question is did Rorschach make the right moral choice sticking to his principles? Are Dan and Laurie making the wrong choice working with Veidt?
I mean, at the end, it seems like they are essentially going to do for Adrian what the Comedian was doing for the US government. Honestly, that was a disappointment for the HBO Watchmen series. It really focused on the more superficial elements or appeal of the story without actually considering the various implications of that ending and the situation people were in. The first few years after the Manhattan incident would be the most interesting part of that story. Not 30 years along. Might as well just do something original at that point – not anything to do with THE WATCHMEN.
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Comics have taken on social issues in it’s own setting.
We have this famous panel from the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series from the early 70s
Then we have these panels from Secret Wars 2:
Wolverine has it in him to make a point to Cap.
Thoughts? Opinions?
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Comics have taken on social issues in it’s own setting.
We have this famous panel from the Green Lantern/Green Arrow series from the early 70s
As I recall, Denny O’Neill and Neal Adams took on a different “social issue” each month during their short-lived run on that series — overpopulation, pollution, drugs, and so on. As a kid reading those books, I thought it was cool and relevant; as an adult, I realize the stories were heavy-handed and pointed out these problems without offering any solutions or true insights. Oh well, it was the ’70s, after all…
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I read those stories for the first time recently and also thought they were heavy-handed.
But for the time and the audience they were probably the right thing to do – acknowledging the problem is the first step on the path to a solution, and Denny O’Neill deserves credit for trying to raise awareness in his readers.
I think it’s a shame that the O’Neill/Adams GA drugs story (October/November 1971) gets all the plaudits, and nobody mentions the Lee/Romita Spidey drugs story which came first (May-July 1971).
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However, that was true of the Golden Age heroes as well. Superman was constantly doing pro-worker, pro-union, anti-bank and anti-government comic strips when it started. Wonder Woman was created literally to promote a pro-feminist, free love philosophy. Politics and propaganda were certainly big in comics when they started fighting Germans and Japanese in WW2.
Personally, the overt and direct approach with a comic book simply having its heroes outright support some real-world position is less effective than simply weaving it into the story with metaphor and subtext.
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One problem with that Green Lantern panel is to really help black people, Hal would have to dimantle what is known nowadays as the Patriarchy, the white male power structure, practically undo the effects of centuries of colonialism, slavery and segregation, and empower all people of color. Such an epic social overhaul would take decades and involve a lot more than a magic power ring.
In Black Panther, the villain Killmonger meant to spread the Wakandan tech to empower black people worldwide. His idea was broader in scope. True, he was a killer, but his view of black empowerment through militant politics actually resonated with some black moviegoers.
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We could also get into social situations like if Reed Richards is so great, why doesn’t he use his advanced tech and IQ to get to viruses etc. and even cure cancers by examining the cancer cells?Or how about Superman and the JLA doing the same even starting a utopia on Earth. (The Authority tried to take over once IIRC
Alan Moore had Miracleman and his allies do away with the nukes and they started a utopia.)When you ask for all this in the fantasy comic setting, you can see the paradoxes and why those things don’t make sense.
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One problem with that Green Lantern panel is to really help black people, Hal would have to dimantle what is known nowadays as the Patriarchy, the white male power structure, practically undo the effects of centuries of colonialism, slavery and segregation, and empower all people of color. Such an epic social overhaul would take decades and involve a lot more than a magic power ring.
This actually relates to Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison and Mark Millar when they approached JLA and The Authority pretty much around the same time. Rather than trying to take a realistic approach to superheroes, they took a comic book approach to real problems.
In other words, instead of asking the MAN OF STEEL or SUPREME POWER or even MIRACLEMAN and WATCHMEN type of question -“what if superheroes existed in the real world” they asked “what if real world problems existed in a comic book superhero world?”
So, instead of having the heroes behave realistically, they recast real world problems as essentially comic book supervillain plots. Instead of dealing with a realistic portrayal of the military-industrial complex, the Authority faced a version of Jack Kirby creating superweapons for an American Ideal that had been worn down and degraded. Instead of fighting religion, Ellis had them face a completely alien god where the idea of the horrors of theology and the insupportable weight of an ancient apocalyptic tradition on the modern era was transformed into a comic book creation the heroes could actually fight.
We got this in Claremont’s NEW X-MEN, Wolfman’s TEEN TITANS, Gerber’s MAN-THING and HOWARD THE DUCK. The “trick” wasn’t taking a realistic approach to the characters, but introducing relevant modern problems in a format consistent with the work itself. SWAMP THING under Alan Moore did much of the same and certainly inspired similar approaches in Gaiman’s The Sandman where the work is a part of the times – crucial to the times, even – but is not overtly separating itself and commenting on anything in a definite way.
And in the work inspired by this period of comics – like Joss Whedon’s – it became a simple rule that behind the villain in the pulp fiction, there was a real problem. It’s important to the imagination that it be allowed to unconsciously find connections between the struggle in the story and the individual audience member’s or reader’s personal struggles. The important part of that is “unconsciously” – if the message is overt, the story too obviously making a statement – then it won’t reach the imagination.
In comic books, any problem can be solved with a punch from a hero. So, to remain true to the narrative, that means that any problem from the real world would have to be something the heroes can punch. To suddenly shift gears and betray that approach would be to break the pact with the audience.
