Generalorder4

“It is impossible to live in the past, difficult to live in the present and a waste to live in the future.”

― Frank Herbert, Dune ---

I rapidly discovered why we seldom go to theaters anymore when I went to see Dune 2.

We ordered the tickets online but the email was wrong so we paid the money but didn't get the tickets so after arriving we had to speak to the management and show them the receipt on a cell phone. It took an hour to work out how to pay for parking online, we needed photo I.D so we needed to drive back home and to the theater again and when we left a MINUTE late there was already a ticket on the car.

At least the staff was friendly and the seats reasonably comfortable.

SPOILERS

The problem is Dune 2 wasn't really worth all that money and time.

I thought Dune 1 was okay, verging on good. The visuals were spectacular and unique, I love good 'used future' science fiction and I recognized enough of the story to tell someone involved in making the film had actually read the book. When the second film was hinted at I was excited. Now that the fairly low energy movie is out of the way we can focus on the intricate politics and high concept action! But Dune 2 was surprisingly a drag in large parts. Hours passed and the film was basically hanging out with the Freman in their tents talking about prophesy. This wouldn't be so much of an issue if... 1: The characters weren't basically repeating the same thing over and over 2: The prophesy counted as a plot Dune the book is a treatise on desert ecology with the subplot of a planetary war.

Dune 2 is hour on hour of people bickering about a prophesy and religion in general (but in broad and uncomplicated strokes) with little scenes of occasional action and interesting visuals to keep it from being interminable.

And THIS wouldn't have been a big issue if the action had literally made any sense.

In Dune 1 every action scene felt earned and intelligent. People fight with swords because everyone wears shields. You need slow bombs to blow up shielded space craft, slow bullets to hit targets. But in Dune 2 action happens for literally no reason. The Freman in a memorable (and exciting and well directed) scene ambush a Harkonen spice harvester but hiding in the sand and then leaping up to take out the patrols to either side. Then they play peek-a-boo with a thropter, trying to find time to shoot it with a rocket when it lowers its shield to use its own gun. HOWEVER

Seconds later a team of Freman on a cliff fire a laser gun and blow the crap out of the harvester effortlessly. So the ambush and all that death and danger was completely pointless. Well, maybe the lasers have to charge up so the Freman ground troops have to distract or hold the harvester long enough to shoot it? NOPE. We later see the same laser shoot DOWN a harvester before it even touches the sand so literally the Freman have a seemingly infinite supply of a weapon that can be fired at extreme range with extreme effect. The entire ground war is devoid of meaning. I wasn't expecting a problem on par with The Last Jedi in Dune 2, but here we are. All the action scenes had this lingering issue in the back of the mind of 'why don't they just laser everything'...and no explanation was ever offered. Likewise, everyone has forgotten they have shields. Apparently Harkonen soldiers wear bulky armor that stops nothing: they are the Stormtroopers of Dune who routinely die instantly to a slash across the torso. The only reason they don't use guns seems to be they get ambushed and have no time to, or they draw swords and knives instead for no reason. They can also fly (THEY FLY NOW!) but never use this to their advantage. I know, I know 'cinematic choices' but isn't this supposed to be smarter than a run-of-the-mill dumb sci-fi? Speaking of dumb, the writing is bad. People don't speak to each other in these films, they sermonize in same room other people are standing. Every line of dialogue is designed to be 'significant' but because of this nobody talk about anything except for the plot except on very rare occasions. Likewise all the villains talk in villanese where they just shout angrily or proclaim they will kill someone or brag about how their schemes are coming round. Even the heroes seem locked into bickering, shouting, and muttering matches. That said...the movie is gorgeous. The desert looks amazing and indeed alien. The armor, the clothing, the props, the sets are all immaculate when they need to be and appropriately gritty and scuffed up if they've been used. Details sell this movie, like Freman script scratched into a thumper, A Harkonen soldier activating the sun shield on his helmet, Emperor Christopher Walken playing some kind of space chess in his pretty little garden. It looks great, it sounds great, most performances are fine. I found the choreography very silly (Freman are apparently ninjas on wires) but it's certainly dynamic. A lot of what you see is real, and it matters to the immersion. People walk up and down real stairs and into real rooms. Real people jump around and scramble on the sand. Costumes are real and each has unique detailing. This is the best world-buiding since Star Wars and that might be worth the price of admission. But it is WAY too long. It seems to end three times, and all three times I would have happily walked out. I actually left to use the restroom without any qualms of missing something because I figured it would mostly be more muttering in dark rooms, and I was pretty much right. This movie does not have to be this long. There are so many scenes that feel like padding and there are enough rushed scenes to wonder why more care wasn't put to making these polished up. The final big battle is mostly off screen. ALL of the villain deaths are big let downs, mostly because the inexplicable rating means most everyone dies to bloodless sound effects. There IS blood but it's just smeared in places. I'm guessing this was to keep things PG. There's a tepid sex scene (like two logs lying on each other), one instance of out of place modern swearing (Oh sh*t!) but you could take your kids and, if they didn't fall asleep, they could enjoy the action without any issues. As a fan of the books the discrepancies were just...odd. The ending has become like the ending to Watchman where the writers there too tried to change the well known wrap-up and make it their own...but their ending makes no sense.

The giant alien squid monster in Watchman isn't just a striking visual, it's a way to unite the entire world against a supposed extra terrestrial invader. Swapping out the squid with Dr. Manhattan just makes the enemy of the entire world The United States. That's NOT the path to world peace. And in the original Dune, Paul threatens to kill the worms thus eliminating the spice which would in turn lead to the cessation of all interstellar travel. In Dune 2 he threatens to nuke the spice fields. You know...the fields that the worms routinely create...and then leave. So nuking the fields to stop the spice is like nuking oil drills and then saying 'see, I destroyed all the oil in the universe!' Doesn't make any sense. So the writing isn't good, the scenes make no sense, the story got VERY stale when it devolved into a bunch of vengeful grumps waging petty vendettas. BUT it was very pretty and Hans Zimmer's score was nice. I've seen Dune 1 several times. I don't think I'll ever seen Dune 2 again on purpose. And Dune 3...I just don't feel that pumped about it. Dune 2 is inarguably the most entertaining movie in theaters at the moment, but given how much of a hassle theaters have become that's just not saying much. I think Dune 2 would actually work better as a silent film: a series of gorgeous visuals and music, but with all the awkward dialogue cut out.

"Happiness is continuing to desire what you already possess." - Friedrich Nietzsche

"Part of the attraction of The (Lord of the Rings) . is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed.”

- J.R.R Tolkien

---

First off, sorry I've been hard to find for the few still interested in my page here!

I'm mostly taking care of my ailing parents and looking for a job.

But I did find a little section of time to write, and these quotes finally woke up my slumbering muse. ---

I dreaded watching the original Star Wars again after all these years. Partially because I was concerned the somewhat janky early effects would looks silly and take me out of the experience...and then of course there's the fact that nowadays going back to Star Wars is like visiting a grave. The franchise is technically still chugging along but the magic is long gone. Nothing announced upcoming seems to be even trying to change the course that's making the 'Star Wars' brand a second rate content factory, they're just trying to burn it all down piece by piece so they can replace it with something else but keep the lucrative name.

A New Hope kicked in and I thought "I've seen this a hundred times. It's one of the first films I ever saw. I know about how it was made. I know all the stories behind it. I know where its future leads. Star Wars is just a nostalgic simple-minded fantasy of my childhood. How trite." Then the music kicked in...and all the fear went away.

