Now having seen Civil War, I stand by what I said. You're right that, if someone tried to watch Civil War without ever having seen The Avengers, The Winter Soldier, or The Avengers 2, they wouldn't "get" it. But I still don't see how that's a flaw. That's the point. It's like starting to watch a show at Season 3 or starting to read a book at Chapter 7. That shit don't fly.
Despite a number of posts I suppose I'm not being clear. Apologies.
It is my contention that the vast majority of current episodic storytelling lacks the ability to compel episode
by episode, as opposed to episode
to episode. Viewers have been de-trained from wanting a
story each week, given how, first DVD box-sets, and later, binge-watching via streaming transformed, and in fact, transcended the former TV landscape. The way to approach TV now is to discuss, perpetually, an ongoing narrative, rather than have a chat about it at work (/water cooler). Discuss. Look for Easter eggs. Fan theories.
This episode to episode thing didn't used to matter so much. What mattered was that you tuned in once a week for a whole story, whether it was serialised or not. I don't think the change is a bad thing in and of itself, but I think we're starting to see some bad writing habits because of it. It's why I'm not sold on the idea that TV shows are a better medium for fleshing out a story because they allow more time for characterization/plot. That's ass-backwards to me. It's important to maintain an overall thread, but the real skill lies in keeping a viewer hooked for that half-hour/hour.
The
X-Files: those guys didn't give a shit. Mytharc episodes showed up willy-nilly, because writers were sure of their ability to re-establish stakes, and had faith that viewers didn't care. This often led to some unevenness, but in general, writing was headed in the right direction: tell a story each week. It peaked, probably, with
The Sopranos. I often just pick an episode to watch. It relies on understanding who characters are in relation to previous events and other characters, of course, but they're all self-contained stories where cause-and-effect relies on events within the episode to a more profound degree than those outwith.
Does that make sense? Have you noticed that nowadays, it's often the case that the first in a series is the best one? How shows repeatedly have interesting first halves to first seasons before going out with a whimper? How the origin stories of rebooted universes have true moments and clear rooting interests:
Star Trek (2007), all the Marvel origin films, for instance?
A good way to explain this is to review how iconic sequels worked. Their creators often had no clue that there would be another film in the franchise. So stories had to be built from the ground up. This
forced little adjustments in writing approach that added up to a lot, while maintaining the feel of a larger, continuous saga.
For instance, they tended not to use character history from prior films to set up reveals (like the Bucky one), but to depict extreme emotions that they wanted the audience to
expect based on information they had, suspense being used for "moments" more than mystery.
Sarah's horror at seeing Arnie in
T2 at the sanitarium works this way as well. And yet its success doesn't hinge on it. The movie lends Sarah a whole arc that we could never have guessed at to start the film, which contributes to our feeling her anguish at the sight of Arnie. Her paranoia, her anger, all lead up to that classic moment of frozen fear. Similar to this is Ripley's indignation at the start of
Aliens. Of the current crop,
Hannibal worked this way. So did
Breaking Bad. The information is on the page. The creators are therefore free to fuck with you to their heart's content, episode after episode.
When they did reveals, there was usually little relation to prior instalments. Vader being Luke's father: it comes out of nowhere because
it comes out of nowhere. It is felt because it relies on the arc of the character in the film. Vader curiously being invested in Luke. Luke trying and failing at Jedi training with Yoda. Of course it made people think back to
A New Hope, but that only added to the mythology, the nerdy pontificating. It's not why it worked in the moment.
I'm still wary of the "if you have to explain it, you didn't feel it" line (mind/body and what not) but I agree with you here.
Yeah but I'm saying something concrete when I say it. With conventional narrative, function is driven by what the writer thinks will make a viewer
feel something. This is simply a fact. And the best guys don't just acknowledge this, they embrace it (definitely watch 21:31 to 22:10):
The better a writer/director is able to make elicited emotion match what they
intended their audience to feel, the more skilled he/she is. For example, you get to know a character well, and then they die spectacularly. Build empathy for a character, then fuck with the audience empathy. This is why an action movie is the hardest film to make.