Unless… as with Alan Moore and Frank Miller, etcetera, breaking that pact is the new pact fans made with those writers and artists.
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When you ask for all this in the fantasy comic setting, you can see the paradoxes and why those things don’t make sense.
Over at Image Comics, Erik Larsen’s SAVAGE DRAGON isn’t afraid to take on social issues. The most recent issue had the title character Malcolm arguing with one of his friends over her decision not to get the COVID vaccine. Larsen has never been afraid to put his preferred presidential candidates on the cover, and during the Trump administration the storyline had The Donald throwing all illegal aliens out of the country — including Malcolm, whose father was an alien from another planet.
This kind of content works for SAVAGE DRAGON because the book is written in “real time” — the July 2021 issue takes place in July 2021, and the August issue takes place in August, etc — whereas all Marvel and DC books are written so as not to be locked down to a specific time, with rare exceptions, so that they don’t have to address the fact that Peter Parker, who was a high school student when the character debuted in 1962, does not look or act like a 76-year-old in 2022.
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What other ideas do you have?
There’s also the other camp that thinks you shouldn’t cut out any part of the story. To this day there are still those fans of the LORD OF THE RINGS books who still complain that Peter Jackson cut the character Tom Bombadil out of the films completely, as though somehow his absence has significantly reduced the quality of Jackson’s adaptation. Similarly there are people who are dissatisfied with Francis Ford Coppola’s version of THE GODFATHER because he eliminated all reference to the plastic surgeon who (in Mario Puzo’s novel) fixed Michael’s face and who ended up in a relationship with the bridesmaid who Sonny boffed upstairs during Connie’s wedding celebration.
Meanwhile, people who never read LOTR or the GODFATHER books enjoyed the respective films with no idea of what was missing. Who’s to say who is right? And who is to say whether eliminating characters or plotlines from THE ETERNALS would improve the film or would take away a critical part that tied the film together? Certainly not a bunch of fanboys who think they know better than the professionals.
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I see what you are saying but truth is LOTR was a success and the Godfather was… Well, you know…
I refer to movies and shows that were not and still aren’t received well
They clearly missed the mark.
Since you mentioned the Godfather, as for the third movie, I feel they should have dropped the whole Vatican story, did more with Sonny’s illegitimate son by the bridesmaid, never should have casted Sophia, and rewrite it to display old Michael with one last master plan as his legacy.
Also:
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Well, there are some movies that did not really live up the high part of their High Concept.
First, obviously, PROMETHEUS. What is its essential concept? Simple and has potential –
“Ancient Aliens was right! Life on Earth and human civilization were created by extraterrestrial gods and they left us with a map to their homeworld. However, when we get there, we find out that they are preparing to wipe out all life on Earth.”
That is a fairly good idea for a movie… only it’s not really a movie for the ALIEN franchise. However, even with a big director, that is a challenge and Ridley Scott is not really a big director. He’s a respected director, but his name alone will not get massive movies made. PROMETHEUS only exists because it was a prequel to a prequel to the ALIEN franchise.
In the end, though, that completely compromised the central premise of the movie. None of the potential drama really could be explored because every answer to any dramatic question was always going to be “Aliens!”
Just like the Ancient Aliens show, in that regard.
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Now, a bit less controversially, MAN OF STEEL…
Honestly, there are two points to make here. First, MAN OF STEEL is in somewhat the same position as PROMETHEUS.
It has a simple high concept – “A young boy grows up with godlike abilities far beyond anything known on Earth, and as a young man, he discovers he is actually one of the last survivors of an alien race so advanced they might as well be mythological deities on Olympus. When other survivors of his lost world find him on Earth and decide to rebuild their civilization atop the ruins of the human world, he has to decide if he is even still human, and if there is any place on a human Earth for a Superman.”
That broadly sums up the “theme” of the story. The problem is that it is a SUPERMAN movie, and the final answer to every dramatic question in the story will be… “this is a job for Superman!”
Second, this does make you wonder about the actual value of a story’s form. Both PROMETHEUS and MAN OF STEEL were successful enough to have a lot of fans. They also were exactly what the filmmakers wanted. Personally, I don’t think Ridley Scott could have made a better movie than Prometheus or Zack Snyder could have made a better movie than Man Of Steel even if they had the same budgets only these were completely original rather than parts of an ALIEN or SUPERMAN franchise respectively. (However, I do think other people could have made better movies that were completely original and with half the budgets.)
Honestly, what people aren’t looking for are “stories.” It’s like saying you got a car because it was red or has a sunroof or any number of reasons. When it comes down to it, you got the car because you need to go places you cannot walk to. In the end, it is just a method for delivering your ass all over town for the most part.
Stories are method or delivery vehicle as well for entertainment which just means pretty much whatever. The story attempts to deliver this enjoyment, but that is not intrinsically what it is. So the form of a story or even the skill in any aspect of filmmaking from the script to the color correction is not really what people are willing to pay for when they go see it. It’s really to do more with what the audience brings to the work that can determine if it works.
Would the LOTR movies had been a hit if 9/11 never happened? Would we even have a trilogy and what would superhero movies be like if we never went to war in Iraq? The success of movie meant for a worldwide audience often depends more on what people are going through at the time – stuff that can never be successfully captured in a focus group – than the talent or craft demonstrated in the movie. Even then, people want more production value than tighter stories as well.