Some things are timeless, and A New Hope is just that. The music, the writing, the fast paced story and the overall wrap-around feel of possibility is intoxicating. Regardless of what it became, Star Wars was special out of the box. It's the kind of film that has so much in it, but when the last battle arrives you feel a tinge of sadness that it will be over soon and you have to leave. I remember every beat, every scene, every line of dialogue, and I it didn't feel like a chore or a slog. It felt like talking with an old friend and everything falling back into place. And part of that is because of what is NOT in the original Star Wars films as much as what IS. For instance, Star Wars: A New Hope was a nightmare behind the scenes. A ton ended up on the cutting room floor. Multiple feverish drafts of the screenplay were made and re-written on set. Effects didn't work. Costumes were cheap. Actors flubbed and tripped. George Lucas was convinced that this would be the last film he ever made and bankrupt him totally. How could an homage to film serials attract anyone new? A bunch of oldsters maybe, but modern audiences wouldn't get it or wouldn't care. This was destined for failure.

And because of that it was trimmed within an inch of its life. Dialogue is speedy. Exposition is a handful of sentences or not even broached. How often in any film does someone say something like 'I was a Jedi Knight the same as your father' and not elaborate AT ALL?

In Pirates of the Caribbean there's actually an extended and nicely written but somewhat pointless scene in which Jack Sparrow explains what a PIRATE is: a fundamental concept to all but very young children who probably shouldn't be watching a movie with bloody gunshots and decapitations. But in Star Wars there is NO explanation for anything that doesn't need it. 'This is your father's lightsaber' How's it work? No idea. Where did Dad get it? No clue. How did Obi get it? I guess he was a Jedi too so at some point Luke's dad gave it to him: not elaborated on. Nobody explains what a Jawa is. They show up, stun R2-D2, and when they arrive at the Skywalker moisture farm you think for a second someone is going to say 'Oh good, those Jawas have finally arrived with their robots! Those creatures are always stunning scrap in the dune sea.' Instead what you get is Uncle Owen walking out, waving vaguely at a Jawa like it's just another salesman and grumbles 'Okay, let's see.'

HE knows what a Jawa is. Luke knows what a Jawa is. The Droids even know what Jawas are (consider how C3-PO later says 'I can't abide Jawas!') So if they know, why would they explain to the audience? Consider how many Marvel films open with EXHAUSTIVE explanations of backstory, flashbacks, dramatic re-enactments, and even after all that there's STILL 90% of the dialogue taken up with exposition. --- Here's a conversation in The Avengers Steve Rogers: Thor, what's his play?

Thor: He has an army, called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract.

Steve Rogers: An army. From outer space.

Bruce Banner: So he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for.

Thor: Selvig?

Bruce Banner: He's an astrophysicist.

Thor: He's a friend.

Natasha Romanoff: Loki has them under some kind of spell. Along with one of ours.

Steve Rogers: I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He's not leading an army from here.

Bruce Banner: I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats. You can smell crazy on him. - Here's a conversation in A New Hope Han Solo: Hokey religions and ancient weapons are not a good match for a blaster at your side, kid.

Luke Skywalker: You don't believe in the Force, do you?

Han Solo: Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other; I've seen a lot of strange stuff. But I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. Anyway, it's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense. ---

The dialogue is not only almost divorced from the events of the plot (because they already know what they're trying to do so why explain it to each other) but it does reveal a lot about who we're dealing with. Luke's naivety comes in his rather blunt asking how someone couldn't believe in what he believes, and he even asks the question with an edge like an unbeliever is someone he regards with suspicion. Han both reveals a lot about himself...and nothing. He doesn't give any specifics. His initial gibe is almost a piece of advice aimed at Luke specifically. It's the first time he calls him 'Kid' in an affectionate way rather than dismissively. He does however in his flippancy reveal how little he has regard for himself as much as the galaxy in general. There is no grand plan...but he's still mad about it. 'Simple tricks and nonsense' is not a proud statement. As much as Han doesn't feel he has anything to say, he DOES feel he should make it plain to Luke that harboring unrealistic expectations are not only foolish, they could even be dangerous. What can we glean from the dialogue in The Avengers? Apart from the fact that Joss Whedon likes to impress with his glib writing, almost nothing. None of the characters are really talking to each other: they're talking to the audience. Attempts at unique voices are just bizarre. When has Bruce Banner ever come across as a person who would use the expression 'a bag of cats'? Why does Thor ask OUT LOUD about the name of his friend...only to confirm he is a 'friend' in the stiffest way possible? Why does Steve Rogers just say 'An army from outer space'. For the benefit of whom? Is he just repeating what Thor said? How does being from outer space change anything? Natasha has just lost someone she cares about and I realize she's a hardened mercenary, but she's not a robot (as this movie seems to keep forgetting). She could even has said 'We lost Master Archer Barton' (his official title in S.H.I.E.L.D) if she wanted to be formal. "One of our own" is neither descriptive nor helpful to anyone, least of all her. In the Tolkien quote and the Nietzsche quotes above I identified why so many contemporary productions feel so empty and hollow. It's NOT a political reason. Politics annoy me, but I can overlook them if they are unobtrusive or connected to a great story. Pacific Rim has a dumb rambling monologue about Global Warming and pollution that sounds like a Captain Planet sendoff, but it's easy to ignore surrounded by excellent robot on sea monster fighting. Return of the Jedi has the dumbest and most naive tributes to the Vietnam war (admitted by Lucas) with the 'heroic peaceful forest people' fighting and winning against 'the evil empire'...BUT it also has one of the best endings in the history of cinematic storytelling. The reason that something like, say, The Rings of Power feels so boring and void and The Fellowship of the Rings is still a rip-roaring adventure is because of TOO MUCH in the latter and just enough NOT in the former. Rings of Power leaves NOTHING to the imagination. Things we never knew we didn't want to know how they happened we got to see happen in the most ridiculous way possible. We never cared where Mount Doom came from. It's actually barely important except as a place Sauron forged his ring and a hard to reach location where it has to be unmade. But did you know that some random guy found an ancient sword and inserted it into an ancient ruin that caused a dam to break pouring water into an underground chasm of lava that caused a chain reaction creating the volcano...and Sauron somehow planned all of this thousands of years in advance? Does this help with your enjoyment of the story or the enrichment of your imagination? No. It actually takes away from the mystique of Lord of the Rings by explaining things that didn't need explanations. Why do we care if there was a trade dispute between elves and dwarves that led to the forging of the rings, and why does it matter one was made with a dagger owned by Galadriel's brother? Why does it matter that Gandalf crashed to earth decades before The Hobbit but met hobbits anyway and fought Ring Wraiths long before he even met them in the film version of The Hobbit? Why did we need to know about the niece of the King of Gondolin who does nothing but glare at people for her entire screen presence? The argument could be made 'Well, without going into the backstory there IS no show!"

And by rights there shouldn't have been. The Simarillion was never intended to be adapted for anything, let alone ever even read by the general public. Like arguably Lord of the Rings itself, Tolkien wrote it for one person chiefly...himself. He was fascinated by the lore and the mythology and languages of his world so he put them all down in the form of a creation myth and older tales of great kingdoms and classical larger than life stories. If Lord of the Rings is World War 2, The Simarillion is King Arthur. One is the relatively grounded story of a struggling empire fighting back against impossible odds in a world where old loyalties seem broken, history lost, and civilization on the brink.

The other is the gleaming and undoubtedly exaggerated parables of a time of great deeds and heroes to inspire rather than to historically inform.

And, intriguingly, I saw this same attitude in the original Star Wars too.

There's a lot to infer about Star Wars more than is spelled out. Things use words that feel appropriate to the concept without being too descriptive. A 'landing claw' we can assume is somehow able to keep The Millennium Falcon anchored to a star destroyer ship, even though we can't really see anything resembling a landing claw underneath it. A 'blaster' never needs to be reloaded even though some seem to have clips: probably 'power packs' or something never gone into. We can accept what we see because it all fits into what we learn, and we learn by seeing things in action. What are half the aliens we see and where do they come from? No clue. Chewbakka is a 'wookie' but for all we know he's basically a big friendly dog monster who everyone can seem to understand and seems fiercely loyal and alternates between laid back and a bit dim to focused and cautious. The alien bounty hunters show up and Vader addresses them all in 'English' (or 'Basic' as Star Wars calls it now) so they all seem to speak that language even though some respond with guttural voices or bleeps.