What's happening now is an issue of
assumed empathy. With the Marvel movies, I'm watching folks bend over backwards to explain why certain characters are saying/doing something, because writers assume viewers care enough already. With great drama, this isn't needed. You use shorthand that's crisp and efficient for character moments, that explain themselves with the camera:
What you shouldn't have to do is make a viewer explain motivation, or events that are supposed to explain themselves. It's not immersive. I mean things like this:
Not about Fury. Him surviving is fine. He's Fury. He should be able to survive a corporate takeover.
From my perspective, the "remember the old days" stuff is the natural mode of conversation between friends who have been separated for an extended period of time (and I'm saying this having hung out when I was back in Chicago for only the third time in ten years with my best friend growing up). However, I disagree that it feels like the writers were forcing it. Rather, I felt like Steve was forcing it. It felt organic to the character, so lost and out-of-touch with this new world and the new people in it but now with a chance to reach back (in time) and forward (in space) and (re)connect with his best friend. That it's so one-sided (at least initially) works really well. You can feel Steve's desperation.
I've heard these sorts of explanations by friends about
Civil War. I don't know mate. It's almost like the writing is
just weak enough that it allows fans wiggle room to theorise about "deeper" themes under the surface. Lending weight where there is none.
Fuck deeper themes. I'm at the movies for a superhero action film. Make me cheer and whoop and cry and laugh. I don't want to pontificate to a woman after about how Cap's deep brofeels accurately reflect camaraderie between PTSD soldiers who've seen battle together, so I can get laid. The Russos just aren't good enough to have their cake and eat it too like that. QT/Mann/The Coens/Raimi/McTiernan/Cameron are.
Because what they know is
the fun comes first. And that truly felt fun comes with empathy you work your balls off trying to instill.
I thought of it initially with Iron Man 3, which, oddly, you exempt from these criticisms despite, based on what happens with Gwyneth Paltrow, it seeming to fit perfectly. I thought the same thing but even more so in Civil War with Don Cheadle.
Yes, I part with you on needing people to die, as you noted. Good drama doesn't work off a certain category of event occurring. It works from every event occurring as it relates to
what we know so far.
I can't remember too much about
IM3, but I know he destroys the suits in the end, and that is his way of dealing with the inner conflict the film establishes. He was making too many from experiencing anxiety over his own mortality, and commits in the end to destroying them, because he finally realises he's Tony Stark wearing a suit of armor. Tony Stark the man, with a woman who loves him for who he is.
And it seemed to crescendo quite nicely. The multiple suits action sequence was his coming to terms with how it was never about the suit but him all along, occurring right before the resolution where he destroys them, and is no longer Iron Man.
Again, I'm hazy on the details, but Paltrow dying while he's actually growing, is learning, does nothing but punish him for no narrative reason.
The reason I advocate for his death in
Ultron is because his conflict was different. He's turning megalomaniacal, and nobody is noticing except to make a joke now and then. Hell, one of them helps him create Ultron. His death, in that case, would allow the protagonists (the Avengers) to reassess their purpose.
The reason I like
Iron Man 3 is its Shane Black-ness. Narratively, it's in a category all by itself. It's really not a Marvel film. It's not safe and it doesn't give a shit what you think.
Guardians is another one that's cut from a different kind of cloth.
So that's our Marvel conversation out of the way. Now let's go back to Sorkin:
Yes, let's.
Either I'm way off or you're describing a director surrogate. Isn't the director the one doing the telling?
Yes. But it's why I said something like, "...when the camera isn't doing the job."
The audience surrogate, for me, does the job of the director where he can't do it himself.
I think the difference between the way we're defining it is that you're thinking about it in a textbook sense, and me in a functional sense. Shocking, I know.