However, that has always been true of popular media. It’s when the artform starts to ossify into “high art” that concerns over form and formula start to get codified among aficionados or cinephiles. Like the way opera has moved a long way from the popular form it had a century or so ago. There was a story about the making of Rio Bravo where John Wayne wasn’t happy with a take and asked director Howard Hawkes to shoot it again. Hawkes refused, and he told Wayne, “Listen, you just need four good scenes and I need six total and the movie is gonna be a hit.”
It’s the payoff that people pay for, and if they are worrying about the story, then they aren’t getting that payoff.
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In that sense, Siegel and Shuster also wrote Man Of Steel.
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Lol that last paragraph…
True, but that’s part of the problem with the way the premise conflicts with the property. The premise is undermined by the fact that it still has to adhere to a Superman story. I think they wrote the best screenplay and made the best movie that could be made with such divergent basic principles.
Well I don’t see the issue you’re seeing, they wrote a Superman origin story… the premise fits fine with a Superman story… I’m not seeing the divergence or the conflict here, so yeah, I’m not sure what you mean on this one
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I know you’re incapable of critical thinking and admitting to being wrong, but I’m not really speaking to you. I’m speaking to everyone else.
I said “they wrote it”, not that they wrote the screenplay together or anything specific, it was a general statement… and Nolan IS credited as a writer in the movie. I know you’re incapable of seeing past your pettiness so kindly fuck off.
I wouldn’t expect you to.
Okay, but I still don’t see the merit of your argument… on either case, btw, because it’s the same with Prometheus, first of all Scott is one of the biggest directors and I’m sure his name alone is enough, but then you say it only exists because it’s a prequel to Alien… and yes, that is true, because that’s what it was conceived as, so what is the problem there? Why couldn’t the answer be “because aliens”? What’s worng with that in a prequel to the Alien franchise?
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Once upon a time, there were movies with this kind of story:
At the beginning of the movie, there is a hero. The hero is already experienced and competent. Then something happens, that is not personally connected to the hero, and the hero needs to act. The hero experiences an adventure with action and drama. At the end, the hero saves the day, everything is resolved, and the hero is still the same person as he or she was at the start of the movie.
It is a straight adventure story where there is no character arc for the hero, the hero doesn’t learn anything and isn’t changed in any way. The problems the hero has to handle is not personally connected to him or her and could probably have been handled by some other hero if another hero had been available.
This was perfectly fine for a long time. The most obvious example is any James Bond movie before Casino Royale. Then all script writers read the same manual for how to create drama, and decided that the hero needs to change, to hava e character arc and that the story gets more dramatic if the conflict is personal for the hero. The problem with this is that it gets harder to tell several stories with the same hero. The hero can only change and learn so many times before it gets repetetiva and silly. So nowadays a hero is good for a trilogy, and then he or she has changed enough and there are no more stories to tell. This is a strange approach when movies are not sold on the strength of an actor or a director, but on the strength of a character. It would seem to be a good idea to change that character as little as possible, to be able to make more movies, but apparently not.
I miss the simple adventure movies with iconic heroes.
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A good deal of those sorts of adventure stories in the modern culture were influenced by serials – radio dramas, pulp magazines, matinee movies, television series, comic strips and comic books. James Bond actually goes through a lot of change in his individual stories, but he seems to be unchanged in the beginning of each one – except for the recent Daniel Craig series, of course.
However, in Medieval Europe, these sorts of stories were also very popular in the form of the Chivalric Romance. Stories of King Arthur, Julius Caesar, Charlemange and various knights and nobles related to them. So popular in fact that Cervantes wrote DON QUIXOTE as a satire, parody and spoof of the Chivalric Romance.
Like up above, I mentioned there are two fairly popular types of heroes at the top of the list today – one is the wandering hero like the Lone Ranger, The Equalizer, or even Batman and Spider-Man even though they rarely leave their cities (though Marvel’s Spider-Man does get around in the movies lately – even into space and other dimensions). This was the standard in 20th century television where the series were based on situations and premises. Especially the Western shows like Maverick, Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke and the Rifleman. Whether the heroes went from town to town or was the sheriff in one town, the set up and situation remained fairly much the same in every episode.
The big innovation, I think, came in the 80’s when guys like Chris Claremont and Marv Wolfman started writing comics “like soap operas with superpowers” as Grant Morrison puts it. We also got shows like Hill Street Blues and ER where they had a similar premise each episode but the dynamics of the situation developed so you couldn’t really watch any episode in any order. You had to know what happened in previous episodes just like you couldn’t read a lot of the comics in the same period in just any order. Obviously, that sort of story sucks for syndication but it did catch on. Though it important to note that the demands of series at the time – the need to do reruns, fillers and to package a series for syndication had a definite effect on the stories. The fact that writers had to finish a script for a weekly series with a limited number of available sets, locations, props, cast members, etcetera all enforced a necessity for repeatability — like with any product, the demands of production determine the form of the product. However, in the 21st century, the limitations of production and the capabilities of the creative talents and the audience’s tastes and ways of receiving media all changed significantly.
It’s like the difference between a show like STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION and the reboot of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Or even the first season of the Battlestar Galactica reboot and then later series. In the first season of BSG, each episode was fairly self-contained, but by the second, the dynamics between the characters had developed that we were getting longer connected story arcs over several episodes. There is actually a lot more difference between ST:TNG and BSG than there is between TNG and the original Star Trek series, but even in the later episodes of TNG, the dynamics between cast members had changed considerably — however, often because cast members left or were replaced or added to the show more than a change in the writing approach.