How does 'light speed' work? I dunno...'hyperdrive' which literally means 'excessive motor'. It's a super motor. How do shields work? Don't know but they seem to block things and can be moved around and they depend upon 'power' so when the generator takes a hit the shields go down. Who were The Jedi? Here's where things get interesting because the original trilogy paints a picture even the prequels would ignore, but is far more interesting than just beat cops of the galaxy. According to Yoda a Jedi NEVER uses their power for attack. Jedis can see in the future, the past, and 'old friends long gone' (which might refer to the force ghosts). Jedi principally draw their power for an energy field surrounding and binding the world which apparently has some kind moral polarity given some things are 'evil' and some things are 'good'. Goodness is defined by 'pacifism patience and discipline' but takes a long time to cultivate, although the ultimate rewards are incredible powers.

Evil on the other hand SEEMS stronger but it is deceptive and seductive, drawing from momentary energies like hate and anger, and ultimately leading to corruption and doom.

Arguably the original 'plan' Yoda had was to train Luke is isolation, regardless of what happened to the rebel alliance. He argues the rebels, including Luke's friends, are however unwittingly sacrificing their lives not to defeat The Empire as much as to allow Luke the time to become a Jedi Knight which is more important than either their fates or even the galaxy. Something about the Jedi tradition is so paramount that the entire 'Star War' is a backdrop to keeping the faith alive and using it to overcome an evil greater than even Darth Vader himself. The vision in the cave during Luke's trials not only foreshadows Darth Vader's real identity, but also potentially shows that in defeating Vader he will lose his soul, defeating himself. Yoda makes it clear: 'If you stray from the path, take the quick and easy road, you will become an agent of evil.' He doesn't say 'die'. He's less worried about Luke perishing than Luke being turned into a pawn of The Dark Side. It's supremely heavy stuff. Even Yoda's incredible powers he deliberately does not use to fight The Empire. Why? THAT'S NOT WHAT JEDI ARE FOR. This is not an arms race: it's a theological contest. That's so much deeper than just Jedi and Sith being two people throwing lightning at each other on behalf of different political ideologies. But again, none of this is exactly elaborated upon. It's inferred so it FEELS broader. The Bacta Tank where Luke heals? Not mentioned by name so we just see a weird sci-fi healing ritual. How is Han tortured? Sounds painful, but we deliberately see nothing. How does Han know Lando? Well, he apparently 'won' the Millennium Falcon which Lando considers his own and they have a history and they are old friends. That's it. We might learn more later, but why would we need to? That's all we need to punch through the waffling into the emotional center of the STORY. Consider in A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back there's really only about three characters at one time we focus on or care directly about: Luke, Han and Leia. They grow from being kinda salty and standoffish to loyal friends, there's a cute love triangle going on (this was WELL before Lukas decided for no real reason to make Leia into Luke's sister clearly) and they have defined personalities with a little wiggle room to grow. Han is a loner and selfish. By the end he has friends and he cares about something other than his own skin. Leia is kind of a brat at the beginning, but she eventually lets down her guard and accepts that others aren't quite as ultra-focused on rebellious activities as she. Luke starts out as a whiny starred eyed dreamer, and refines into a damaged but hardened veteran who is led to understand this is a legend HE needs to write instead of relying on the heroes of the past to bail him out. There are characters who come and go and in the last film there's a lot of shared screen time with even things like alien teddy bears and crime lords and such, but in the original two films everyone else was along for the ride. Lando had an arc but he wasn't front and center and mostly served as a rival and antagonist for a time. C3-PO and R2D2 are cared about sometimes, but other times regarded with the same consideration as an appliance. Chewbakka is friendly and clearly has emotions, but they aren't very deep and sometimes Han seems to ignore him while Leia's first response to him is to push past and grumble about him being a 'walking carpet'. We care JUST ENOUGH about the ancillary characters, but not so much they take over the show from the relatively simple and focused story of the primary protagonists. And because of this the window of the story is both focused in but also wide beyond the boundaries of the screen. We only really see the parts of the galaxy the heroes go to, hear about what they hear about, see what they see. Time skips far ahead between both films and the reason is THIS IS WHEN THE ACTION STARTS AGAIN for the heroes. In Empire Strikes Back there's a mention of a 'bounty hunter on Ord Mantell' that convinced Han to leave the rebels and run for it, but again NOT gone into at all. A hundred alternate history and fan works may describe that encounter with the bounty hunter and now we NOW it was IG-88 canonically...but I think as far as The Empire Strikes back is concerned this a plot point first and an actual defined event last. Han needs a reason to leave so we can have a bit of motion and drama for his character. Luke is already being strung up by a space monster so....what is Han and Leia going to do? Answer: Han is going to leave and Leia is going to have to confront her mixed feelings about this. In one throwaway line we have DRAMA where we might have just had Han and Leia just hanging around and waiting for The Empire to start the action. This IS what happens in The Force Awakens constantly. Why does Finn decide to escape? Because someone basically tells him to. Why does Rey leave the planet? She's forced to. Why does Han take on unwanted passengers? He's forced to. Why do the rebels care about these random people who show up? They have a map they want. Finn knows about a secret way in. If they had dropped off the map and Finn had written down the directions on a napkin both Rey and Finn could have left the story and nothing would have changed. Finn follows Rey for...literally no reason. He shouts her name a lot and maybe he's impressed by her inherent godlike capability but otherwise she doesn't seem to care much about him and he's more like a dog who misses his owner than a jilted lover or a brotherly figure. Finn is stuck to Rey honestly, and provably, because the DIRECTOR wanted to tick boxes. Rey is a feminist wet dream power fantasy and Finn is 'person of color' victim porn who can occasionally participate in Rey's amazing self-affirming journey, but not so much that a dreaded MAN starts to outshine the sacred feminine. I'm not making any of this up. J.J Abrams admitted he cast his film to fit diversity criteria and made John Boyega talk without his English accent so he didn't sound 'so smart'. In A New Hope intriguingly the rebel alliance ALSO only cares about the heroes because they have a map, so the heroes have to make themselves useful or interesting to stay in the story. Luke enlists as a pilot. Han gathers up his money and seems about to leave. R2D2 hitches a ride into battle. Leia takes a position in the war room. Instead of the story FORCING the characters to go places and do things, the characters CHOOSE to go places and do things. Luke does initially refuse the quest that Obi Wan offers, but the film still places the impetus on him to make the decision to leave the planet after his home is destroyed. He COULD have rebuilt and pretended he never met Obi Wan who might have just gone to Mos Eisley, chartered a flight, and gone to Alderaan. But he CHOOSES to stay in the story so we continue to follow him. Han CHOOSES to be smart and fly into an asteroid cave and latch onto a star destroyer. He could just give up and die, but through his own smarts and reflexes, not random fate, he manages to outmaneuver danger. And more than this, the heroes encounter meaningful dangers that almost erase them completely. Go back to the first time you saw A New Hope in your mind. In the Trash Masher scene ('trash compactor' in later films but called a 'Trash Masher' in this film fitting with the simpler concepts) Luke is dragged underwater by a monster. For a breathless moment Han and Leia look at each other, clearly coming to grips with the fact that one of their group is probably gone and there's nothing they can do. There's no music. No grand direction. Luke disappearing under the water seems almost like an afterthought or a fairly simple event. Nothing super dramatic. Nobody overreacts. Now we all KNOW NOW that Luke can't die. He's basically the lead of the entire series and clearly has an unfinished arc and there's also the meta-knowledge that Star Wars is a fantasy, not a gritty war story.