Going to cut to the crux of the Sorkin/feminism shit:
The issue is whether Sorkin is pulling that shit out of his ass or if women around him had expressed those/similar sentiments. Sorkin is a diligent researcher, he doesn't talk about shit unless he's done his homework. He's not just some redneck who doesn't like it that his women don't stay home and make him sandwiches anymore. He's an intelligent guy reading the cultural terrain and giving voice to one of the popular sentiments amidst discourses on gender, and doing it in an intelligent and, dramatically, plausible fashion.
For one, research (just a glance at papers around the time) suggests overwhelmingly that women
under-report instances of sexual harassment, when definitions for what constitute it under various categories are adjusted for.
Further, the negative effects of harassment are unrelated to how a woman perceives them. From a review looking at this around the same time
The West Wing was airing:
Magley et al. (1999) conclude: “These data from three organizations demonstrate that whether or not a woman considers her experience to constitute sexual harassment, she experiences similar negative psychological, work, and health consequences.”
Honestly, this is just well-known stuff. I found tons more and very easily. Saying he's a "diligent researcher" is a little lazy, no? Further, when a writer is propagating a point of view that deviates from the norm (eg. black people are policed more stringently because they have low moral fortitude), I believe a viewer should err on the side of sympathy for the perceived victim, and check the writer's conclusions rather than assume his/her non-expert view is correct. This would make it far less possible for the viewer to contribute to minimising the seriousness of sexual harassment. It happens to be the kinder thing to do to assume women aren't complaining for no reason.
Speaking of which, the whining that Sorkin perceives has its own hypothesis (literally called "the whiner hypothesis"), which has been thoroughly refuted.
Nobody said he had the mentality of a redneck. I don't even think he believes such antiquated notions as women having their place. He is (perhaps was, I don't know), however, hopelessly out of touch for a man writing things at the forefront of progressive thought.
When you say his "last two films," are you saying that as a preface to talking about Silence - as in you liked The Wolf of Wall Street and Hugo better - or are you including Silence - as in you liked Silence and The Wolf of Wall Street better?
I haven't seen Silence, so I can't tell you that you're crazy (I'm thinking it, though), but I can tell you that, while I was back in Chicago for the holidays, my friend and I realized there was literally nothing we wanted to see in theaters. Then we thought of Silence, and neither one of us, both Scorsese guys, had any desire to see it. I just can't get worked up for this movie. It seems like it's going to be a fine addition to the "Why did you bother?" folder alongside shit like The Age of Innocence and Kundun.
I meant
Silence and
Wolf.
I'm not even a Scorsese guy, and I get worked up to see everything he makes. I like to see someone good at his/her job doing something new, period. All this complaining about sequelitis and shit, and we're not watching legitimate masters trying new things?
I'm no snob and you know it. I revel in the simplest shit.
The Iron Giant is my favorite movie. But a Marvel film that feigns depth to kick my wallet's ass, over a genius with true experience, is just fucking blasphemy at this stage.
Hmm. I don't think I'd go so far as to identify "the life you live, it's not about you" as Scorsese's Truth. At least, not on the evidence you've provided here. I agree that his movies deal with people who either do the wrong thing(s) for the right reason(s) (Mean Streets and Taxi Driver just for two choice examples) or the wrong thing(s) for the wrong reason(s) (Raging Bull and Goodfellas just for two choice examples) but I don't see an altruistic message in his work. Mean Streets, as the "start" of his career, all but zeroes in on the path of the individual. His is absolutely a moral cinema, but in the sense of trying and failing - or never trying - to live a "good" life and in the process highlighting/questioning what "good" means in different time periods, places, contexts, etc.
That said, I'd love it if you provided a more detailed explanation of why you see altruism as Scorsese's Truth.
There were two posts I made in relation to this. You seen both, or just the one you quoted? Go ahead and multiquote the shit out of them so we can crack this open. It's hard to start without being argued with. LOL.
And thanks for bothering with the Marvel stuff. You're one of the few that chases after me down the rabbit hole.
EDIT: Fuck.
@Caveat: Imma get to you on
Manchester by the Sea soon.