The interesting thing is that people didn’t really notice or care about the differences. Production values were a far more distinct and influential change as better filmmaking tech and effects led to a lot of differences in the way shows look and are produced. You’re far more likely to notice the difference between the editing, production design, effects and acting styles in a show from the 60’s or 70’s compared to one from the 80’s or 90’s or today than you’d notice a difference in the storytelling approach.
However, in general, there is a big question whether characters actually can “change” in a story. There is an idea that characters are revealed by their stories rather than changed by them. Circumstances change and the character responds to them, but the essential nature of the character remains throughout the story until the end.
This kinda corresponds to the various essentialist metaphysical philosophies and theologies that propose some sort of essential nature for our personalities. The idea that we have a soul or atman or definite metaphysically atomic essence. Which makes sense as fiction is essentially a model for that view of the universe. There is a creator (supreme being) or creative team (pantheon) that brings this world and its people into existence, puts them through all sorts of struggles and then reveals the characters’ moral qualities and consequences in the outcome (Judgment Day).
This is why I’m not really a fan of apologist stories that attempt to argue for the idea of some sort of divine providence or universal moral belief as, of course, the fictional world has a creator – its author – and everything in it is written, or shot, or drawn, with a purpose and the characters all are designed to promote that perspective. Real life isn’t a story.
However, plenty of absurdist, nihilist and existential literature and narratives in media as well and has had a lot of influence on theater and naturally movies and television as well. However, in a novel like Camus The Stranger or a play like Waiting For Godot or even in post-modern novels like those by Martin Amis, Kurt Vonnegut or Chuck Palahniuk, the main characters still don’t change their natures even though their circumstances might change drastically (like FIGHT CLUB, for example). In fact, in post-modern, absurd or existentialist fiction, the whole point seems to be that characters don’t change in spite of the drastic changes in their circumstances — possibly because there is no such thing as character. Or to show that adherence to one’s character is as futile as expecting divine intervention.
Speaking of Vonnegut, he always explains everything best:
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As for comics, Grant Morrison has some good ideas, but he blows up cities and stabs too many characters through the chest from the back.
I’m surprised Morrison found the time to do this between writing so many comics.
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Snyder did a few Joker/ Batman team up type stories. He developed this whole symbiotic relationship between the two of them. “Death of the Family” and “Endgame” were the first two parts before Last Knight on Earth kind of finished the thematic trilogy.
They also famously teamed up against The Batman Who Laughs in Dark Nights: Metal.
The first story arc of All Star Batman had Batman and Two Face on an apocalyptic road trip across America, trying to escape from a host of bad guys. That was quite a fun story, with great JRJR artwork, but not really a team up. Bats was trying to deliver Two Face somewhere and the bad guys were trying to stop that happening.
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That is a good approach for a story – the “enemy of my enemy is my ally” where the protagonist and deuteragonist also have a naturally antagonistic relationship but must come together against a shared opposition. It keeps an obvious question in the reader’s mind – what happens between these two when they overcome that shared opponent? – and also leaves open the possibility that one might abandon the other if the opportunity arises.
Abrams used it in the first new Star Trek movie as well casting Spock and Kirk as rivals rather than friends in the first half of the film.
That is one of the most obvious challenges for writers and story structure, though. There is a tendency to linger – to say everything you want – which is not necessarily impossible in a novel, but in nearly every other narrative, it really is necessary to “move the story along” and that means develop the conflict. The most relevant definition of a story is that it is a series of events in specific times and places that happen to a specific person that faces opposition to a clear goal and at the end of the story, they either achieve or fail to achieve that goal.
It’s the opposition that matters the most in that. If I told you that my dog was sick last week and I ran out of medicine, called my regular vet around the corner and then went and picked up the medicine came home and gave it to my dog, it has:
1. a series of events
2. in a specific time and place
3. it happened to a specific person
4. who had a specific goal
BUT… there was no opposition. I did not face any reversals, obstacles or opposing turns of events. So it is not really a story.
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Or the antagonist overcomes the protagonist.
Looking at the classic works where the idea of a story originally developed, there are very few where the protagonist doesn’t meet a downfall. In Oedipus, there isn’t really an antagonist other than some unexplained curse on the city of Thebes. Oedipus seeks out the person responsible for the curse, and it turns out that he’s the unwittingly guilty person.
In the Iliad, it is primarily a conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon, but the battle is between the Achaeans and the Trojans and the climax is the battle between Achilles and Hector. Unlike the movie TROY, in the Iliad Hector loses his nerve, runs away from Achilles and is quickly killed when they do fight. Most of the events are determined more by the will of the gods than by the characters – in fact, very little actually happens without divine interference or influence.
It begins in the war and ends in the war with no resolution to that conflict or really any resolution between the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles. Like in the Odyssey, there is conflict in every scene, but no unified opposition. Odysseus has an overarching goal – he wants to go home, but he doesn’t seem that dedicated to it as he’s always stopping here and there and having various other adventures. Again, who is his antagonist? It seems like he is his own worst enemy.