BUT think back. Given the way this was shot, given that Mark Hammill wasn't an A-List actor, given that nobody knew what to expect from a film that was very unlike any film before it in many ways...what would you think? Luke is dead. There's no reason to believe otherwise. If Luke died right then it wouldn't even necessarily break the story: we've got two characters left! Imagine if Luke never did surface so Han and Leia had to soldier on. They technically have plenty of stuff to do even without Luke in the story. They could deliver the plans. Luke might show up as a force ghost or something and Han could learn The Force. There's no indication in A New Hope that The Force is hereditary yet so really anyone could pick it up like a religion potentially. Han is even clearly beginning to fall for Leia so there's still romance in the story. Luke could EASILY die here. When he comes back it's genuinely surprising because it's one of the few instances of blind luck happening to rescue a character (or maybe there is 'no such thing as luck?') and also because there is literally nothing other than fate to rescue Luke in this instance. Han doesn't dive in. Leia doesn't shoot at the monster. Luke is just GONE so if it wasn't ironically for the trash masher beginning to almost kill them all he would have been toast. And think about the other films too. Leia is shot. Luke loses a hand. Han is frozen in carbonate. C3-PO is blasted to pieces. The film is not shy about hurting these people. Obi Wan Kenobi flat out dies, and not with much fanfare at all. Yoda dies in the third film of old age, not in battle or doing anything traditionally 'heroic'. There is NO instance in The Force Awakens or any Marvel films you feel convinced that any character could even theoretically die, unless it's at the very most dramatic moment. See, in those films heroes don't just up and die from random things like blaster bolts or random aliens or crashes. They have to die in slow motion after doing something great or escape from ANY circumstance not because it was feasible but because the movie had to re-write itself to keep them alive. Rey doesn't survive half the time because of her intelligence or skill, it's usually just because if she died the story would stop. Finn has no agency. Han has no reason to care. Leia doesn't have a lot of mobility. If it wasn't for the bad guys in the Disney Wars movies nothing would happen, mostly them being stupid. In Marvel films and superhero movies in general we're dealing with literal superhuman people...even if they really shouldn't be. Natasha Romanov is probably more skillful than is feasible for a human to be, but she should still BE a human. In the Black Widow movie however she survives falling out of a building because she smashed into an awning on the way down...and doesn't even suffer a broken bone. She is NOT Thor. She is NOT Captain America. But the Marvel films have no characters who are either heroes OR potentially in danger. If you died and it wasn't with any fanfare you aren't a real character: you're some nameless nobody. A hero, even a regular human, has to hang on long enough to do or say something important. See, what makes an adventure an adventure is when everything is explained and nothing is unexpected! Wait...the other thing. What kept the original Star Wars fresh and has been totally lost is that the plots largely revolved around completely separate subjects to the weird and wacky world of the story. A young man tries to rediscover the legacy of his father but uncovers a horrible truth. A rebel alliance fights for freedom against an autocratic empire. People must choose between submitting to powerful evil or fighting and potentially dying on behalf of a seemingly losing cause of good. There's a reason the influences of Star Wars aren't science fiction at all: knightly tales, samurai stories, WW2 combat, stories of revolution, eastern philosophy...etc. In The Avengers say the plot is a 'comic book' plot in the most general sense. It could broadly be said to be about opposing personalities coming together for the greater good, but the film cares less about the people then it does about the situations the people are going through: the set pieces they are inhabiting. There's a magic thing that the bad guy wants to get to take over the world with a big army but the heroes have to stop him because that's what heroes do. The influences are nothing but comic books themselves. It works as what it is: a comic book in live action. But it's not really a timeless tale or very meaningful except as an entertaining showcase of special effects and charismatic actors sharing witty barbs. The themes that ARE there are neither deep nor subtle. "If we can't save the world you can be damn sure we'll avenge it." Tony Stark says, trying to excuse the reason for the super heroes calling themselves The Avengers. Why were The Avengers called The Avengers in real life? Because Rob Liefeld, who wrote the second ever volume of The Avengers, thought it sounded 'cool'. That's right, everyone's popular to hate comic book pariah actually named one of the most popular superhero groups in history. So there was nothing deep behind The Avengers initially, in fact the heroes were only founded because Marvel saw The Justice League was making a lot of money. There COULD have been some investigation about the title or the reason for it existing, but like so many things in the film, it's a one-off joke. Of course The Avengers aren't named because they intend to 'avenge' the earth if they can't save it. That's silly. Also naming them 'The Avengers' because some random agent guy died is equally silly. If it feels like you're forcing the wheel, TAKE YOUR HANDS OFF. There's a reason it's a meme about Marvel writing that if they did make a Star Wars film someone would eventually say 'Boy, these sure are some Star Wars out here, huh?' So anyway, to make a brutally long rant/journal thing short, it was the things I DIDN'T recognize that made me clap this time rewatching Star Wars, those distant cities and unvisited islands left uncharted. - Who are the aliens in The Cantina? Don't know. One of them says he's a wanted man and one is a murderous bounty hunter so apparently they're a rough bunch. It gives the impression of a brutal and unpredictable underbelly to the galaxy as a whole. - Who are the Stormtroopers? Not clear. They wear armor but we never see it taken off so presumably they're like Luke and Han and they seem to have feelings and even doubts so they might be regular dudes, but it's not so important to the story so they're left largely to stand in for 'villainous power'. They are NOT clay pigeons. Every fight that the heroes get into with Stormtroopers ends with them running away! -What can force ghosts do? Probably powerful stuff, but left undefined. Obi Wan says he's more powerful now that he's no longer corporeal (intriguingly something that is NEVER explained in the film: he just collapses into a robe) and Luke keeps asking for his 'help' but conveniently when Luke strays from his teaching Obi Wan can no longer help him. Something about the dichotomy of good and evil defines the ability for Jedi to get involved. After all: 'luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!' -What fuel do ships run on? No clue. The Millennium Falcon seems to just have a finite amount of 'power' to route to different systems. There's a mention of a 'reactor leak' which is 'dangerous' in The Death Star but nothing specific. The X-Wings have hoses hooked up to them but that's mostly because they are basically spitfire airplanes in space so it's more of an evocative image of that than any explanation. Nobody seems to run out of fuel. We don't even see any indication people use fuel at all: no depots, no mention of it in slang. -Intriguingly there are two instances of the word 'Hell'. Uncle Owen says 'There will be Hell to pay' and Han says 'I'll see you in Hell' making it VERY clear he's referring to some kind of afterlife in a traditional sense, probably not a pleasant one. Is there some kind of general religion? All the rebels say 'May the force be with us' pretty casually. Intriguingly The Empire and outlaws seem to be the only people expressly without a religion. Han refers to The Force as 'hokey' and the imperial commander chides Vader for his 'sad devotion to that ancient religion'. Apparently in some cases technology replaces religion (Han says a blaster is better than faith, the Imperials says that The Death Star is better) and this is definitely a theme. Those living just in general seem to have a basic but not dismissively approach to faith, or at least the concept of religion. Nobody questions what Han or Owen means when they mention 'Hell' and Obi Wan expressly statements 'He was concerned you'd go on some damn fool idealistic crusade like your father' again tying The Jedi directly into religion. Even Yoda calls The Force a religion expressly. It's ironic how often modern Star Wars tries to deny any religion in the story at all when it was there in the beginning and gave the story much more of a unique flavor than just another shooty space flick. The spiritual dimension made the conflict more than just two groups trying to kill each other: something more was at stake. - How big is the galaxy? GIGANTIC. For one thing you have to use light speed to go anywhere. For another, compared to modern Star Wars, not every planet seems to have anything on it. Notice how the first Tie Fighter seen is 'too far from any planet'. When Lando is located in the second film it's repeatedly said his gas mining operation is 'too small to be noticed'. He has a gigantic city but compared to presumably TRULY ENORMOUS mining operations he's a drop in the bucket. The Empire routinely uses ships the size of planets but STILL it's stated that nothing they have compares to the celestial bodies around them. When The Death Star is sited Luke calls it a 'Small Moon', not a big one. Compared to a planet it's small. But it's 'too big to be a space station'. And consider at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, Lando leaves to visit Tatooine and flies right past a STAR CLUSTER in the distance. So he's going to another planet bypassing a literal whirlpool of other stars and planets. Star Wars is so huge you have to travel between star systems to reach places at the speed of light! There's so much unnamable, so much to explore, so much going on. The Empire and The Republic have a war spanning The Galaxy, so that's an unbelievably large war! Again, apologies for the redundancy, but compare this to the 'scope' of Disney Wars. We go back to most of the same planets, or planets that look the same to ones we've seen before. Starkiller Base is meant to be staggeringly huge but because of this is dwarfs the galaxy: apparently a small splinter cell group managed to build something bigger than The Death Star that can destroy multiple planets without anybody noticing? It's like the cost in time, labor, and resources is pointless. At least The Death Star had multiple films to become operational and in the last film isn't even finished! And then Starkiller based blows up three planets. So apparently planets aren't that hard to destroy. The Death Star had a massive count down and apparently had to do lots of tests to become 'fully operational' but Starkiller just blows away half a galaxy in seconds. It's meant to be impressive but it shrinks the scale. Especially when this big horrible death machine is destroyed MUCH MORE EASILY than The Death Star...and is never rebuilt. Apparently a weapon capable of destroying multiple planets wasn't THAT important. In Marvel too for all the 'multi-verse' nonsense would have you believe we aren't seeing anything new no matter where we look. Shrink down to microscopic and as much as we see some trippy visuals sometimes everything is pretty similar to any other alien planet throughout the Marvel films. Everyone uses laser guns. Everyone uses a spaceship or a flying creature. Everyone luckily speaks the same language or can do so quickly and painlessly. And in movies like Into the Spiderverse the plot revolves around the 'cannon' that implies NOTHING is new between dimensions. Some things ALWAYS happen or else. Some people always die. Some people always become specific heroes or derivations of the same. There's a million Spidermen because apparently getting bit by a radioactive spider and then deciding to become a superhero with the theme of a spider is so commonplace it happened a million times. Yes it's infinite universes, but that too makes everyone feel disposable, replaceable. Anyone can die and we'll grab and clone or an alternate. And we have to apparently because we can only tell one type of story. Nothing changes. In Star Wars a new hope the heroes escaped Mos Eisley, traveled to The Death Star and snuck around, and afterwards led an attack on The Death Star with starfighters. In Empire Strikes Back they escape from a planet under siege and the party splits into Luke's trials of knighthood and Han's desperate attempts to escape the empire, all culminating in a showdown between Luke and Darth Vader...which he loses. In every single Marvel film a bad guy shows up, threatens to do something that will be bad, and the heroes kill them at the end...with the except of Infinity War...which ironically was retconned. This is literally the plot of Rebel Moon as well, except the bad guy is brought back at the end by another bad guy so they can be killed in the later films. We don't need to tell the same stories. We don't need to focus so much on 'world building' we lose the plot and forget the characters. Sometimes we can let those distant shores be discovered by other people. Sometimes we can keep something enjoyable by virtue of all that is DOESN'T explain and lay bare. Sometimes our stories can be windows into a world, not a travelogue exhaustively and to the point of tedium going over the ONLY roads we MUST take. Let's have more new hopes.