Achilles wants to achieve glory in war, but he’s already pretty much done that many times over before the story of the Iliad even begins. Nevertheless, he gets involved in a petty squabble with his commander that ends up getting his best friend killed and then goes into battle to get revenge. Then he behaves so dishonorably that it even pisses off Zeus. Again, it is like Achilles is really in conflict with himself. At the end of their respective stories, have they achieved anything? Has anything substantial changed?
You can say the same for Shakespeare’s tragedies as well like Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, Richard III. They are contending against themselves and the drama reveals their character in their struggles, but they do not change. The only thing that changes is that their kingdoms are better off after their downfalls. Same for comedies from Aristophanes to Moliere to Wilde. The characters are often contending with conflicts they created for themselves – not those imposed upon them from an external antagonist.
This is why I find the idea of an “anti-hero” to be a little strange in that it depends on an ideal of a hero that really is only seen in modern times. Essentially, heroes were rarely designed to be “good” people until fairly recently. They were simply characters that performed great, terrible or epically ridiculous, deeds from regicide to patricide to incest, mass adultery and even to deicide.
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Another way to look at story structure is Dan Harmon’s Story Circle.
Let’s take another look at how the episode’s “A” story — which centers on Morty’s journey — fits into the story circle.
1. A character is in a zone of comfort
The first beat of the story sees Rick and Morty on what seems like just another one of their adventures. “Morty exists in comfort until he finds out that Rick is an arms dealer,” which leads to…2. But they want something
As Harmon points out, “This is an ethical quandary for Morty.” The boy is put in a situation of guilt that compels him to “go across a threshold and search for a way to undo the ethical damage that he perceives Rick as doing.” That takes us to the next stage.3. They enter an unfamiliar situation
Even though he rarely defies his grandfather’s instructions, Morty takes Rick’s car keys and chases after the assassin, accidentally killing him.4. Adapt to it
Morty discovers an alien gas entity named ‘Fart’ — who was the assassin’s target. Going against Rick’s instructions once more (and making what he believes to be the ethical choice), Morty liberates Fart from space jail.5. Get what they wanted
Morty has achieved his goal: he’s saved a life — and can now rest assured that he’s done the right thing.6. Pay a heavy price for it
“In the second half of the story, we start finding out that the act of saving that life is going to cost a lot of other people their lives,” Harmon explains, as we see Fart slaughter many space cops while Rick and Morty make their escape.7. Then return to their familiar situation
After the escape, the gang returns to a place resembling ‘normal life,’ crossing what Harmon calls “the return threshold.” At this point, Morty realizes that Fart is a truly malevolent creature and means to return with his people to destroy all carbon-based life.Note: On the circle diagram, Step 7 is directly opposite to Step 3, where Morty crossed the threshold into the unfamiliar situation. Balance and harmony are a big part of storytelling.
8. Having changed
“So Morty makes the decision to change into someone who kills.” He terminates Fart, thereby saving the universe and becoming someone different from the person he started as. As Harmon points out, this is not a show for kids: not all protagonists need to learn universally positive messages for a story to ring true.Harmon has laid out his process for using the story circle in a fascinating set of posts (warning: contains swears) where he also talks about the nature of storytelling, answering questions like…
Why is this structure a circle?
You might be asking why Harmon doesn’t just lay this structure out in a flat line. He lightly touches on the rhythms of biology, psychology, and culture: how we all move cyclically through phases of life and death, conscious and unconscious, order and chaos.The fascinating thing he points out is that cycles like these are, in part, what have allowed humans to evolve.
“Behind (and beneath) your culture creating forebrain, there is an older, simpler monkey brain with a lot less to say and a much louder voice. One of the few things it’s telling you, over and over again, is that you need to go search, find, take and return with change. Why? Because that is how the human animal has kept from going extinct, it’s how human societies keep from collapsing and how you keep from walking into McDonald’s with a machine gun.”
“We need [to] search — We need [to] get fire, we need [to find a] good woman, we need [to] land [on the] moon — but most importantly, we need RETURN and we need CHANGE, because we are a community, and if our heroes just climbed beanstalks and never came down, we wouldn’t have survived our first ice age.”
What Harmon’s getting at is that stories are a basic, universal part of human culture because of their millennia-long history as both a teaching and a learning tool. This idea of questing, changing, and returning is not a hack concept concocted by lazy writers, but an ingrained part of our collective psyche. That’s why stories from one culture are able to resonate with people across the world.
In Harmon’s philosophy, when a book, film, show, or song doesn’t meet the criteria above, it’s not necessarily bad writing: it’s simply not a story.
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In Harmon’s philosophy, when a book, film, show, or song doesn’t meet the criteria above, it’s not necessarily bad writing: it’s simply not a story.
I love that story structure idea, but it does fall apart when it is not applied to an ongoing television series or comic book or serial of some kind.
I mean, what “familiar situation” does Luke Skywalker return to at the end of Star Wars? What “heavy price” does Indiana Jones pay at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark?
If we went by that for every story then a lot of works by Poe, Camus, Dostoevsky, London, Melville and any number of the best and most well-known plays and movies would either not be stories or would have to be twisted into knots to fit.
However, for continuing adventures, it certainly is a good model. You could apply it to Sherlock Holmes or Superman or The Fast and the Furious franchise, but it doesn’t apply to everything and has no bearing on a lot of great stories. Once a writer starts seeing everything in a single lens like that, it ends up limiting them to telling the same story every time which is similar to following a single philosophy for life.