'...and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.' - J.R.R Tolkien : The Hobbit “Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia. The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands."

- H.P Lovecraft : The Picture in the House

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There's a meme going around (way to date THIS entry) in which men are asked how often they think about The Roman Empire...and woman are startled to discover the answer tends to be more than 0%. Usually this is used as some kind of 'gotcha' about male minds obsessing about the past or supremacy or harboring secret socially unacceptable thoughts...but a critic brought up another point.

Men like REALMS.

Rome wasn't just a place: it was a state of mind. Going back through the ages every society has their 'realms' of history which wasn't just a series of dates, it was a lifestyle, a comprehensive amalgam of fashion and thought and culture. Consider all the movies about mythical or real periods in Japanese and Chinese history. You can already see it in your mind's eyes: the flowing robes, the katanas resting in their scabbards, the courtly formalities, the rolling countryside and peasantry with their own distinctive clothing at work in the fields.

It's no different from Europeans or Americans thinking about Rome. It's a mindset because it echoes as a complete vision of a time gone by: the helmets, the pillars, an untamed world being explored by a seemingly unstoppable empire which could never see it's own tragically ironic fate decades later. But before the fall, there was this suspended time of 'triumph'.

Ignorance seemed to be on the retreat. Man was moving up in terms of technology and understanding and civilized systems of governance. Roads were branching out. Tribalism was giving way to a new consolidated power seeming dedicated to the challenging all boundaries.

Here was a time where there were libraries and public baths and democracy, but you should still walk with a weapon at your side in the wilder places.

Is this romanticized? HEAVILY. But it captures the imagination anyway.

Think of the genres which ARE history. The gangster dramas of America which come with fedoras and pinstripes Tommy guns and Ford Model 18s screaming around the corner pursued by squat police cars. Pirates instantly makes you think of tricorn hats, triple-masted sailing ships, the roar of cannon, eyepatches and peg legs and curved swords and daring raids across the largely unexplored seas. Knights and the largely mythical time of chivalry fills the mind with stone castles and fluttering banners and shining armor.

As I say, every culture by now has these touchstones of historical/mythical wonderment. Think about Italian history and your mind is flooded with porcelain masks and intrigue. Think of French history and the Musketeers go galloping through the imagination with fencing swords and flintlocks glinting in the sun.

The American West is a lawless place of cowboys and gunslingers and noble Indians all in contention over the unclaimed and unforgiving deserts and lush mountains and forests.

The most successful fictional universes in history, regardless of genre, have captured this cohesive feel of not just a story and characters but a universe with consistency they can live in. Dune isn't just Paul Atredies and giant sand worms, is the mysterious Bene Gesserit cult, the mutant navigators, the all-powerful CHOAM corporation, and every faction has a history going back millennia even until the extreme history of our own civilization in the now.

Middle Earth isn't just hobbits and ring wraiths, it's an entire mythology and history of OUR world where each city was meticulously catalogued to have it's own economic and legendary basis, each race has a language and a culture that ties into a grand narrative going back to a literal pantheon of deities and Biblical level events that shaped the planet and all living things.

But we're losing that much desired aspect of entertainment.

Consider Ashoka. This for me was the last straw in terms of Disney Star Wars because of how crunched it made the entire universe of Star Wars feel. The original trilogy promised a literal 'galaxy' of possibilities, but Ashoka is already so bored with the mundanity of the current universe Disney has made they had to bring up multi-verses and time travel. Disney is SO uninterested in its own factions, it's own characters, it's own universe that it keeps looking for distractions to the grey gruel it feels the franchise has become.

Every darn Star Wars 'story' nowadays revolves around an Empire, a Rebellion, The Jedi, desert planets, droids, the same aliens we've seen before again and again. The Star Wars expanded universe had a giant green bunny alien called Jaxxon which was silly but at least it indicated there WERE strange possibilities in the Star Wars universe. Ashoka really does seem to double down on the Disney strategy that, no, nothing is new. Even the 'new' element of Thrawn is borrowed from older stories, and he realistically can have no expansion of character or importance because he's gone by the time the original Star Wars trilogy starts.

It's another cul-de-sac of imagination: a shrinking of scope rather than widening it.

This seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Even with DC and Marvel opening up the possibilities of 'infinite multiverses' it always boils down to the same events, the same people, doing roughly the same things and then coming back to the status quo. I don't feel I've learned anything new about Dr. Strange in Dr. Strange 2. He actually had to regress in personality so he could 'learn' the same lesson because every character nowadays has ONE arc, and one arc only. There can be no deviation.

But deviation is ironically what can make a world feel consistent.

The idea of a 'realm' is a living canvas. When people think of 'Rome' they don't think of a static picture: it's a dynamic living chunk of history that's always buzzing with activity. Soldiers are marching. Merchants are calling. Politicians are posturing. Gladiators are preparing. Citizens are working. The wheels of the world are moving because the world doesn't care to stay still.

Digging in your heels doesn't feel like reality. For good or ill the world moves on and trends and tides and structures come and good. The people you knew are not the people you know. Some things do remain at a bedrock of personality and constancy, but others have developed and altered and shifted with time and events.

Going back to my favorite stories, the characters CHANGE. Paul Atredies goes from a sheltered royal prodigy to a fanatical religious leader whom the entire universe trembles at. Frodo goes from a well-to-do layabout to man broken in body and spirit preparing to give his life to save a world he barely knew about a year before. Luke Skywalker starts out as a whiny brat, and in the end is a stoic, determined warrior who is prepared to fight and die for a faith he knew nothing about for most of his life.

The major complaint I have about so many characters nowadays is how little they change. John Wick got a lot of attention for not only morphing in attitude from a punching bag into a killing machine, but by the end of the series he's missing multiple fingers and has brands on his body. He's physically different, like Frodo, and cannot go back to who he was.

Compare this to, say, Rey Skywalker who changes incredibly little throughout her own adventures. She learns little, loses nothing except a few people she knew for a couple days, and in the end is also identical in appearance as well as attitude even if she's gotten more superfluous power in the interim.

Andor starts out as a glum stick-in-the-mud and stays that way. Our introduction to him in his show is him murdering two men so he could always kill people: it's not a decision we ever see him grapple with. He was always a pawn of The Rebellion whether he wanted to be or not so watching him get roped into the revolution didn't surprise or thrill me either.

This is why I was pleasantly surprised by the show One-Piece. For all that it is a fever dream, it's at least an ORIGINAL fever dream. The characters communicate via sentient snails with mustaches. That doesn't entirely make sense, but the fact that everyone does it and no one finds it weird enough to comment on gives a strange cohesion to the complete insanity of the production.

Here's a guy who can chop ships in half by swinging his sword. How? He's been training a lot. That's really the only 'explanation' we get for this, and it feels right for the universe of the story where people can gain powers by eating fruit and one of the most powerful techniques involves putting a sword in your mouth.

One-Piece feels like a WORLD as much as it does a story taking place there because everyone just sort of accepts the dream logic at face value.

And moreover characters DO change. Our protagonist begins as a pretty naive happy-go-lucky guy who treats the whole pirate situation as an adventure he can ease through on good fortune alone...but as time goes on and stakes get higher he is forced to come to grips with the fact that friends of his and innocents are risking death and that he will have to make difficult decisions to accomplish his goals.

It's the CONTRAST of personality that makes it feel like an arc that's earned.

Luffy is a rare example of a character that feels like he's making decisions and being effected by the decisions he makes.

This is why so many 'fantasy' and 'sci-fi' productions can leave me cold. There's nothing to explore if the parameters are either so tight they stifle the imagination or so broad that anything consistent becomes a fallacy. If there are infinite multi-verses, why should I care about anything happening in any one of them? If the only important things happen to this family or this group of people or to the powerful alone, why should I care about the rest of the 'universe' as broad as it may be?

Walk around some time and just look at people. Each has their own story to tell. Each has experienced happiness, sadness, loss, joy, frustration and elation. The way they live now is not the way they used to live because times have changed, the world has changed, their minds have changed or struggled to change with the current of events.

Look at that old empty building. It used to have a function and its own history as well. Look at that tree. It's seen times come and go you can't imagine.

So when a production pours money and time into a universe that leaves you feeling cold you have to wonder: why can our own writers and artists nowadays not even recreate the TRUTH around us? 'Realistically' you might argue everyone has to be mired in shades of moral grey and constantly eaten by doubt and indecision and guided exclusively by lizard brain practicality at the expense of others and the world around them, so the only realistic story is one that has no happy endings, no meaningful progression, no highs or lows.

Except...that's not true.

How many times have you seen an ordinary person do something extraordinary. Probably more than once. How many times has a loved one or a friend sacrificed not to further themself but to make you or someone else happy for the sake of virtue alone? How many times have people risked their lives for the lives of others? How many times have you seen hidden depths to a person you discounted at first consideration, when they opened up to you about a past or a pain you never knew that they have been resiliently and silently dealing with? How many times have you said 'I never knew that'?

The world is FILLED with highs and lows, with good and evil, with happy and tragic endings. It is the myopic person, not the scholar, who closes their eyes to the richness of the universe we live in NOW let alone the fictional universes we can build.

If you are not creating to explore, what are you doing?

'There are no uninteresting things, only uninterested people.'

- G.K Chesterton

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I've been listening to more reviews than seeing productions nowadays, and the reason is time management. I've TRIED to get into every show and movie you can imagine thanks to Tubi and Youtube and Crackle and Netflix and Amazon basically giving you millions options to watch at the cost of a few commercials.

Commercials I can stand. Wasting my time I cannot.

And boredom wastes my time.

What is boredom? Stasis. Lack of movement forward or backward. The absence of relaxation because instead of focusing on nothing but good vibes you're TRYING to focus on something for the sake of obligation...but not enjoying your time, feeling it waste away.

This happened when I tried to watch Andor, tried to watch The Witcher, tried to watch Secret Invasion. This should all be up my alley. I LIKE fantasy. I LIKE sci-fi. I even like BAD sci-fi and fantasy as long as it's entertaining.

I enjoyed watching 'The Eliminators' which was a B-movie featuring a cyborg, a ninja, a riverboat captain, a robot sidekick, cavemen, a ninja, and a mad scientist trying to time travel to conquer Rome. Does this sound like an Oscar caliber film? NO.

Is the writing or acting or even directing very good? NO.

Was it fun to watch? YES.

Because something was always happening, they were always going somewhere, it was always clear what the good guys needed and why the bad guys were chasing them. There were scenes of characterization spaced with creative action. The scenery changed regularly so if you got tired of the river now we're in the jungle now we're in a ruin rebuilt as a fortress.

And regardless if the acting is amazing, everyone is TRYING. From the goofy henchman to the taciturn cyborg lead to the manic boat captain and the cackling scientist everyone is having fun and trying to make an impression.

But that's just not always the case in most productions nowadays.

LONG drawn out scenes feature people muttering in dark boring hallways. Time skips ensure you never care about anything because you never know quite where or when you are. Stakes are barely explained or nonexistent. Action happens but it never seems to change anything and no one important is ever even in danger of being injured let alone killed.

Things happen and the show forgets about them one scene later. People say things just to hear themselves talk (and yes, I understand the irony of THAT annoying me)

For awhile I felt that the problem was political, and to some degree it is. I still think a lot of people would not have jobs they were unqualified for if it wasn't for the feverish desire of Hollywood to separate themselves from their sins.

But the MAIN issue came to light recently in one sentence I heard in a recent review.

"Characters should be changed at the end of each scene."

For some reason this fundamental truth had not really occurred to me. Mostly because I have a classical film school background...meaning any decent or true things about filmmaking I had to teach myself. Apart from how to weaponize guilt and fad demographics to get into film festivals and win meaningless accolades you probably won't learn anything in film schools nowadays either. I was literally singled out as 'the story guy' because I foolishly believed that films should have them.

But this sentence hit me upside the head. THIS was the answer. THIS was why something like Andor bored me to a comatose stupor even though it is pretty and the acting is decent. This is why shows in which cars blew up seemed like watching paint dry on a wall. NOTHING CHANGES.

Scenes don't exist because they advance anything: they fill time.

In the (thankfully) canceled show Cursed, the reviewer Clipped Coin pointed out that there's a scene per episode simply devoted to telling the audience the plot. Not the character: they presumably already know what they're doing. No, the characters will tell each other what they already know just to pass the time. The show is so boring and devoid of interest it has to keep stopping what little action there is to remind people watching the show of the plot.

Not The Story: there isn't one. Only The Plot: why people are wandering seemingly aimless from one place to another.

Now, Cursed is a hateful show rife with anti-Christian bigotry, but that's nothing new. I thought about it and I think I can say this much: if it was just as much a screed as it is now BUT it had interesting characters, decent pacing, a good story and something HAPPENING more often I could choke down the lectures and get to the pudding.

But the pudding is so seldom there. It's not that productions are 'too woke' it's that they are BORING in addition to being annoyingly preachy.