Personally, I do wonder if Harmon would still promote that story structure ten years from now or if he’s really still committed to it today. It feels like something a writer comes up with when they first have success, but later discards when they discover people grow tired of their work. Essentially though, I think Harmon is leaving out some context in the limitation of his profession. He probably should add that “-it is simply not a story… that you can pitch to producers to get made.”
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Yes to both, BUT I’m more talking about the inherent unreliability of the “standard” story model.
Does Indy ever actually encounter an “unfamiliar” situation. We are introduced to him in the jungle risking his life hunting for some ancient artifact to steal from its sacred resting place. His “familiar situation” is what he’s doing all the time he’s hunting for the Ark. We barely get to see him as a professor at a college and really, that’s where he seems to be the most out of place and uncomfortable.
You could say that his “heavy price” was that after he retrieved the Ark, he was not allowed to study it. It was hidden away yet again for some future adventurer to “raid.” And he certainly hasn’t “changed” at the end of Raiders – though that is truer of the Temple of Doom. What was the heavy price that Luke paid? The Death of Ben – a person he barely knew actually – or the death of his aunt and uncle? Both take place way before he gets what he wants.
The thing is that heroes are paying heavy prices all the time in stories so you can always point to that – only often the price is paid before they get what they want. In UNFORGIVEN, Will Munny gets the money but loses Ned – but he doesn’t return to his familiar situation after that – he goes and kills Little Bill and all his deputies. Then he returns to his familiar situation, but we don’t really see that – it’s just an epilogue.
So, these elements are so vague you can find them if you look – and two people could find two completely different sets to fit that model from the same story. Some heroes do return to their familiar situations – some have changed like ROCKY and others haven’t like Indy or Roger Moore’s James Bond. Some don’t return to their familiar situation – like ROMEO & JULIET (or any number of tragedies). And many stories have all those elements but not in that order.
You could try to apply this model to John Carpenter’s THE THING or Kubrick’s THE SHINING or THE EXORCIST, but it really doesn’t fit those stories very well – or any story where the main character dies. But those are still certainly stories – and don’t even start looking at movies like RASHOMON or books like Camus’ THE STRANGER or a play like WAITING FOR GODOT.
At least Harmon writes stories for a living, like Blake Snyder did (SAVE THE CAT), opposed to McKee or Field who simply made a living selling a story structure plan, but the models are more about the way the person that came up with it sees stories than a universal perspective on stories.
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Maybe the story circle works for Raiders, but only if you apply it to the right character? No, I don’t mean the old “Is God the protagonist” debate, but maybe the character undergoing the story is Marian? Looked at like that, I think the story beats from the structure fit better than they do for Indy.
And this is generally true for episodic fiction, whether it be Colombo, Knight Rider, The Incredible Hulk … the character we think is the protagonist — the one we see every week — isn’t really the protagonist in those stories. He’s our window into the world, but the true protagonists are the weekly guest stars. They are the ones who face unaccustomed dilemma and peril, and ultimately have their situations changed. The recurring character is the guest star in their stories.
Indy would have been the star of a whole series of pulp novels in the ’30s, and in each of those novels he would walk in, fix somebody else’s problem, and walk out again unchanged. If we assume Raiders is just one novel in that series, it’s obvious that the actual protagonist of that novel is Marian.
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It also works for Belloq as well, he gets what he wants and pays a heavy price. He’s certainly changed at the end.
However, it is an interesting point in stories like superheroes where the story essentially makes the “deus ex machina” into the protagonist. With Superman, Batman, Sherlock Holmes, The Lone Ranger, etc., there often needs to be a separate group of characters that the hero rescues. The hero is often not directly invested or personally involved in the situation, but they are the means by which the “innocent” is saved from “evil.”
Like, at the end of the Oresteia (the only “complete” three-part tragedy surviving from Athenian drama), Apollo and Athena step in at the end to save the main character, Orestes, from the wrath of the Furies.
Quick summary, Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War with a young concubine Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of defeated Troy, and just steps back into the throne even though his Queen Clytemnestra had been ruling quite well with her lover. Also, she’s still grieving and angry because Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter to the gods so they could get the wind needed to sail to Troy.
So, she kills them. Personally, I’m on her side in this. However, her son Orestes – very Hamlet-like – at the urging of Apollo kills his mother and her lover. Now, it is not necessarily a big sin for a wife to kill her husband, but the Furies have a problem with children that shed their parent’s blood. They were born from the blood of Uranus when his son Cronus killed (or maybe just castrated) him. So, the Furies torment Orestes until he appeals to Athena who then sets up a trial and finds that he is not guilty as the murder of his mother was sanctioned by Apollo. Also, she then makes a rule that all disputes must henceforth be settled in court or she will unleash the Furies – now called the Eumenides – upon the person that takes the law into their own hands.
Now, if you took that story and made Apollo and Athena the protagonists, then you’d essentially have the basis for a superhero story.
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How I Met Your Mother and the failures of storytelling.
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Making a superhero near omnipotent is like putting your video game character in god mode with endless health, all power, nothing can hurt him. There is no challenge, no real adventure. In comics, it hurts the storytelling.
I think that’s a very simplistic and limited way of looking at it. Take someone like Dr Manhattan from Watchmen. He’s a godlike omnipotent being, and he’s one of the most complex and interesting characters in the book, because they explore that kind of character in an interesting and thought-provoking way.