Pirates of the Caribbean on Stranger Tides is not a bad movie because it has another rote anti-christian message in it...it's a bad movie because it's largely BORING for being so inconsequential. Boring is the one problem I will not spend my time or thought to circumvent.

I can deal with silly. I can deal with ridiculous. I can even sometimes deal with preachy.

I cannot deal with boring.

The recent Haunted Mansion movie is purportedly devoid of messaging which is lovely...but it also looks stuffed with empty CGI and stock characters who change very little. You can be woke and boring, but you can also be boring without being woke.

Conversely, I enjoyed almost all the ludicrously stupid Resident Evil films regardless of the messaging (it's pretty down on capitalism and the last film features insane Christians ) because it was such a spectacle of creative madness I can't help but at least be riveted by it. Two giant axe wielding zombies are in a gunfight. Our heroine has to zip line down a flaming skyscraper firing quarters out of a sawn off shotgun. There's a slow-mo matrix battle between two police officers and a guy wearing black leather and sunglasses.

It's insane, but it is never BORING.

Because oddly something is always changing, even if incredibly drastically. The heroine/heroes seldom change, granted, but their location frequently does. The safe place they went to gets overrun. They get into a fight and need to run to another location. Something blows up or breaks so now they need to rush to another set piece.

It's not Shakespeare, but it keeps things MOVING.

Where's the hook in something like Secret Invasion? Indiana Jones 5?

Nothing is moving. In Secret Invasion so many scenes are people just talking in rooms and seldom even saying anything important except veiled threats that go nowhere. Nick Fury whines about being old, but that never goes anywhere either, and whenever he whines nothing changes in his attitude or his decisions.

In Indy 5, Indiana Jones seldom goes anywhere he isn't dragged for reasons he barely knows or cares about so he has no real investment in what's going on. Helena his super amazing female superior replacement does...but her motives are so shallow even SHE doesn't change at all from scene to scene.

Let's compare.

In Raiders of the Lost Arc every scene is a journey.

Indy's introduction is his learning that his own entourage is turning against him as he gets deeper and deeper into uncharted and cursed territory. His companion who does go with him into the tomb rapidly learns that Indiana's work is not bed of roses, getting tarantulas on his back and witnessing another explorer killed by an ancient trap.

When he approaches the idol he has to work out the traps by thinking them through, showing another side to him that isn't just brute force or instinct. He's a guy whose intelligent.

And when everything goes sideways he gets fearful (another side to him) and what began as a slow and deliberate expedition becomes a mad dash for safety, showing that he's by no means either invulnerable or infallible. His problem with snakes in the getaway plane is yet another instance of his character 'changing' in the minds of the audience as we learn more about him in a realistic and well paced way.

In Dial of Destiny Indy and his companion Helena don't change at all. They don't think things through. Everything they survive they do by luck. The only time Indy comes up with a plan is again by accident, and it doesn't even effect events in the film.

We as the audience learn nothing new either. Indy is old. We 'learn' this fact a hundred times. Helena is selfish. We 'learn' thing constantly and it never stops being nearly meaningless. Consider Indy being a potential divine conduit in Raiders is the reason he can succeed where no one else can. In the beginning of the film the idol he find is literally glowing: magic is real. Unlike every other explorer he meets Indy seems to listen to the religious objects he finds and tries to preserve, so he does have a unique character trait that develops as the story progresses. In the beginning of the film Indy is dismissive of God and power and magic, but at the end he somehow knows exactly what to do to avoid the Ark of the Covenant's power.

Was he 'told' this? This might also explain much better his super human feats of strength, endurance, and dexterity. He is a guided man.

In Dial there's no reason Indy has to be in his own movie. Nothing he does is important, needs to be unique to him, and actually literally the villains would have failed without his existing. In Raiders he is the only thing standing between the Nazis and the power of God.

In Temple of Doom he has to rescue the kids and return the magic stones to save the country.

In Last Crusade the Nazis would have kept trying to get the grail until they had it. He stopped them.

But so little needs to change for anything to happen in Dial of Destiny nothing matters between scenes. If Indy fails to escape the baddies it doesn't matter because he's captured later anyway. The villain's plan is so stupid he's destined for failure, Indy just happened to be there at the same time.

Same with The Witcher. When does Geralt actually have anything uniquely to do? Or even his companions? They're fighting a war but are they really tipping a balance or just wandering around and doing random things? Geralt doesn't even monster hunt after awhile which was supposedly his profession.

In Andor I don't learn anything about the heroes or villains regardless of how much time they spend talking about themselves. Andor begins as a guy willing to murder people and ends the same way. He starts out a sad sack and ends the same way. The villain begins sort of conflicted but not really and ends the same way. NOTHING changes. Nothing develops. Tons of people die, are arrested, stuff blows up, but nothing is truly effected by any of this.

And the entire show is a prelude that gets ignored as soon as the movies start again so there isn't even anything to glean from it to enhance the series.

Secret Invasion is so allergic to change that THOUSANDS of people die but nobody drastically seems to care. Nick begins a broken old man longing for death and ends as the same but now he's being reluctantly kept alive by his slavish devotion to his wife. That's not really a change, and there was an opportunity for change when she tries to kill him.

But he forgives her almost immediately and never brings it up so again, nothing changes.

The best movies/tv shows are always showing/revealing something new. Lost became a train wreck but started out fascinating because every few minutes something happened that changed the dynamic of everyone. Plane crash calming down? Now there's a smoke monster attacking people! Smoke monster went away? Now there's a polar bear in the middle of the jungle! The big reveal about Locke was jaw-dropping and hooked me like a fish. Again, ludicrous is not boring at the very least.

But static, empty, devoid of meaning or purpose or drive or anything but dour, drab, cripplingly depressive emotional sludge IS boring. Drama isn't just a word, it's a verb.

Something isn't dramatic just because two people are shouting at each other: their DYNAMIC needs to change. Something isn't dramatic when something blows up: it has to be something that is LOST or causes loss. Someone sleeping with someone or killing someone isn't dramatic unless either event is MEANINGFUL to someone else.

Someone needs to remember these rules. I don't care about politics (I really really don't) I don't care about CGI I don't care about budget I don't care about remakes or reboots.

ALL I care about is a return of dynamic and deliberately CHANGE to productions again, to make the fictional more meaningful than a distraction.

If I wanted to turn off my brain I'll take a nap. I doesn't cost me a subscription fee and doesn't' come with commercials.

I turn to television, to games, to books, to movies for ENTERTAINMENT: drama and development and creative experiences to make up for my time and money spent.

And if that isn't forthcoming I don't care about ANYTHING else. I'll go elsewhere to look for it.

"Good understanding wins favor, but the way of the unfaithful is hard.”

- Proverbs 13:15

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The trailer for the Peacock streaming version of Twisted Metal has landed and it looks...nothing like the games. It's some weird post apocalyptic thing with only some characters resembling their game counterparts, but not in terms of their backstories or even attitudes. Apart from Sweet Tooth being there there is NOTHING that feels like Twisted Metal at all, let alone even lightly pays homage to the games. And I can already promise you the creators have their excuses at the ready.

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"We couldn't just completely recreate something or the audience wouldn't be in suspense!'

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" We NEEDED to adapt the source material to the medium to make the show flow better!"

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"Fans would never be pleased with ANYTHING so why even try?"

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"We're not JUST appealing to fans, we're reaching out to new viewership not familiar with the franchise so we need a fresh and clean reboot."

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"The material was outdated and offensive and needed sanitizing for modern audiences."

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With Twisted Metal of course they can offer one more excuse: even the GAMES have very loose continuity, with the characters changing roles and backstories between games, the setting and stakes changing, and Calypso the central figure sometimes being a different person entirely too.

So game over, right? Looks at those ironclad reasons to avoid adapting source material in anything but the most cursory of ways. No one has any right to complain.

Except that it's all lies. Directly, lies. As in deliberate untruths: not just excuses.

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"We couldn't just completely recreate something or the audience wouldn't be in suspense!'

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Did literally anyone complain when Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings attempted to accurately recreate the books they were based on? Quite the opposite: a majority of complaints were because of the DEVIATIONS from the books, not praise for the sudden exciting 'swerves' from the fiction that supposedly provides audience suspense.

What's the first thing people who actually enjoy material look for in a production being made supposedly based on that material? That answer is seldom, if ever, how many times that adaptation deliberately ignores or changes something about established lore.

I can guarantee you if anyone is saying good things about the trailer for the second Dune movie it's along the lines of 'I actually recognize that scene from the book!'

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" We NEEDED to adapt the source material to the medium to make the show flow better!"

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With the possible exception for Peter Jackson having Frodo be taken to Osgliath to establish a narrative, there is almost NEVER any excuse for deviating from the source material for the sake of fitting a medium for the simple reason a lot of people nowadays seem to not care or not understand about the medium they are working in. This is the same logic which led to the Secret Invasion tv show, supposedly based on the comics of the same name, removing all the superheroes and intrigue so there would be room for...people weeping on park benches.

This is neither faithful to the source material OR interesting to watch in a TV show. The deviation wasn't in favor of making something MORE cinematic, it was to make it LESS so. Drawn out, boring, and miserable is seldom what people look to television to experience. The excuse can't even be made that this was a money issue: eight episodes of Secret Invasion cost more to make than the movie Oppenheimer which has a literal true to life nuclear bomb in it.

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"Fans would never be pleased with ANYTHING so why even try?"

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This is why people HATED Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, most of Game of Thrones, Dune, and films that are literal word for word adaptations of books with screenplays by the authors like The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption and Silence of the Lambs.

Wait...those are timeless classics that made billions of dollars.

Fans aren't asking for the impossible. Ironically the very least they want is SO attention to detail and care for the source material: an ADAPTATION of a work they loved in the first place. Easter eggs and name recognition alone isn't enough. In the Max Payne film (a terrible movie and a financial flop) there's an auto parts store named after a major character from the game. The guy doesn't show up, just his name. The movie is so empty of association with the game it can only REFERENCE major characters instead of actually try and recreate them.

What is the point?

Even if you aren't trying to appeal to a fans (realistically a majority of people who will actually pay for your adaptation in the first place) THIS is no excuse either...

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"We're not JUST appealing to fans, we're reaching out to new viewership not familiar with the franchise so we need a fresh and clean reboot."

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Guess what people hate? Reboots. Everyone hates reboots across the board: fans, non-fans, people who walked into the room. Nobody likes reboots for the same reason that studios love them: they're lazy board clearing scotched earth attempts to get all the recognition but have none of the obligations. It's CALLED Spiderman, but we don't need to do anything vaguely like Spiderman because it's a REBOOT. We can literally do anything we want because the power of REBOOT basically gives us a 'get out of adaptation free' card. No research needed, no effort needed: just whatever we cobble together AND we get all the tasty money from people fooled into buying the product because of a familiar name.

But this strategy is seeing a significant diminishment of returns recently. Reboots mean that the previous films basically get erased so a lot of people just ignore the films/shows leading up to a reboot because none of it will matter when the big extinction wave hits.

This is why Ant Man 3 and The Flash movies were flops: they won't matter at all when the important reboot films arrive and change everything.

But, ironically, studios have learned another lesson by accident recently. Nostalgia sells tickets. Spiderman No Way Home broke the bank by breaking the rules: melding the previously erased timelines of Spiderman which should have logically been buried by the reboot Spiderman: Homecoming. But despite the actors being older, the franchises long dead, it didn't matter: people paid to see the original cast back in the saddle.

The very reason for a reboot fell apart as people flocked to see a reboot being torn to pieces in real time. And there's already been announced another Toby MacQuire/Sam Raimi Spiderman movie in the works.

Turns out it's not reboots that call everyone and their money together at all, it's the opposite.

The craved stability of a time when things seemed to mean more than just whatever was happening in a single film.

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"The material was outdated and offensive and needed sanitizing for modern audiences."

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The TV show version of Twisted Metal features a man getting his arm hacked off and numerous scenes of torture. I know we're living in a depraved society, but if you can handle blood caking a room you can handle something unthinkable like a woman driven by 'outdated' jealousy of her maid of honor in a horrible heteronormative way.

(I'm disgusted that spellcheck knew that made up word)

Twisted Metal has always been walking on an edge of decency on purpose. Sweet Tooth was a killer clown who murdered children specifically. Calypso was a man whose face had been burned off. Even before Twisted Metal Black (my favorite of the series) pushed things about as far as they could go, the series was synonymous with flouting conventions and a complete disregard for taste. You blow up the Eiffel Tower. You run down civilians. It's a nasty, gritty, strangely cartoony world of mayhem and actual magic.

So apparently the best way to 'update' this was to replace all the drivers with just...stereotypes. No more colorful drivers with motivations. The lead character is boring and doesn't seem to have much agency at all, just going to do something for money. He's even promised a wish from clearly a female Calypso, but he turns it into a joke.

The very premise of the series is sneered at.

And the other stereotypes aren't going to avoid antagonizing EVERYONE, just people the showrruners personally don't care about. You think everyone will appreciate evil redneck cops? Of course not. Offense is fine in THAT respect, so again it's all a front, a lie made to excuse laziness.

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You don't want to make enemies of fans. You can disappoint them without pissing them off, but if you directly antagonize or ignore them you are cutting off a gigantic part of your audience right at the start.

Who besides fans would care about a Twisted Metal production? I guess people who like the actors or just want to see cars shooting at each other, but again apart from Sweet Tooth there is NOTHING similar to the games here at all. It could just be called Death Rally or something and you wouldn't even need to reshoot anything from the trailer.

But the fact it is called Twisted Metal comes with expectations that the showrunners do not care about and are not meeting.

So the fans are in the dirt, but newcomers are also heading for the hills off the bat too because video game related media does NOT have an amazing track record. Even Super Mario Bros and Mortal Kombat, two of the most successful video game related films to date, have had pretty middling reviews. If they get a whiff this is a video gam adaptation that's strike one. Maybe they'll watch it out of sick curiosity but not much more.

And apart from that distinction, what's here to see? It's a silly post apocalyptic action thing.

Like Daylight...which was canceled for low viewership. And Zombieland...which petered out. Not a great track record there either.

The REAL reason this is called Twisted Metal and is post apocalyptic is simple but will never be stated aloud: money.

Twisted Metal hasn't made a game in years so it must have been cheap to pick up the rights. Post Apocalyptic setting means you can basically shoot anywhere with a little setting dressing and there you go, and a lot of scenes can just be on empty roads or in the woods.

And the audience KNOWS this.

Shows look cheap because they are are being cheap. Bad costumes, bad special effects, are because of rushed schedules and the thought that audiences will accept anything without any direct say thanks to streaming services lying nowadays about viewership.

This is one reason for the Writer's Strike: a lack of transparency from streaming services about revenue. If a show has no viewership it doesn't matter how many magazines you pay off to sing it's praises: it is not making money back.

So because the current system is in a rut the studios keep making cutbacks to the one thing they don't care about: the shows themselves.

But it's not always going to work, and a solution is RIGHT there if anyone bothered to look into it.

Long ago the Sci-Fi channel (now called SyFy if it's even still on) ran a miniseries for Dune which was notable for cheap sets, cheap costumes, and cheap CGI...AND for the strange fact that it almost perfectly followed the book it was based on.

Because of this until the recent big budget movie adaptation the Sci-Fi show was basically the only way to see the book Dune adapted to the screen. Even David Lynch's film is a very loose adaptation...which again was a critical and commercial failure by neither appealing to fans or to newcomers by deviating from the source material.

I think the Sci-Fi miniseries for Dune proved once and for all money doesn't matter if the source material is actually ADAPTED. But for some reason nobody wants to even try nowadays, treating books like collections of names to use at random and franchises like a couple extra bucks to bilk people out of before they realize how sloppy the underlying product truly is.

Will Netflix's One Piece break the curse? We'll have to wait and see.