If you have a powerful character like that, it’s about telling the right story with them. Yes it’s boring to put them up against an enemy they can beat by physically overwhelming them. But look at (say) what Morrison and Quitely did with an old-fashioned overpowered Superman in All-Star Superman. That book was one of the best Superman stories of all time, and he barely threw a punch.
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DC rebooted everybody at the time. COIE was a line-wide reset.
Stop attacking the fans Dave.
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Yes… but they rebooted to make Superman “weaker”.
For a while, he was less powerful. However, Superman’s power level from the MAN OF STEEL series steadily increased in ACTION and whenever they rebooted the character in the future, it didn’t take long for him to start ramping up like a character from Dragon Ball Z.
Also, in context, everyone was weaker and more vulnerable in the post-Crisis stories. As far as his power-level compared to the other characters, Superman was still far higher.
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It never occurred to them that the counterpart is really the analogue answer to the other character.
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You make a point and that is your right and your opinion. But you are also attacking all the fans that say “ This character is too powerful.” They don’t have a point?
Al, have you considered that you’re attacking all the fans that say “Omnipotent Superman is the best version of Superman”?
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I’ve read a lot of Silver-Age Superboy (Superman too, but I prefer Superboy), from the era when he could literally move planets around, see right across to the other side of the galaxy, and fly through the time barrier under his own power.
It’s honestly my favourite era of Superman.
When you have a character that powerful, it’s ridiculous to put him in a fist fight, because there is no credible threat for him. So the writers didn’t put him in fist fights. Which is great, because fights are ultimately boring: punch, punch, punch, and six pages later somebody falls down. Yawn.
Instead, the writers found ways to challenge him without a villain he could punch.
They gave him problems he had to think his way out of. Yes, a super-hero who has to think instead of punching. Wild, eh?
They gave him moral dilemmas that he couldn’t solve just by snapping a neck. Unbelievable, I know.
They gave him stories where he could be an inspirational role model to young boys (and girls) in ways that didn’t teach them to solve problems by punching things.
They gave him stories where sometimes he would fly somewhere just to see what was there. Who would have thought that peaceful exploration could be fun?
Absolutely fantastic stories. Clever, moral, inspirational, and full of wonder. These Silver-Age writers of the invulnerable Superman were some of the most creative writers comics have ever seen.
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The idea that superheroes – especially Batman and Superman – do not kill is also very much a Comics Code era idea. Same for the way Western heroes would shoot the guns out of villains’ hands rather than simply shoot them.
It is an exceptionally strange development for superheroes in that if you look at the mythic heroes that inspired them from Achilles to Pecos Bill. Killing was certainly what they did even in the stories for children. Not outright murder, but often in fair fights or in defense of self or others.
The depiction of homicide in fiction is an extremely interesting and varied topic. As mentioned earlier in the thread, Indiana Jones is basically a homicidal maniac set against the actual objective of the story. Remember, the G-men that recruit Jones, Jones himself, most of his friends and even the German commanders that want the Ark do NOT believe it will convey any supernatural advantage to its possessors. Only Belloq believes in it, and he is proven correct. So, in the end from his own perspective, Jones is just a thief murdering people for a valuable box of rocks.
And it is a blast to watch and root for him to mow them down.
Essentially, superheroes are a power fantasy and the power over life and death – and the righteousness in that power – is a big part of that fantasy. It’s a big reason a lot of us loved THE AUTHORITY. An overtly “punk” version of the Justice League.
Also, Al’s point though is a good one, but I think the point more is not that they wanted to make Superman weaker, but that there was a need to provide a believable possibility that Superman could be beaten. It was necessary to make Superman more apparently vulnerable, but at the same time everyone knew he would win in the end.
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The Joker is the prime example. He is a homicidal maniac. How many hundreds of people has joker killed over the years? At the minimum, he should been put in an ultra max prison, along with a bunch of others and Arkham Asylum bulldozed.
But really, no excuse Batman for not killing him holds up. As a matter of fact, Batman is indirectly complicit in the deaths of people Joker has killed. There is no benefit to society with Joker alive. He will cause death and destruction. As long as he is alive, people will die and Batman will have blood on his hands.
I understand that in comics, no character ever truly dies. Certain ones are considered the “best toys” in the metaphorical toy box, even though they really are worn out and overused. Everyone wants to play with them.
But in a slightly more realistic sense, Joker would have been dead long ago. Someone would have killed him. Batman looks ineffective and weak that he can truly stop him.
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True – however, all the people Joker killed were imaginary. He’s imaginary. He is no more guilty of murder than Batman would be if he killed the Joker.
But realistically, The Batman should certainly have killed the Joker in self-defense or in defense of others many times. That’s what he does in the movie BATMAN after all. Though somewhat second hand, he is going to kill the Joker at the climax of the film.
SUPERMAN is a little different as we are all about as dangerous as toy poodles to Superman so there is not going to be a situation where a human being poses any sort of mortal threat he can’t immediately deal with.
Honestly, that is how I would write Superman. He goes in, picks up people by their collar and says “bad human! bad! no! bad!” until they are too embarrassed to keep fighting.
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What fascinates me is bad storytelling.
There are movies, for example, that I would say are perfect representations of negative genre.
Take the films The Pest, Monster In The Closet, Drop Dead Fred and Son of the Mask (aka Mask 2). These are irredeemably horrible movies, but they are films with a recognizable structure in an established genre. They do not break any rules of storytelling but they are so reviled to give credence to the idea that they are objectively bad – that literally anything else you might do would be better than watching any portion of these movies.
However, there will still be people who remember them fondly. Especially those that saw them as kids.
Whatever it is that makes them the opposite of entertaining is as elusive as what makes films in the same genre like WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, BEETLEJUICE or THE MASK so beloved. The important part of telling a story has little to do with the craft of storytelling.
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Same for the way Western heroes would shoot the guns out of villains’ hands rather than simply shoot them.
I don’t believe this is true for Lucky Luke.
Fun fact: In the first Lucky Luke album(s), he actually does shoot to kill. The first quartet of Daltons were shot to death (or hanged, don’t remember). The standard quartet of Daltons that show up in the coming albums is actually their cousins.
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True, Gladiator came to be compared with SUPERMAN more than any other hero. Though, technicallY he was more an analogue of Mon El who was in the “Superboy” role in the Legion back then. A non-Earth analogue of Superman.
Mon El was one of my favorite characters back then as he wasn’t just a copy of Superman. He had his own story especially in the underrated or unfairly forgotten L.E.G.I.O.N. Series.
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I mean, the guy is called Kallark, so I’m pretty sure he’s a Superman analogue, not Mon El, but yeah, the Imperial Guard are LoSH analogues, so I guess both kinda work anyways…
Kind of a shame Marvel never did much with the IG, they should’ve given that book to a Morrison, Ellis, Ennis, Millar or one of those guys to go wild with it.
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I mean, the guy is called Kallark, so I’m pretty sure he’s a Superman analogue, not Mon El, but yeah, the Imperial Guard are LoSH analogues, so I guess both kinda work anyways…
The Mon-El analogue was Smasher.
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Since Quantum Leap is rebooting:
I also will mention movies like Back to the Future, Peggy Sue Got Married, Big, 13 going on 30, Groundhog’s Day, and even some Twilight Zone episodes. None of them are sci fi that we all usually see. They just suspend belief on one thing as the plot device (time travel, switching bodies with someone younger, lightning strikes and you can read women’s minds, etc.) and then they run with it from there. They don’t get so carried away with the details.
Not a bad way to tell a story as the focus is not really on the plot device/event that created the situation.
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In the original script of GROUNDHOG DAY – first, it started when Phil had already been repeating for days and days so he was already used to it. And the reason he was repeating the day was explained as a Gypsy curse. So. the big changes when Ramis got involved was to start before the repeats and to take out the explanation. It made all the difference.
It’s interesting to compare that with THINNER where the main character is the victim of a gypsy curse and the whole story is about him trying to force the gypsy to undo the curse. It ends up being far less as the conflict is focused on the external action rather than the internal struggle of the character.
I think that is what helps a lot of films where the story really isn’t all that great – like BLADE RUNNER or MAN OF STEEL. Deckard may get all the replicants by the end of the movie, but he pretty much fails in every other regard. However, the way he struggles with what he’s doing and what he wants to do keeps the audience engaged.
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A more recent film of that type is YESTERDAY, wherein the protagonist, an aspiring singer/songwriter, wakes up in an alternate reality where The Beatles never became a band and nobody has ever heard any of their songs. The logic behind this isn’t important to the story they wanted to tell, and the lead actor (Himesh Patel) helps to carry it off.
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That is a good example. Someone called these “Genie in a bottle” stories, though “Gypsy curse” might be a better one for situations where the single strange thing is more of burden. Essentially though, it is about getting some ability that everyone thinks they would like to have and then discovering that what you think you want is not really what you want.
In GROUNDHOG DAY (and its many copies like EDGE OF TOMORROW) the ability to live the past over and over is something the hero struggles to fix. In ABOUT TIME, it is presented as an advantage, a superpower for fixing your mistakes. However, even in the latter film, it becomes more of a crutch than a gift.
In BRUCE ALMIGHTY and THE MASK or even ENDLESS SUNSHINE OF A SPOTLESS MIND or THE TRUMAN SHOW, Jim Carrey is something of the face of these “genie in the bottle stories.” Who wouldn’t want to be god for a while or have a special mask to release your inner desires or to forget all the painful memories of our lives? Who doesn’t feel like their lives are being controlled by some writer for the entertainment of a bored audience that just wants to laugh at us from time to time?
STRANGER THAN FICTION, WHAT WOMEN WANT, BEDAZZLED or WEIRD SCIENCE are in the same boat. The explanations are light, flimsy and not important.
Also, it is interesting in that these “superpowers” are then set into a domestic situation of some sort so it is a good contrast to superheroes. Contrast a movie like NEXT to ABOUT TIME. They have a character with similar powers – one can go back in time to fix a mistake and the other can see into the future to avoid mistakes – and both use their powers to find a girlfriend as their main personal objective. However, it would be insanely weird for the protagonist of About Time to fight a bunch of terrorists. Just as it would be weird – but not necessarily uninteresting – for Superman or Batman to spend a whole movie trying to play matchmaker to their friends.
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Some stories are not very well suited to a sequel, probably why we never saw a second Groundhog Day however popular it was.
They should have just released the first movie again as Groundhog Day 2.
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Just as it would be weird – but not necessarily uninteresting – for Superman or Batman to spend a whole movie trying to play matchmaker to their friends.
Let’s talk about the Silver Age…
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